Packed with A-list stars and acclaimed veterans, this year’s best actor field is the strongest that Oscar voters have assembled in quite some time. But which man will prevail? With a month and a half to go until the winner is picked, here is each nominee’s potential path to victory.
Timothée Chalamet, ‘Marty Supreme’
Few things help an Oscar-contending performance like a good final scene. Just look at Mikey Madison, who proved so memorably heartbreaking in the last moments of “Anora” that her tearful look became the centerpiece image of the film’s successful Oscar campaign.
Without spoiling anything, Chalamet closes “Marty Supreme” with a pair of knockout scenes that land like a one-two punch and showcase his greatest strengths as an actor: physical commitment and emotional vulnerability. That powerful finale has already carried Chalamet to wins at the Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes, so if anyone in this race can be considered a front-runner, it’s him.
But if you read my column regularly, you know what I’m about to say: Oscar voters have a real aversion to rewarding young men in this category, and the 30-year-old Chalamet would become the second-youngest best actor winner ever. They made Leonardo DiCaprio wait until his 40s to finally reward him, and that same skepticism from the Oscars’ old guard could hinder Chalamet’s best shot yet at winning.
Leonardo DiCaprio, ‘One Battle After Another’
Does anyone doubt that DiCaprio will eventually win another Oscar? At 51, he remains one of the last global superstars, continually using his clout to mount ambitious movies with top-tier directors. If a second Oscar is inevitable, it would make sense for it to come for “One Battle After Another,” one of the strongest films he’s ever starred in.
Still, Oscar voters have taken DiCaprio for granted in recent years. Despite leading the best picture nominees “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Don’t Look Up,” he wasn’t nominated for either. DiCaprio’s overdue win for “The Revenant” a decade ago seemed to satisfy voters, who have been in no hurry to recognize him since.
A big sweep for “One Battle After Another,” the presumed best picture front-runner, could change that. Recent best picture winners “Oppenheimer” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” also picked up multiple acting trophies, so DiCaprio could get a lift from his co-star Teyana Taylor’s strength in the supporting-actress race. And in tight matchups — like Emma Stone (“Poor Things”) vs. Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) in 2024, or Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) vs. Cate Blanchett (“Tar”) the year before — the winner almost always hails from the movie voters like more.
Ethan Hawke, ‘Blue Moon’
If this race were judged by words per minute, Hawke would win in a walk. As the chatty, catty lyricist Lorenz Hart in “Blue Moon,” he may deliver more dialogue than everyone else in this category combined.
Oscar voters love a big transformation, and in a best actor field light on them, Hawke will stand out for shaving his head and changing his posture to play the much shorter, balding Hart. Voters who prefer a more seasoned nominee than Chalamet may also regard the 55-year-old Hawke as the most overdue for a win: This is his fifth nomination, after two for acting (“Training Day,” “Boyhood”) and two for co-writing “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight.”
But as the only best actor nominee to come from a film that wasn’t nominated for best picture, Hawke is at a disadvantage, and his biggest challenge will be reaching busy voters who only have time to catch up with the most-nominated movies. Speaking of which …
Michael B. Jordan, ‘Sinners’
After breaking the all-time nominations record, “Sinners” has gotten a significant second wind. Should that surge hold, it could give us a real race in the top category, where “Sinners” faces the formidable “One Battle After Another.”
If Ryan Coogler’s vampire film has any hope of winning best picture, an acting win will help make that case, and Jordan has been the most consistently nominated member of the “Sinners” cast this season. (Playing clearly delineated twin brothers is a great way to demonstrate your range.) Still, a win along the way would have helped: At the Golden Globes, where most of the men on this list were competing in the comedy categories, he lost the award for best actor in a drama to Wagner Moura (“The Secret Agent”).
This is Jordan’s first Oscar nomination, and I wonder whether voters will make the 38-year-old wait his turn, as they have so often done with other young and handsome leading men. Just as Chalamet’s awards arc resembles that of a younger DiCaprio, Jordan reminds me of another bankable actor turned director, Bradley Cooper, who has been nominated five times for his performances without ever winning. Will Jordan have to keep proving himself, too?
Wagner Moura, ‘The Secret Agent’
I often say that it pays to have the last film that voters watch, as peaking late in the game can give you the edge over contenders whose moments have begun to fade. Last year, after Fernanda Torres scored a surprise Golden Globe win for the Brazilian drama “I’m Still Here,” she rode that late surge to a best actress nomination at the Oscars. In what had felt like a tight two-way race between Demi Moore (“The Substance”) and the eventual winner Mikey Madison (“Anora”), Torres picked up a lot of votes and nearly emerged as the spoiler.
This year, we’re seeing that same late-breaking shift with Moura, another Brazilian who won the Globe for his sympathetic performance in the political drama “The Secret Agent,” earning his way into a very crowded best actor race. The difference this time is that Moura is far better known to the academy’s largely American voter base than Torres was. Since his breakout role in the Netflix series “Narcos,” the 49-year-old actor has worked in Hollywood for years, appearing recently in the film “Civil War” and the crime series “Dope Thief.”
Like Hawke, Moura could benefit from voters who are reluctant to support a young contender like Chalamet. Still, even if he continues building momentum this season, there will be few places to demonstrate it until the Oscar ceremony in March. Moura wasn’t nominated by the Screen Actors Guild and failed to make the BAFTA shortlist in his category, so there’s no place for him to notch a major win until the big night.
Kyle Buchanan is a pop culture reporter and also serves as The Projectionist, the awards season columnist for The Times.
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