FINAL 2025 Oscar Nomination Predictions: SUPPORTING ACTRESS

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Despite The Brutalist‘s poor showing at SAG (only earning lead actor Adrien Brody a nod), I think Felicity Jones and Selena Gomez (Emilia Pérez) will be fighting it out for the fifth spot, earning the same precursor nominations (BAFTA and Golden Globe, both missing SAG and Critics Choice) and in arguably equally strong films. Dual supporting acting nominations from the same film are far from a rarity and there’s a case to be made that because of the dramatic difference in screen time between the EP ladies; Gomez and frontrunner co-star Zoe Saldaña could find themselves in a Catherine Zeta-Jones/Queen Latifah-esque in Chicago scenario. The thing about that that gives me pause though is SAG is pretty good about clocking when we’re getting those double nominations: Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu (2022), Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan (2022), Al Pacino and Joe Pesci (2019), Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz (2018), Sam Rockwell and Woody Harrelson (2017), Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain (2011), Melissa Leo and Amy Adams (2010), and, of course, the Chicago (2002) girls. In most of those examples, one of them took SAG then the Oscar.

Screen time has become quite the talking point this year in both of the supporting categories (we’ll to actor later) Saldaña, Ariana Grande-Butera (Wicked) and Margaret Qualley (The Substance) sharing nearly as much – if not more in some cases – as their co-stars running lead campaigns.

‘Category fraud,’ as its referred to isn’t a new thing but it feels like it gets more egregious every year. But who’s fault is it? The Oscars used to nominate co-leads from the same film quite easily but not since 1991’s Thelma & Louise have two women from the same film both been nominated for Best Actress and you’d have to back to 1984’s Amadeus for Best Actor. So when a campaign is in the early stages, for studio awards strategists it becomes a matter of playing chess, not checkers. In the case of Emilia Pérez, early talks about whether Saldaña or the titular role played by Karla Sofía Gascón would be run as lead. Since all of the actresses in the film (including the BAFTA-longlisted Adriana Paz) collectively won Best Actress at Cannes, that provided no guidance. Saldaña is the driving force of the film, opening it with multiple numbers before Gascón even arrives. From then they largely share the same amount of time and film’s namesake provides the driving force for the rest of the film. But in the the most lopsided example, their screen time differs by about five minutes but not in Gascón’s favor, in Saldaña’s. Makes for a hard case to argue that she’s actually supporting-worthy as a category placement but there is no screen time requirement for performances in any industry or journalist group to speak of. We do have the example just a few years ago of the Academy going out on its own with Daniel Kaluuya (the frontrunner and eventual Oscar winner for Judas and the Black Messiah) and LaKeith Stanfield both being nominated in supporting despite the lead campaign for Stanfield. Is there a chance that Academy voters opt to put Gascón in supporting alongside Saldaña? It’s possible, but I’d say highly unlikely.

The same goes for Wicked; the screen time for Grande-Butera and Cynthia Erivo differs by about 14 minutes (in Erivo’s favor) and in the original Broadway musical, the character of Glinda (played by Grande-Butera in the film) earned Kristin Chenoweth a lead Tony Award nomination alongside her Elphaba, Idina Menzel, who won it. In The Substance, Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle opens the film (and closes it) and we’re with her for a little while before Margaret Qualley’s Sue shows up but by the film’s end the two share the slimmest of margins of any lead-supporting contenders, just two minutes. Qualley is actually the supporting actress contender with the most critics wins, more than Saldaña and Grande-Butera, but there is a small, back burner feeling of when Mila Kunis hit every precursor in Black Swan, under the eventual Best Actress winner in Natalie Portman. But Qualley couldn’t pull SAG or BAFTA. Both of her nominations for Critics Choice and the Globes were in a field of six and BAFTA is as well. Missing there was a bit of a red flag for me.

So where does that leave us, or more importantly, the actresses who are true supporting players in their films whose 10/15/20 minutes provides no ammunition against the stronghold of co-leads? To quote Oscar nominee Diane Ladd, “upset and chagrined,” no doubt. As a predictor do you then just go with the performance in the stronger film or can something stand out enough to leapfrog over them?

Enter Jamie Lee Curtis in The Last Showgirl. The surprise Oscar winner in this category just two years ago (for Everything Everywhere All At Once) is back nepoing harder than any baby has ever nepoed. First came the shock nomination at SAG, followed up by the BAFTA showing. If Curtis makes the Oscar cut she’ll join a very small group of actresses who didn’t earn their first (and follow up) nominations until after the age of 60: Judi Dench, Ethel Barrymore, Marie Dressler, Ruth Gordon, and Jessica Tandy. As with so many of this year’s acting categories, it’s going to be a banner year for first-timers and for Supporting Actress, the only realistic options for a voter looking for a familiar name are Curtis, Felicity Jones and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in Nickel Boys.

Something to look out for here, and in any acting category, is the ‘real person’ effect. In an overwhelmingly fictional characters season, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown stands contender (in my top 10, at least) to be playing a real life person. She has that surprise SAG nomination and she’s great in the film but I wonder if it’s a rogue nom and speaks more to the overall love of the film vs the individual performance. Getting in with just SAG is not an easy feat and it hasn’t happened recently; Ruby Dee in 2007’s American Gangster was the last time in this category, five years before the SAG-AFTRA merge. In the last five years, three actresses have been nominated here with just one precursor: Kathy Bates for Richard Jewell (Globe), Jessie Buckley for The Lost Daughter (BAFTA), and America Ferrera for Barbie CCA). It’s actually easier to get in with no precursors than just SAG. I currently only have 3/5 SAG-to-Oscar crossover in this category, not out of the realm of possibility in recent years that have seen everything from 2/5 to 5/5, but I could still be underestimating Barbaro here. We’ll see.

Here are my final 2025 Oscar predictions in Supporting Actress.

1. Zoe Saldaña – Emilia Pérez (Netflix)
BAFTA, CCA, GG, Cannes (Best Actress), SAG
2. Ariana Grande-Butera – Wicked Part I (Universal Pictures)
BAFTA, CCA, GG, SAG
3. Isabella Rossellini – Conclave (Focus Features)
BAFTA, CCA, GG
4. Jamie Lee Curtis – The Last Showgirl (Roadside Attractions)
BAFTA, SAG
5. Felicity Jones – The Brutalist (A24)
BAFTA, GG
6. Selena Gomez – Emilia Pérez (Netflix)
BAFTA, Cannes (Best Actress), GG
7. Margaret Qualley – The Substance (MUBI)
CCA, GG
8. Monica Barbaro – A Complete Unknown (Searchlight Pictures)
SAG
9. Danielle Deadwyler – The Piano Lesson (Netflix)
CCA, Gotham, SAG
10. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor – Nickel Boys (Amazon MGM)
CCA

Next up (alphabetical): 

Michelle Austin – Hard Truths (Bleecker Street)
Joan Chen – Dìdi (Focus Features)
Carol Kane – Between the Temples (Sony Pictures Classics)
Natasha Lyonne – His Three Daughters (Netflix)
Gotham
Saoirse Ronan – Blitz (Apple Original Films)
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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