Final 2020 Oscar Predictions – SUPPORTING ACTOR

Brad Pitt is a star. The ‘kind they don’t make any more’ kind of Hollywood star. This weekend he’ll win his first acting Oscar. He’s won everything leading up to this weekend on top of being the critics’ favorite as well. As a producer with his company Plan B (where he won his first Oscar) he’s been one of Hollywood’s biggest champions of underdog and undertold stories. He uses his position by picking projects that back women and people of color filmmakers and LGBTQ+ subjects and themes in both film and television. There’s simply no unseating him.

Supporting Actor almost went lockstep the entire way with four of the five Oscar nominees earning Critics Choice, Golden Globe, SAG and BAFTA nominations. Only Anthony Hopkins (The Two Popes) is the outlier, missing out on a SAG nomination for Jamie Foxx in Just Mercy.

Joe Pesci (The Irishman) is a distant second here, with his first nomination since his win in this category 29 years ago for another Martin Scorsese film, Goodfellas. This is Al Pacino’s first nomination in 27 years. Tom Hanks enjoyed an Oscar comeback with this nomination for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, his first since 2001. All nominees in this category have won acting Oscars before except Pitt. His Golden Globe, SAG and BAFTA speeches (although, who is writing them…) have been awards show highlights this season and his Oscar speech should prove to be equally wry and clever.

Here are my ranked Final Oscar predictions for Supporting Actor with a chart of a decade of related precursors and history.

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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), 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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