Nomination voting is from January 8-17, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced on January 23, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th The Oscars The telecast will air on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7pm ET/ 4pm PT. We’ll be updating our picks throughout awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all of ours 2025 Oscar’s predictions.
Race condition
Much metaphorical ink has been spilled here and across the web about this year Best Actress Oscar race. How fun that it’s so up in the air, even if it makes the job of forecasting all the more difficult.
In the end, while almost all of the women listed on the list of frontrunners and contenders acted objectively worthy of the nominations they’ve already received, the contenders who seem most likely to get a nomination are the ones where you can make the strongest argument they could win. (How fun is that?)
Taking things all the way back to Cannes Film Festival 2024won over the jury of so many female-led films that they renounced tradition and gave a prize for best actress to the ensemble “Emilia Pérez”. Still, except praise for the star of it filmKarla Sofía Gascón, there were already rumblings that the Oscar for Best Actress would go to Mikey Madison, star of Palme d’Or winner “Anora,” or Demi Moore, star of Best Screenplay winner “The Substance,” when the festival ended.
As more and more awards have been announced, all three actresses have consistently been nominated, with Moore finally triumphing over the other two at Golden Globesthe year’s first televised awards ceremony. That acceptance speech for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy was the icing on the cake and secured her leading status in Oscar voting.
Tonight’s other winner? Brazilian star Fernanda Torres, whose film “I’m Still Here” has become a serious dark horse in the race for best international film (“Emilia Pérez” is probably too big a prize to beat, but the extra attention from the Globes means it definitely moved up voter lines in time to vote.)
All that said, the contender to win the biggest critics’ awards to date, with the rare NYFCC, LAFCA and NSFC sweep, is “Hard Truths” star Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Sure, the last actress to win these and not get an Oscar nomination was Sally Hawkins for another Mike Leigh movie, but Hawkins wasn’t a previous Oscar nominee like Jean-Baptiste is. It’s likely that she and Leigh got back together all those years after her Best Supporting Actress nomination for her movie “Secrets and Lies” and knocked it out of the park. again.
Again, this race is so tight that this list excludes several past Oscar nominees (and winners) such as Angelina Jolie (“Maria”), Nicole Kidman (“Babygirl”) and Saoirse Ronan (“The Outrun”), but the only one who really seems like she has a chance, based on her FAIL and BAFTA nominations include “Wicked” star Cynthia Erivo. But we’re only a year removed from Margot Robbie charting a similar path with “Barbie” and ultimately failing, even though her male co-star did.
Competitors are listed in alphabetical order below.
Predecessors:
Karla Sofia Gascón (“Emilia Pérez”)
Marianne Jean-Baptiste (“Hard Truths”)
Mikey Madison (“Anora”)
Demi Moore (“The Substance”)
Fernanda Torres (“I’m Still Here”)
Contenders:
Amy Adams (“Nightbitch”)
Pamela Anderson (“The Last Showgirl”)
Cynthia Erivo (“Wicked”)
Angelina Jolie (“Maria”)
Nicole Kidman (“Babygirl”)
Saoirse Ronan (“The Outrun”)
Tilda Swinton (“The Room Next Door”)
June Squibb (“Thelma”)
Kate Winslet (“Lee”)
Zendaya (“Challenger”)
