The first week of December usually means two things, the first being that Christmas season has officially began. And the second being that the much more prestigious and higher anticipated awards season has come to cast a shadow over the festive holidays.
And now that the annual awards season has officially began, there is no more appropriate time than now to release our official predictions (at the time of writing) for all 4 acting categories at the 97th annual Academy Awards ceremony.
First up, we have Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Best Actor
Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown)
Adrien Brody (The Brutalist)
Colman Domingo (Sing Sing)
Ralph Fiennes (Conclave)
Jesse Eisenberg (A Real Pain)
As most acting categories tend to do, the Best Actor category seems to be shaping into a two horse race throughout the early stages of the season. And as it stands, we predict Chalamet to win by a hair length.
With a maiden Academy Award win here, the Bob Dylan impersonator would become the youngest ever performer to win the award for Best Actor. Dethroning who, you might ask? None other than his fellow competitor in this two horse race, Adrien Brody himself.
Best Actress
Mikey Madison (Anora)
Cynthia Erivo (Wicked)
Karla Sofia Gascon (Emilia Perez)
Angelina Jolie (Marie)
Demi Moore (The Substance)
Selecting just 5 actresses from all of the brilliant female leading performances we've seen this year is much more difficult than predicting who we expect to be crowned the best of them all. There are a handful of exceptional showings that unfortunately will not make the cut this year.
Having said that, we predict that Mikey Madison will be crowned an Academy Award winner for her performance as the titular character in Sean Baker's 'Anora'. The young actress has been the frontrunner for quite some time now and it's difficult to see a world where she isn't receiving an Oscar come March 3rd.
Best Supporting Actor
Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain)
Guy Pearce (The Brutalist)
Clarence Macklin (Sing Sing)
Yura Borisov (Anora)
Denzel Washington (Gladiator II)
There seems to be a lot of variety in performances throughout our Best Supporting Actor predictions this year, with Mr Washington the only non-first-time nominee we have here. Regardless, we predict that it will be Kieran Culkin tasked with the responsibility of delivering an acceptance speech on March 3rd.
Culkin gives a genuine powerhouse performance under the direction of Jesse Eisenberg in 'A Real Pain', and we believe that the actor has enough industry recognition following the success of HBO's 'Succession', to get him over the line here.
Best Supporting Actress
Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Perez)
Ariana Grande (Wicked)
Felicity Jones (The Brutalist)
Danielle Deadwyler (The Piano Lesson)
Margaret Qualley (The Substance)
This year we find ourselves in the rare scenario where the Best Supporting Actress category could come down to a genuine flip of a coin. On one hand we have Zoe Saldaña with her revolutionary and brave performance in Jacques Audiard's 'Emilia Perez', whereas on the other we have Ariana Grande in her once-in-a-lifetime role as Glinda in Jon M. Chu's 'Wicked: Part One'.
As it currently stands, we have Saldaña to take home to Oscar gold. We currently anticipate that once the madness and the excitement that 'Wicked' is currently generating, inevitably dies down, the Academy voters will realise that Saldaña is a deserved winner here.
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