FINAL 2023 Oscar Predictions: MAKEUP and HAIRSTYLING

I think there are only two ways this will go and it’s either Elvis or The Whale. Both are Makeup and Hair Stylists guild (MUAH) winners, both feature complicated weight suits and both have top Best Actor contenders.

There is some good acting/makeup correlation over the last decade+ with winners like Marion Cotillard in La Vie en rose, Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady, Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour and just last year with Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye (which beat out Best Picture nominee and overall awards leader Dune). The main takeaway here is that these were all also transformational biopics and only one contender this year falls under that and that’s Austin Butler in Elvis.

Now, this definitely isn’t foolproof by any means. Leonardo DiCaprio won Best Actor for 2015’s The Revenant but the film lost the Makeup and Hairstyling Oscar to Mad Max: Fury Road. Renée Zellweger won Best Actress as Judy Garland for Judy and Joaquin Phoenix won Best Actor for the titular Joker for their 2019 films but both films lost to Bombshell (featuring Best Actress nominee Charlize Theron as Fox News’ Megan Kelly).

As in many categories, there is a late-breaking and sneaky chance for All Quiet on the Western Front to emerge but it probably needed to show up at MUAH first, or win BAFTA. Still, the images alone of star Felix Kammerer’s dried, mud-caked face are pretty indelible.

At the MUAHs, Elvis won Period Hair and Period Makeup, just like Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom did two years ago. That film went on to win the Oscar but both of its leads, Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis, lost their lead bids in non-Best Picture-nominated films. Elvis is nominated for Best Picture among its seven nods.

The Whale won Special Makeup Effects but there isn’t really a precedent to only win this award and then translate it to the Oscars. The closest similarity, and it’s really not much of one, is 2002’s Frida, which actually lost this award to The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers but then won the Oscar where there was just one other nominee and it wasn’t LOTR. Wild year. Bringing it back, The Whale is not nominated for Best Picture, further weakening its stance. Not by that much though, the makeup effects in the film are more advanced than that of Elvis or The Batman, which also utilizes significant weight suits and makeup.

So how does it shake out? Will the category align with Best Actor as we’ve seen or split like 2015 and 2019?

Here are my final 2023 Oscar winner predictions in Makeup and Hairstyling.