2026 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTOR (July)
In 2022, when The Whale premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Brendan Fraser’s reviews were pretty rapturous. While he didn’t win the Volpi Cup for Best Actor (that went to Colin Farrell for The Banshees of Inisherin), it was the beginning of the path that, for most of the year prior, set him towards his eventual Oscar win. But it wasn’t until the Toronto International Film Festival, where the film screened and he was given the TIFF Tribute Award that things really solidified. The audience, en masse, put the film on an emotional map that charted its Oscar course. It was a more key festival and a true kickoff.
So, when it was revealed today that Rental Family, in which Fraser stars as an American actor in Japan hired to live out roles in other people’s lives, would world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, it was like seeing puzzle pieces fall into place. In my Best Picture/Best Director predictions on Monday after its November release date was announced I even said “It screams TIFF People’s Choice winner.” The combination of the two push Fraser way up into my top 5 for this month.
In the same TIFF announcement from this morning, Wake Up Dead Man and The Lost Bus will also have their world premieres there and while I’m not banking on Daniel Craig bagging any gold as Benoit Blanc, but Matthew McConaughey in the latter, in a harrowing true story of a bus driver trying to save the lives of dozens of schoolchildren during the worst California wildfire in a century, feels like a contender.
Here are my 2026 Oscar nomination predictions in Best Actor for July.
| 1. Jeremy Allen White – Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (20th Century Studios) |
| 2. Timothée Chalamet – Marty Supreme (A24) |
| 3. George Clooney – Jay Kelly (Netflix) |
| 4. Brendan Fraser – Rental Family (Searchlight Pictures) |
| 5. Wagner Moura – The Secret Agent (NEON) |
| 6. Jesse Plemons – Bugonia (Focus Features) |
| 7. Michael B. Jordan – Sinners (Warner Bros) |
| 8. Leonardo DiCaprio – One Battle After Another (Warner Bros) |
| 9. Dwayne Johnson – The Smashing Machine (A24) |
| 10. Will Arnett – Is This Thing On? (Searchlight Pictures) |
| 11. Daniel Day-Lewis – Anemone (Focus Features) |
| 12. Matthew McConaughey – The Lost Bus (Apple Original Films) |
| 13. Colin Farrell – The Ballad of a Small Player (Netflix) |
| 14. Oscar Isaac – Frankenstein (Netflix) |
| 15. Paul Mescal – The History of Sound (MUBI) |
| 16. Ethan Hawke – Blue Moon (Sony Pictures Classics) |
| 17. Denzel Washington – Highest 2 Lowest (Apple Original Films/A24) |
| 18. Tonatiuh – Kiss of the Spider Woman (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions) |
| 19. Dylan O’Brien* – Twinless (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions) – Sundance winner |
| 20. Joel Edgerton – Train Dreams (Netflix) |
Other contenders: Murray Bartlett – At the Sea (TBD), Austin Butler – Caught Stealing (A24), Willem Dafoe – Late Flame (TBD), Benicio Del Toro – The Phoenician Scheme (Focus Features), Idris Elba* – A House of Dynamite (Netflix), Colin Farrell – A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (Sony Pictures/TriStar), Ralph Fiennes – The Choral (Sony Pictures Classics), Hugh Jackman – Song Song Blue (Focus Features), Lee Byung-hun – No Other Choice (MUBI), Rami Malek – Nuremberg (Sony Pictures Classics), Guillaume Marbeck – Nouvelle Vague (Netflix), Josh O’Connor – The Mastermind (MUBI), Robert Pattinson – The Drama (A24), Brad Pitt – F1: The Movie (Apple Original Films/Warner Bros), Channing Tatum – Roofman (Paramount Pictures)
*Lead or supporting? Idris Elba – A House of Dynamite (Netflix), Tom Hiddleston – The Life of Chuck (NEON), Dylan O’Brien – Twinless (Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions) – Sundance winner
2025 or 2026? Robert Pattinson – The Drama (A24)
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), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) 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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