FINAL 2025 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTRESS
The toughest above the line race of the season, as the roller coaster of accolades kept changing hands, giving us historic wins, memorable speeches and surprise victories.
A much closer race than I think most people want to believe, with a top three that all have a viable shot, with pundits and hobbyists alike maintaining a surprising amount of assurance in their choices in a race that’s far from easy to pin down. Demi Moore has SAG, Critics Choice and the Golden Globe – beating Mikey Madison at each. Madison has the BAFTA and Spirit Award – beating Moore at both. Fernanda Torres has the Golden Globe too, but in drama, and as she wasn’t nominated at SAG or BAFTA, the Oscars will be the first and only time the three actresses will actually go head to head, making this the nail-biter that it is.
Even as stans push their favorites, entire countries back a single contender, and editorials going so far as to say a win for Fernanda Torres could save actual lives in Brazil, the stakes for an Oscar race feel higher than they usually are and fanbases even more active than usual.
Ultimately, I see the race as between Demi Moore (The Substance) and Mikey Madison (Anora) with Torres in third but not quite as the third party disrupter that others feel, despite her film’s surprise Best Picture nomination (which I think helps it more for International Feature Film, as opposed to here). Torres being able to bypass the career narrative of Moore in a film with Best Director and Original Screenplay nominations, as well as a very likely Makeup & Hairstyling win, or Madison in the PGA/DGA winner and frontrunner for Best Picture, it’s hard to what her true entry point is as an upset, especially as a non-English language performance. Is there passion for her performance? No doubt. There just isn’t a precedent for it, but then hey, she could be the precedent, especially in the ever-expanding international membership. Sony Pictures Classics has also given us one of the best phase 2 campaigns I’ve ever seen, not missing a beat with Torres, a likable and amiable campaigner, something that can go a long way. Kyle Buchanan of The New York Times, arguably one of the most respected and level-headed pundits not obsessed with clickbait choices and headlines, is going for Torres, saying, “It pays to be the last contender people watch” and wondering if some voters might be looking for a “third party option.” Is Torres’ own legacy as the daughter of Oscar-nominated actress Fernanda Montenegro (for 1998’s Central Station, also from Walter Salles) be on the minds of older voters? Will it matter to them or is the nomination, an uphill climb itself, the reward?
Moore was as big a star in the 80s and 90s as you could get with Oscar-winning Ghost, G.I. Jane and A Few Good Men among her most regarded films, but she suffered equally with some of those decades lowest points with Striptease (which made her the highest paid actress at the time), the remake of The Scarlett Letter, and Nothing but Trouble, earning four Razzies and becoming sidelined after a decade of commercial success but never being considered a ‘serious’ actress. Even after behind the camera Emmy and DGA nominations for her work, Hollywood kept her on the back burner, never making room for a comeback (although I would unironically argue that her work Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle is great) and just allowed her personal and marital dramas and her very public journey with plastic surgery be her story. But all of that changed last summer when The Substance hit Cannes. The Hollywood body horror story seemed cut right out of Moore’s own life and experiences, detailing an aging actress being put out to pasture in favor of a younger model. It was almost too on the nose but the genre allowed for a look at her experience, and that of any actress over 40, to be both a metaphorical and realistic exploration of internal and external misogyny. That Moore’s character Elisabeth Sparkle is an Oscar winner in the film as she’s on the precipice of being one herself is perhaps the film’s biggest wink, or biggest prophecy.
Mikey Madison has been shot and set on fire, twice. In two defining film roles before Anora, in Scream and Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood, the petite, straight-haired brunette actress (not unlike Demi Moore, actually) came into her own in Anora, which writer/director Sean Baker wrote specifically for her after seeing Scream. Playing Brighton Beach sex worker Ani, Madison comes in without the baggage of a more established actress, a classic Hollywood ingenue, in a way that the Academy loves to feel they discover. Even if most of saw her on five seasons of Better Things, this will be her introduction to many, if not most, voters. She’s a commanding force and presence in Anora, appearing in nearly every scene with equal amounts of vulnerability and dominant alpha energy. At just 25, there might be some ‘she’s young, she can be rewarded in the future’ type of voters but we’re not far away from that age being prime Best Actress territory for winners.
It wasn’t that long ago that the average age of a Best Actress winner was just 29 (compare to Best Actor where the youngest ever winner was only 29) but the 2010s started to see a shift; yes, we have young winners like Jennifer Lawrence, Brie Larson and Emma Stone but in that same decade came Meryl Streep’s third win, Julianne Moore’s first, Frances McDormand’s second and third as we entered the 2020s, Cate Blanchett and Renée Zellweger snagging their second wins and firsts in lead, and Jessica Chastain, Olivia Colman and Michelle Yeoh with first wins. Emma Stone returned from her ingenue win in 2016 to being an established name earning a second just last year. The Academy is constantly evolving and the membership with it, but it feel like the ingenue era is not ready to make a comeback and the era of established actresses, career or legacy wins (not derogatory), have become a part of the fabric. Even more so when attached either to a top two Best Picture contender or the makeup & hairstyling Oscar, now so deeply connected to the physical transformation of lead performers with Chastain, Streep, Stone more recently, Marion Cotillard in 2007 and even over in Best Actor, with Brendan Fraser’s comeback narrative + makeup win that made him undeniable.
As Mark Johnson noted in his final Oscar predictions piece: “For the first time since 1977, every Best Actress nominee comes from a film nominated for Best Picture. Even more notably, this is the first time since 1940 that the Best Actress lineup represents five different Best Picture nominees. In Oscar history, this marks only the fourth time that all Best Actress contenders have starred in films also nominated for Best Picture, joining 1939, 1940, and 1977.” It can’t really be overstated how much of a paradigm shift this is from the days, not very long ago, where Best Actress was largely populated with nominees who were often the only nominee for their film and rarely were represented in the Best Picture category.
Here are my final 2025 Oscar predictions in Best Actress for the 97th Academy Awards.
| 1. Demi Moore – The Substance (MUBI) BAFTA, CCA, GG, SAG, Spirit |
| 2. Mikey Madison – Anora (NEON) BAFTA, CCA, GG, SAG, Spirit |
| 3. Fernanda Torres – I’m Still Here (Sony Pictures Classics) GG |
| 4. Cynthia Erivo – Wicked Part 1 (Universal Pictures) BAFTA, CCA, GG, SAG |
| 5. Karla Sofía Gascón – Emilia Pérez (Netflix) BAFTA, Cannes, CCA, GG, SAG |
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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