FINAL 2025 Oscar Nomination Predictions: BEST ACTOR

Published by
Share

We have four safe spots in Best Actor and then its gets really tricky.

I’m not sure anyone could argue that Adrien Brody (The Brutalist), Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown), Colman Domingo (Sing Sing) and Ralph Fiennes (Conclave) aren’t locked and loaded here. Is an Earth-shaking snub possible? Of course it’s possible but even though we often see years where a person who hits BAFTA, Critics Choice, Golden Globes and SAG misses out in the end, it’s not going to come from this quartet. While Domingo’s film is easily the weakest of the five he actually has the most going in, adding a Spirit Award nomination and a Gotham win to his caché.

So let’s get to the where the real contest is, the ‘final’ spot where we have a possible leader and a few spoilers.

After almost exclusively playing either only James Bond or Benoit Blanc for the last decade, Daniel Craig broke free with Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ sensual gay fever dream Queer, giving him the best notices of his career, a National Board of Review win and his first SAG nomination. It’s hard to reconcile his miss at BAFTA in a field of six (they nominated him for Casino Royale!). One interesting factoid: 8 out 10 of the last Best Actor lineups have had a gay character. But, none with the graphic sexuality that’s in Queer and for as much as the Academy has opened its ranks and presumably its minds over the last decade, for a gay film with zero Oscar prospects elsewhere (not even the guilds bit), he’ll be just scraping by.

Is there anyone’s awards run this season as funky and surprising as Hugh Grant’s? His turn in Heretic, as a weird recluse who kidnaps two young Mormon missionaries and holds them hostage, is not exactly Oscar fodder. Even recently celebrated horror performances like Toni Collette in Hereditary and Lupita Nyong’o in Us, couldn’t make a dent in the awards conversation the way Grant has. He’s earned BAFTA, Critics Choice and Golden Globe nominations for his work but it’s important to recognize that those were all fields of six (and split categories for the Globes, an easier get where he was submitted in comedy). He missed SAG – a field of five – to the five men above. Grant’s never been Oscar-nominated before but holds the distinction of nabbing all four precursors (BAFTA, CCA, GG, SAG) and then missing out on that Oscar, for 2016’s Florence Foster Jenkins, a much more ‘Academy friendly’ role.

With two films in contention, Sebastian Stan is either the luckiest or unluckiest contender in Best Actor. While Academy rules dictate that an actor cannot be nominated in the same category twice, Stan has seen nominations for both The Apprentice and A Different Man; BAFTA, Golden Globe and Spirit Awards for the former and a Golden Globe win for the latter and both films are on the Oscar shortlist for Makeup & Hairstyling. Portraying Donald Trump during his rise as real estate mogul in the 1970s and 80s, The Apprentice is a dual chapter look at a meek version of Trump before meeting Roy Cohn (BAFTA, Golden Globe and SAG nominee Jeremy Strong) to after, revealing the evil rapist and dictator who would go on to become President of the United States. Twice. Undoubtedly, that’s not going to be an easy ask for some voters (maybe even less so than Daniel Craig giving a sloppy blow job), and some have expressed vocally that they won’t watch the film. But anecdotal ‘voter talk’ is simply too small a sample size to accurately say if it’s a mitigating factor. And, like Grant, Stan missed SAG but made it into three precursors with six or more spots. His Golden Globe win for A Different Man (in the comedy category), his only precursor nomination for that film, could be seen as reward for both as he was not going to win the drama Globe over Brody or Chalamet. Does Stan being lead in two films muddy the waters for him in one? Well, let’s talk about it.

If you know me or read my work, you know how I feel about the concept of ‘vote-splitting.’ It’s too often (if almost exclusively) used to explain an actor in two different films receiving votes for both but not enough in either to earn a nomination. The fallacy there, for me, is that there is no difference between a person choosing between an actor in two films vs two actors in two films. They are still, at the end of the day, two different performances and a voter simply chooses a preference of one over the other. If you want to now how I think vote-splitting actually works, it would be when the same actor gets votes in both lead and supporting categories and that ends up being their downfall. But even then we’ve seen it circumvented, like Kate Winslet in The Reader and LaKeith Stanfield in Judas and the Black Messiah. In probably the wildest roller coaster though, Leonardo DiCaprio escaped a full snub when he was Oscar-nominated for Blood Diamond over The Departed, a season where he received dual lead nods at Critics Choice and the Globes, lead at SAG for Diamond and supporting for The Departed.

The concept is worse when employed in the winning stage when a third candidate emerges triumphant over two actors who have been pegged as the frontrunners. Obviously Brody is the best example of that, besting previous Oscar winners Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt and Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York when he won Best Actor for 2002’s The Pianist. At the time, people used vote-splitting to defend their erred predictions and not simply the fact that Brody got more votes while the attention and precursors were myopically focused on Nicholson (Golden Globe Drama and Critics Choice winner) and SAG winner Day-Lewis. But I digress. I know that goes down a bit of a rabbit hole but context is crucial for understanding motives. It’s also worth noting that Sebastian Stan didn’t face any ‘vote-splitting’ at BAFTA as A Different Man wasn’t longlisted there.

Whatever happens, it’s going to be close.

Here are my final 2025 Oscar predictions in Best Actor.

1. Timothée Chalamet – A Complete Unknown (Searchlight Pictures)
BAFTA, CCA, GG, SAG
2. Adrien Brody – The Brutalist (A24)
BAFTA, Gotham, CCA, GG, SAG
3. Colman Domingo – Sing Sing (A24)
BAFTA, Gotham, CCA, GG, Spirit, SAG
4. Ralph Fiennes – Conclave (Focus Features)
BAFTA, EFA, CCA, GG, SAG
5. Daniel Craig – Queer (A24)
EFA, CCA, GG, SAG
6. Sebastian Stan – The Apprentice (Briarcliff Entertainment)
BAFTA, GG, Spirit
7. Jesse Eisenberg – A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures)
GG
8. Hugh Grant – Heretic (A24)
BAFTA, CCA, GG
9. Sebastian Stan – A Different Man (A24)
GG
10. Glen Powell – Hit Man (Netflix)
GG

Next up (alphabetical): 

Kingsley Ben-Adir – Bob Marley: One Love (Paramount Pictures)
Nicholas Hoult – Juror #2 (Warner Bros)
Gabriel LaBelle – Saturday Night (Sony Pictures)
GG
Paul Mescal – Gladiator II (Paramount Pictures)
Jesse Plemons – Kinds of Kindness (Searchlight Pictures)
GG
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.

Recent Posts

31st Screen Actors Guild Awards: David Chang Tapped as Executive Chef; Rashida “SHEEDZ” Olayiwola and Louis Virtel Named Head Writers

The 31st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards has added to its formidable creative team, naming celebrated chef David… Read More

February 7, 2025

Frontrunner Friday 2025 Oscar Predictions: We Need to Talk About Karla

I haven't delved much into the last few weeks of Oscar drama regarding Oscar-nominated actress… Read More

February 7, 2025

Advanced Imaging Society 15th Lumiere Awards: ‘Dune: Part Two,’ ‘Wicked’ and ‘The Wild Robot’ Take Top Honors in Film

Shōgun and Arcane Season 2 win for Episodic The Advanced Imaging Society has announced the winners of… Read More

February 7, 2025

27th Costume Designers Guild Awards (CDG): ‘Wicked,’ ‘Conclave,’ ‘Nosferatu’ Take Top Honors

The Costume Designers Guild Awards (CDGA), which honor achievements of excellence in Costume Design in… Read More

February 6, 2025

2025 AACTA Industry Awards: ‘Better Man,’ Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ Dominate

Boy Swallows Universe wins big for Australian television Boy Swallows Universe, Furiosa: A Mad Max… Read More

February 6, 2025

Director Watch Podcast Ep. 84 – ‘Silkwood’ (Mike Nichols, 1983) with Special Guest Izzy of Be Kind Rewind

Welcome to Director Watch! On this AwardsWatch podcast, co-hosts Ryan McQuade and Jay Ledbetter attempt… Read More

February 6, 2025

This website uses cookies.