With the Academy’s nominations announcement drawing closer by the day, it’s time to lay it all on the line with my final Oscar nomination predictions. In a weird turn of events, the nominations for Best Actress feel much easier to pick than normal. That’s not to suggest there isn’t a wealth of possible contenders and picking just five is extremely rough going. But there has been a fairly solid consensus for much of awards season, suggesting the final five Oscar nominees are fairly locked away.
Emma Stone (Poor Things), Carey Mulligan (Maestro), and Margot Robbie (Barbie) have all scored nominations from BAFTA, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Golden Globe Awards and the Critics Choice Awards. If any are missing from the Oscar nominations, you’d have to call it a rather stunning snub. Some have suggested Robbie is in danger, but I cannot fathom how you nominate Barbie across the board and fail to acknowledge its leading actress. Sure, it’s happened before (Robert De Niro for The Irishman springs to mind), but it would be a huge shock to see it occur here.
Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall) may have missed out at SAG, but we know non-English speaking performances rarely make it in there, so her trio of BAFTA, Globe, and CCA noms are enough to lock her in. And Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon) suffered the biggest BAFTA snub, but her win at the Globes, her performance overall this season, the chance to make history, and the fact Killers is a huge contender overall should be more than enough to see her through.
And that’s that, right? We’ve got our final five who have hurtled through awards season relatively unscathed. I just don’t know. It all just feels too simple for a category that’s normally so damn hard to predict. Is someone waiting in the wings to snatch a place away from our expected five? Greta Lee (Past Lives), perhaps? Maybe perennial nominee Annette Bening (Nyad)? That BAFTA nod for Fantasia Barrino (The Color Purple) gave us all pause. Expect something unexpected here.
BEST ACTRESS PREDICTIONS:
1. Emma Stone – Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures) – BAFTA, CCA, GG, SAG
2. Lily Gladstone – Killers of the Flower Moon (Paramount Pictures / Apple Original Films) – CCA, GG, SAG
3. Sandra Hüller – Anatomy of a Fall (NEON) – BAFTA, CCA, GG
4. Carey Mulligan – Maestro (Netflix) – BAFTA, CCA, GG, SAG
5. Margot Robbie – Barbie (Warner Bros.) – BAFTA, CCA, GG, SAG
Alternate: Greta Lee – Past Lives (A24) – CCA, GG
