Welcome to the lead actor race for 2024. With the fall film festival season now in the distance and a few potential contenders still to debut on the horizon, it’s time for our first look at the battle for Best Actor.
If there’s one thing for certain about this year’s Best Actor race, A24 is making a hard play to dominate this category. After picking up the rights to The Brutalist and Queer after their premieres at Venice, A24 added another two major leading actor contenders in Adrien Brody and Daniel Craig, respectively to a roster that already included Colman Domingo (Sing Sing), Sebastian Stan (A Different Man), and Andrew Garfield (We Live in Time).
Could we be looking at a situation where one studio takes three or four spots in this one category? It’s very plausible. People have been clamouring for Domingo to be nominated since Sing Sing dropped all the way back at TIFF last year. Brody received rave reviews for his quiet but powerful performance in festival favourite The Brutalist. And while the reaction to Queer has been a touch mixed, few can deny it features Craig’s greatest performance to date.
There’s a lot of love out there for We Live in Time, but Florence Pugh really has the meatier performance, making Garfield’s chances here rather slim. Stan won Best Actor at the Berlin Film Festival for A Different Man, but that was way back in February, so that doesn’t particularly help an Oscar campaign. He’s also stuck in the unfortunate situation of competing against himself for his much-publicised work in the “controversial” The Apprentice. Will he ultimately cancel himself out by splitting votes across two films?
Now that Conclave has seen its wide release met with universal acclaim, Ralph Fiennes has all but locked in his first nomination since The English Patient in 1997. If the film becomes a frontrunner for Best Picture, Fiennes could be swept along for the ride. And that just leaves us to wait to see if Timothée Chalamet’s performance in A Complete Unknown lives up to the assumption that he could be the one to take this race. The film has shunned festival season and is unlikely to premiere until early December ahead of its Christmas wide release. For now, I’m keeping him in that top spot, purely based on the Academy’s love of biopics for Best Actor winners.
BEST ACTOR PREDICTIONS:
1. Timothée Chalamet – A Complete Unknown (Searchlight Pictures)
2. Adrien Brody – The Brutalist (A24)
3. Ralph Fiennes – Conclave (Focus Features)
4. Colman Domingo – Sing Sing (A24)
5. Daniel Craig – Queer (A24)
IN CONTENTION
Jesse Eisenberg – A Real Pain (Searchlight Pictures)
Andrew Garfield – We Live in Time (A24)
Ethan Herisse – Nickel Boys (Amazon MGM Studios)
Nicholas Hoult – Juror #2 (Warner Bros.)
Jharrel Jerome – Unstoppable (Amazon MGM Studios)
Paul Mescal – Gladiator II (Paramount Pictures)
Peter Sarsgaard – September 5 (Paramount Pictures)
Sebastian Stan – The Apprentice (Briarcliff Entertainment)
Sebastian Stan – A Different Man (A24)
John David Washington – The Piano Lesson (Netflix)
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