FINAL 2025 Oscar Predictions: BEST ACTOR

For the longest time, Adrien Brody’s frontrunner status for The Brutalist was closely tied to what appeared early on to be the trajectory of the film, a major Best Picture contender and possible winner. But, despite Brody’s ability to continue collecting prizes, his film’s started to weaken after the post-Golden Globes glow. The rise of Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown, playing Bob Dylan in a celebrated biopic was as baity as Brody’s architect escaping the Holocaust and in the pantheon of Oscar-y winners, these are about as top two as you can get. But who’s going to come out on top and how close is the race, actually?

The Best Sound Oscar could definitely be a bellwether early in the evening if it goes to A Complete Unknown but Sound and Best Actor as a combo feels so strange. Chalamet would almost make more sense as a solo win for the film than being paired with that tech but then, Joaquin Phoenix won with just an Original Score Oscar as Joker‘s other win.

On the Prestige Junkie podcast recently, Katey Rich was talking about the Brody vs Chalamet race and the differences in their campaigns. Brody has been everywhere, at L.A. events from presenting at guild awards to the AARP Awards, working the room in a very traditional campaign way. Chalamet was largely absent from those events and opted instead for an ‘alt campaign’ that included viral videos of the international promo tour from the film and, of course, hosting SNL two weeks before Oscar winner voting began and in the middle of SAG winner voting. She made an interesting point that Chalamet’s type of campaign probably fit better with SAG’s very large and very spread out vocational membership that includes online personalities and influencers and a younger-skewing crowd but since we’ve never seen it work before it makes it hard to see him able to pull out a win.

Stats can be fun and sometimes they can take us far, even as each year they break down and become fewer and less reliable. One that hasn’t – yet – is that winning the Oscar after only winning SAG has happened in every acting category…except Best Actor. Now, as we know, pre-2000 BAFTA wasn’t really a precursor as it took place after the Oscars but context is still important. But, in each example it was a split year across SAG, BAFTA, Golden Globes and Critics Choice, giving the SAG winner the upper hand and, in most cases, several ‘overdue’ wins.

Best Actress
1995: Susan Sarandon (Sharon Stone won the Globe, Nicole Kidman won Critics Choice, Emma Thompson won BAFTA)
2001: Halle Berry (Sissy Spacek won Globe and Critics Choice, Judi Dench won BAFTA)

Supporting Actor
1997: Robin Williams (Burt Reynolds won the Globe, Anthony Hopkins won Critics Choice, Tom Wilkinson won BAFTA)
1999: Michael Caine (Tom Cruise won the Globe, Michael Clarke Duncan won Critics Choice, Jude Law won BAFTA)
2004: Morgan Freeman (Clive Owen won the Globe and BAFTA, Thomas Haden Church won Critics Choice)

Supporting Actress
2022: Jamie Lee Curtis (Angela Bassett won the Globe and Critics Choice, Kerry Condon won BAFTA)

That’s just not the case this year with Chalamet’s SAG win over Brody’s Globe, Critics Choice and BAFTA. It would be unprecedented (but obviously not impossible) for Chalamet to triumph here. In 2016 the SAG only winner in Best Actor was Denzel Washington (Fences) winning his first ever SAG award vs. Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea), who ultimately won the Oscar. Other recent lead Oscar winners who lost SAG first, like Anthony Hopkins in The Father, Emma Stone in Poor Things, and Frances McDormand in Nomadland, all won BAFTA. And, like Brody, had all previously won lead Oscars before.

One factor that’s impossible to ignore is that, despite his young age, Chalamet is the biggest star on the planet right now. He stars in two Best Picture nominees (his third year doing that) and is leading blockbuster after blockbuster in a career to that continues to skyrocket. While their might be a feeling of ‘he’ll have another chance later’ among some voters, plenty will feel like this is the right time, right now, at one of probably his many career peaks.

We know this much, whomever wins the Oscar between the two will either make history or keep a stat intact. If Chalamet wins he’ll become the youngest Best Actor Oscar winner ever (he’s the youngest SAG winner ever in his category), unseating Brody. If Brody wins, he remains the youngest Best Actor winner ever, a position he’s held since his win for The Pianist, 22 years ago.

Here are my final 2025 Oscar predictions in Best Actor for the 97th Academy Awards.

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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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