Who are the early Oscar and Bafta frontrunners in the acting categories?

At the 2025 Oscars, the four acting prizes were won respectively by a previous winner (Adrien Brody) and three first-time nominees (Mikey Madison, Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldaña) — and this quartet triumphed in the same categories at the Bafta Film Awards. There was a notable emphasis on first-time nominees among the acting Oscar nominations — nabbing 13 of the 20 spots (up from 10 the year before).

This year, there is plenty of opportunity for debut nominees to flourish — especially if the women of Sentimental Value and One Battle After Another capture the imagination of voters. Actors speaking languages other than English could achieve a record number of nominations, thanks to a strong showing of titles from nations far and wide, including Norway, Brazil and South Korea.

And individual films flooding the acting categories with multiple nominations is another outcome we may well see this year — with One Battle After Another, for example, Sentimental Value and also Hamnet.

Fortunes will ebb and flow in the weeks and months ahead — the UK and US film academies hold their awards ceremonies respectively on February 22 and March 15.

Leading actress

The 2025 Oscars saw this category dominated by newcomers, with Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo the sole nominee with any previous nods, and Anora’s Mikey Madison coming from behind to win the award. This current awards season sees Erivo again in contention with Jon M Chu’s Wicked: For Good, and voters may wish to reward her for her contribution to both films.

Providing formidable competition is Jessie Buckley, seen by many as the frontrunner for leading actress thanks to her vital, alive turn as Agnes, wife to William Shakespeare and mother of three children in Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet. It is a performance likely to command the respect of actors, who nominate for both the Oscar and Bafta — and should connect broadly with all voters in the academies, who will pick the winner.

Former Oscar and Bafta winners in leading actress include Emma Stone and Julia Roberts — in contention again this year, respectively in English-­language films from continental European directors: Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia and Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt. Both play powerful figures up against checks to their power: Stone a pharma corporation CEO kidnapped by conspiracy theorists; Roberts a prescription medication-abusing Yale professor caught in the crossfire of a sexual assault allegation made against a colleague.

Jennifer Lawrence is likewise a former Oscar and Bafta winner (respectively for Silver Linings Playbook in 2013 and American Hustle in 2014). She is in contention this year with Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love.

A year ago, both Fernanda Torres and Karla Sofia Gascon achieved leading actress nominations for foreign-­language films, and this year Norway’s Renate Reinsve in Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value leads the charge among performers hoping to repeat the feat. Reinsve was Bafta-nominated in 2022 for Trier’s The Worst Person In The World, and is now gunning for her first Oscar nod.

Likewise in the market for first Oscar nominations are Chase Infiniti in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, Rose Byrne in Mary Bronstein’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Sydney Sweeney in David Michôd’s Christy and Tessa Thompson in Nia DaCosta’s Hedda. Relative newcomer Infiniti faces the challenge that her character comes late to her film, whereas Byrne dominates almost every moment of If I Had Legs, playing a therapist being made to feel she is failing as wife, mother and professional. Byrne already has the Berlinale Silver Bear and New York Film Critics Circle awards for the role, as well as an Indie Spirit nomination.

Likewise, no shortage of screen time for Sweeney as boxer Christy Martin, while Indie Spirit nominee Thompson has the title role in Hedda, playing an academic scheming for her husband’s professional advantage. Thompson has two previous Bafta Film Awards nods, for rising star in 2018 and leading actress in Passing in 2022.

Amanda Seyfried and Kate Hudson have a supporting actress Oscar nomination apiece — respectively for Mank in 2021 and Almost Famous in 2001 — and are now contending for their first leading actress nods, in Mona Fastvold’s The Testament Of Ann Lee and Craig Brewer’s Song Sung Blue. Both roles called for singing: Shaker religion ecstatic reveries for Seyfried and Neil Diamond covers for Hudson.

Leading actor

Last year’s leading actor Oscar race was the inverse of actress: awards veterans nabbed four of the five nominations, and The Apprentice’s Sebastian Stan was the sole first-time nominee. Adrien Brody picked up his second leading actor Oscar — and his first Bafta — with The Brutalist.

This year could boil down to a battle between two generations of male heartthrob: Leonardo DiCaprio (age 51) in One Battle After Another versus Timothée Chalamet (turning 30 this month) in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme. DiCaprio has six acting Oscar nominations so far, converting into a sole win for The Revenant in 2016. Chalamet is contending for consecutive Oscar and Bafta nominations following his nod last time for A Complete Unknown. He was also Bafta-nominated in 2018 for Beautiful Boy and rising star.

Or maybe make that three generations of heartthrob if George Clooney (aged 64) in Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly crashes the party. Multiple nominee Clooney has won two Oscars — for producing Argo in 2013 and acting in Syriana in 2006 — and one Bafta (Argo).

The Hollywood hotness quotient would rise even higher if either Wagner Moura in Kleber Mendonca Filho’s The Secret Agent or Michael B Jordan in Sinners achieve nominations — both are strongly in contention. Moura was named best actor by Cannes and the New York Film Critics Circle for his role as an academic targeted by Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1970s, while Jordan has the boost of playing a dual role in a bona fide blockbuster.

Moura’s Portuguese-language role is one of the contenders from titles submitted to the international feature Oscar, and so too is Lee Byung-hun in South Korean director Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, playing an unemployed middle manager offing rivals for a coveted job opportunity.

Jesse Plemons was nominated in 2022 by both Ampas and Bafta for his supporting role in The Power Of The Dog, and now has a shot at a leading actor nod thanks to his turn as a conspiracy theorist chasing the scent of an alien invasion in Bugonia.

Ethan Hawke has so far earned four Oscar nominations, two of them for acting (Training Day in 2002 and Boyhood in 2015) and he has a Bafta nod for the latter film. He is in contention this year for a defiantly verbose turn as lyricist Lorenz Hart in Richard Link­later’s Blue Moon — set at the opening night party for Oklahoma!, a stage musical he did not write. Sticking with music-themed biographies,

Jeremy Allen White is in contention for the title role in Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. No stranger to awards ceremonies — for his TV work in The Bear — White has yet to win the hearts of Oscar or Bafta voters.

Box-office behemoth Dwayne Johnson is likewise eyeing his first US or UK academy nods, playing MMA fighter Mark Kerr in Benny Safdie’s The Smashing Machine.Joel Edgerton andWill Arnett — respectively in Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams and Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On? (which Arnett co-wrote) — would also be first-time nominees. Edgerton, who has an Indie Spirit nod, plays a logger and railroad worker in the Pacific Northwest, in a story unfolding across much of the 20th century, and Arnett is a man in a collapsing marriage who finds purpose as a stand-up comedian.

Supporting actress

Last year’s supporting actress Oscar nominees spanned the range from substantial, co-lead screen time (Ariana Grande in Wicked and category winner Zoe Saldaña in Emilia Pérez) to the little-seen Isabella Rossellini as Sister Agnes in Conclave. Grande contends again in Wicked: For Good, in a role, Glinda, that feels even more co-lead than in Wicked. This may give her an advantage in a field that — in many of its leading contenders — seems populated by genuinely supporting roles.

Teyana Taylor in One Battle After Another is absent for much of the film, but delivers high impact when on screen. The same can be said for Amy Madigan, a late entrant as Aunt Gladys in Zach Cregger’s Weapons. If US and UK academy voters wish to prove they are open to any genre of film that achieves excellence, they have the opportunity to do so here; she has already been recognised by the New York Film Critics Circle.

Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas could both achieve nominations for their work in Sentimental Value, respectively as a US starlet and a former child actress. Also vying for spots are Gwyneth Paltrow and Odessa A’zion as women in the life of Chalamet’s titular table tennis star in Marty Supreme. And then Regina Hall joins One Battle After Another co-star Taylor as a potential supporting actress nominee, in a pivotal role that straddles both chunks of the film, set 16 years apart.

The last time Ampas voters nominated two supporting actresses from the same film was in 2023, with Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu in Everything Everywhere All At Once. Before that, it was Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz in The Favourite in 2019.

Bafta voters have not shown much bias towards British performers, but the UK film academy may rally for Hamnet’s Emily Watson as Shakespeare’s mother Mary. Her Richard Harris honorary award at this year’s British Independent Film Awards is a signal of Watson’s ascendancy to national treasure status. Her last nomination for a film role at Bafta was in 2000 for Angela’s Ashes.

If Watson is an actor’s actor, so too is Nina Hoss, and she gives her all in Hedda in a role switched from male (in the Ibsen stage play) to female, and showcasing a stellar turn that has bagged her an Indie Spirit nod.

Supporting actor

This year, supporting actor could be a category that simply echoes nominations in the other performance categories, rather than — as was the case last year at Oscar with winner Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain — expanding the field of titles achieving nods for performance.

Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro in One Battle After Another, Paul Mescal in Hamnet, Stellan Skarsgard in Sentimental Value, Delroy Lindo, Miles Caton and Jack O’Connell in Sinners, Jeremy Strong in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Jonathan Bailey in Wicked: For Good, William H Macy in Train Dreams and Andrew Scott inBlue Moon — if nominated, they are unlikely to be their film’s sole acting representation.

One joker in the supporting actor pack is Jay Kelly’s Adam Sandler, playing the manager of the titular Hollywood star. As with Culkin last year, Sandler could be the sole performer from his film that emerges with a nomination. The same could be said for Jacob Elordi from Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, arguably the gothic horror film’s strongest shot at an actor nomination, although Oscar Isaac and Mia Goth are in the mix.

Penn won Oscars for his roles in Mystic River in 2004 and Milk in 2009, but has so far failed to convert any of his three Bafta nominations into a win. One Battle After Another co-star del Toro — named best supporting actor by the New York Film Critics Circle — took the Oscar and Bafta in 2001 for Traffic, was nominated by both academies for 21 Grams in 2004 and has an additional Bafta nod for Sicario in 2016. Mescal had Bafta and Oscar nominations for Aftersun in 2023, and was Bafta-nominated in 2024 for All Of Us Strangers. Skarsgard is Bafta-­nominated only for his TV work in 2020 for Chernobyl, and is an Oscar virgin. None of the above-­mentioned trio of Sinners supporting actors has yet earned the attention of Oscar or Bafta voters, and ditto for Sandler and Bailey.

At the Gothams, Stellan Skarsgard faced competition from his own son Alexander Skarsgard, playing an alpha-male gay biker in Harry Lighton’s Pillion, in the supporting performance category — holding out the prospect of a Skarsgard smackdown in supporting actor. (Alexander’s brother Bill Skarsgard is winning attention for Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire, but that’s a leading role.)

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