With the annual Academy Award voting ballots closing today, it would be a good idea to attempt to summarise and evaluate one of the most confusing and difficult to predict categories from this years selections, that being the Best Actor category.
The Best Actor category serves the purpose of nominating 5 male actors who were all the lead characters in their respective movies throughout the most recent calendar year. One of these actors will go on to receive the Oscar when the annual event comes, and will forever be known as an Academy Award winner.
Before the list of best acting performances from Male leads this year is narrowed down to 5, there are currently 7 actors all in strong contention for a nomination. Those 7 actors are the following:
Leonardo DiCaprio (Killers of The Flower Moon)
Bradley Cooper (Maestro)
Jeffrey Wright (American Fiction)
Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer)
Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers)
Colman Domingo (Rustin)
Andrew Scott (All Of Us Strangers)
As it stands, Cillian Murphy seems to be the most likely to take home the award on March 10th. The Irish actor does an excellent job of portraying J. Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan's blockbuster biopic 'Oppenheimer'.
Not only is Oppenheimer the favourite to receive the award for Best Actor on Oscar Sunday, but the film is also the current underlying favourite to take home the prestigious Best Picture award thanks to it's recent sweep amongst awarding bodies. This only adds to Murphy's chances of becoming an Oscar winner.
However, there are a few other performances potentially scattered amongst this category that may have something to say in Cillian Murphy's pursuit for Oscar gold, and one of them is Paul Giamatti.
The 56-year-old has only been recognised by the Academy once throughout his long and illustrious career within the film industry, this being for his supporting role performance in Ron Howard's 'Cinderella Man'. Although this was almost 20 years ago, Giamatti is essentially a shoe-in to receive his second nomination and could very well end up taking home the award himself.
Giamatti does an excellent job of portraying strict boarding school teacher, Paul Hunham, in Alexander Payne's recent comedy/drama 'The Holdovers'. Giamatti's recent victories at awarding bodies such as the Golden Globes and the Critic's Choice Awards increase his chances of becoming an Academy Award winner in 2024.
Alongside Giamatti, a man tasked with the responsibility of potentially dethroning Cillian Murphy as the current frontrunner to win the award, is none other than Bradley Cooper. Cooper is an actor who has received a smothering of nominations from the Academy throughout his impressive career, but is still yet to grace the stage and receive an award himself.
To date, the 49-year-old has received an impressive 9 Academy Award nominations, going all the way back to 2013. A tally of 9 nominations in 11 years is very impressive, not including his expected nomination for the 2024 Oscars for his performance as Leonard Bernstein in the Netflix biopic 'Maestro'.
Much like Murphy and Giamatti, Cooper is essentially more or less a guarantee for a nomination when the time comes, and stands a decent chance of being victorious on the night. Given the fact that Cooper was tasked with multiple responsibilities on the set of 'Maestro' such as directing, writing and producing, we could see Cooper pick up various nominations for his work on this film.
Aside from these three frontrunners who all stand a chance of becoming first-time Oscar winners on March 10th, a steep drop off amongst the quality in lead actors occurs. Of course all of the performances mentioned are exceptional, but this is where the top 5 prediction becomes slightly more difficult to predict.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Colman Domingo seem to be the most likely for a nomination out of the remaining four for their for performances in Martin Scorsese's 'Killers Of The flower Moon' and George C. Wolfe's 'Rustin'.
But then again, the recognition and love shown by the Screen Actor's Guild Award's for Cord Jefferson's 'American Fiction' gives us no indication that Jeffrey Wright deserves nothing short of a nomination. The fact that the movie is expected to be nomination across various other categories such as Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay increases Wright's chances.
The annual Academy Award's are due to take place on March 10th 2024, where all of our thoughts and predictions will finally be put to rest for another 12 months.
Who do you think will win the award?
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