2025 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTOR (September)

It’s A24’s world and we’re lucky to be living in it.

With no less than five Best Actor contenders this season (albeit on quite a sliding scale of likelihood), A24 could exert some real dominance in this category as we dip out of the late summer fests and enter early fall and the real beginnings of awards talk.

After picking up Sing Sing at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, the Oscar-winning studio dropped the film this summer in a very small platform with not much box office success but with star Colman Domingo still positioned well as a top tier contender. Earlier this year, Sebastian Stan won Best Actor at the Berlin Film Festival for his work in A Different Man, out in theaters next week. He also has the lead role as a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice in October. But it was the announcement of post-Venice picks up of two of this year’s hottest tickets – The Brutalist and Queer – that raised eyebrows and a real challenge for A24. Were the pickups a show of a lack of faith in Domingo and Stan? The Brutalist walked away with the Silver Lion for Best Director at Venice for Brady Corbet but that meant no win for star Adrien Brody and Queer went home empty handed entirely. Neither film even has a release date yet but both continue their festival runs as we barrel towards things like submission deadlines for Gothams, Spirit Awards and the Screen Actors Guild. While rumors of Queer possibly being held until next year have bubbled up, it doesn’t make much sense if they’re making big splashes at NYFF and more.

There’s also Andrew Garfield in We Live in Time but that’s largely regarded as more of a play for Florence Pugh (a distant one at that) and maybe Harris Dickinson in Babygirl (but realistically more of a supporting play). But who of the five can realistically make it to Oscars’ top five when you have Ralph Fiennes (Conclave) and Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) already on the burner and two brand new possibilities in Nicholas Hoult (Juror #2) and Peter Sarsgaard (September 5). While the latter is going to be campaigned lead, it’s a very Spotlight-y ensemble cast, which could find Sarsgaard on the outside just as Michael Keaton was for that eventual Best Picture winner in favor of his supporting co-stars.

Here are my 2025 Oscar predictions in Best Actor for September.

1. Adrien Brody – The Brutalist (A24)
2. Ralph Fiennes – Conclave (Focus Features)
3. Timothée Chalamet – A Complete Unknown (Searchlight Pictures)
4. Colman Domingo – Sing Sing (A24)
5. Daniel Craig – Queer (A24)
6. Paul Mescal – Gladiator II (Paramount Pictures)
7. Jharrel Jerome – Unstoppable (Amazon MGM)
8. Nicholas Hoult – Juror#2 (Warner Bros)
9. Sebastian Stan – A Different Man (A24)
10. John David Washington – The Piano Lesson (Netflix)

Next up: Kingsley Ben-Adir – Bob Marley: One Love (Paramount Pictures), Ethan Herisse – Nickel Boys (Amazon MGM), Harris Dickinson – Babygirl (A24), Jesse Eisenberg – A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures), Mike Faist – Challengers (Amazon MGM), Tom Hanks – Here (Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures), Gabriel LaBelle – Saturday Night (Sony Pictures), Cillian Murphy – Small Things Like These (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions), Josh O’Connor – Challengers (Amazon MGM), Joaquin Phoenix – Joker: Folie à Deux (Warner Bros), Glen Powell – Hit Man (Netflix), Peter Sarsgaard – September 5 (Paramount Pictures), Sebastian Stan – The Apprentice (Briarcliff Entertainment)

Other contenders: Austin Butler – The Bikeriders (Focus Features), Timothée Chalamet – Dune Part Two (Warner Bros), Adam Driver – Megalopolis (Lionsgate), Jacob Elordi – On Swift Horses (Dimension Films), Andrew Garfield – We Live in Time (A24), Richard Gere – Oh, Canada (Kino Lorber), André Holland – Exhibiting Forgiveness (Roadside Attractions), Anthony Hopkins – One Life (Bleecker Street), Barry Keoghan – Bird (MUBI), Jesse Plemons – Kinds of Kindness (Searchlight Pictures), Jason Schwartzman – Between Two Temples (Sony Pictures Classics), Bill Skarsgård – Nosferatu (Focus Features), Michael Shannon – The End (NEON), Robbie Williams – Better Man (Paramount Pictures)

Lead or supporting?: Harris Dickinson – Babygirl (A24), Mike Faist – Challengers (Amazon MGM), Tom Hiddleston – The Life of Chuck (TBA), Josh O’Connor – Challengers (Amazon MGM)

2024 or 2025?: Tom Hiddleston – The Life of Chuck (TBA)

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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