2024 Oscar Predictions — Best Actor Is a Tight Race Between Cillian Murphy and Paul Giamatti

The year began with a strong performance by Bradley Cooper that looked like it might be the one he finally won the Oscar for, playing Leonard Bernstein in Maestro (which he also co-wrote and directed). The buzz was off the charts, and it appeared like he had cleared the field. Colman Domingo also made a strong impression in Telluride for his performance as Bayard Rustin. Domingo also seemed like he might be a strong bet for the win — it would depend on how well the movie did overall. So the Best Actor race had two actors playing two real life characters from history.

The Holdovers also played in Telluride — Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti together again for one of the best films of 2023. It was a slow burn. It took lots of word of mouth for the film to rise to the top of the pile, eventually becoming a formidable Best Picture contender in its own right. Giamatti wasn’t even nominated for Sideways or ever for lead, so this nomination seemed long overdue.

Then came Oppenheimer, which turned into a cultural phenomenon, blowing out the box office and becoming the Best Picture frontrunner with what appears, at least for now, no real challengers.

Last but not least came Jeffrey Wright in American Fiction, another slow burn that would become a formidable contender for Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay, not to mention Best Actor.

Cillian Murphy has come on strong in the past few days. The buzz is off the charts, aided by his appearances at high-profile events like the DGA Awards and on magazine covers. It doesn’t hurt that he’s starring in what appears to be the Best Picture frontrunner. We could also see a scenario like in 2002, when The Pianist surged in the last moments before the race, taking Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Actor, while Chicago still prevailed as Best Picture. That was with the old ballot of five Best Picture nominees.

In the current era of the preferential ballot, just twice have Best Picture and Best Actor gone to the same movie. Granted, both actors in those movies were the titular characters:

The King’s Speech
The Artist

In other words, they were the movie. The directors also won, but people voted for these films mainly because of the central performance. That’s more true of Oppenheimer than of The Holdovers since the latter is more of an ensemble work, with a great performance by Giamatti in the center. Oppenheimer, though, is all Cillian Murphy. He’s the whole movie. It’s largely told from his perspective and is a nearly three-hour expression of his internal world.

Giamatti’s star was rising after it seemed that the earlier frontrunner, Bradley Cooper, didn’t win at the Golden Globes or the Critics Choice. Without Cooper in the race, it comes down to two performances, Giamatti and Murphy. This is how the chart looks now:

This is how it could go for Giamatti and Murphy, with the categories flipped. Here, Giamatti would be George Clooney, and Murphy would be Jean Dujardin:

The King’s Speech year, Giamatti won Best Actor (Comedy) at the Globes but Colin Firth swept every other award:

Before that, Best Actor and Best Picture matched in:

2000 — Gladiator, Russell Crowe
1999 — American Beauty, Kevin Spacey
1993 — Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks
1991 — The Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins
1988 — Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman
1984 — Amadeus, F. Murray Abraham
1982 — Gandhi, Ben Kingsley
1979 — Kramer vs. Kramer, Dustin Hoffman
1975 — One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jack Nicholson
1972 — The Godfather, Marlon Brando
1971 — The French Connection, Gene Hackman
1970 — Patton, George c. Scott
1967 — Rod Steiger, In the Heat of the Night
1966 — A Man for All Seasons, Paul Scofield
1964 — My Fair Lady, Rex Harrison
1959 — Ben-Hur, Charlton Heston
1957 — The Bridge on the River Kwai, Alec Guinness
1955 — Marty, Ernest Borgnine
1954 — On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando
1949 — All the King’s Men, Broderick Crawford
1948 — Hamlet, Laurence Olivier
1946 — The Best Years of Our Lives, Frederic March
1945 — Going My Way, Bing Crosby

First Expanded Ballot era:

1934 — It Happened One Night, Clark Gable

We’ll have to ask Marshall to confirm, but roughly 25% of Best Picture winners have also won Best Actor, and only three have won both in years with an expanded Best Picture lineup (Editor’s note from Marshall: this is correct). Something about the expanded ballot, with more Best Picture contenders, makes it much less likely that a film will win both.

Oppenheimer is now predicted to win an unprecedented number of Oscars for the preferential era. Whether it will or not remains to be seen.

If this wasn’t the era of the expanded ballot, a win for Oppenheimer that takes both Picture and Actor could track like Forrest Gump, give or take:

Picture
Director
Actor
Visual Effects
Screenplay
Editing

Or Amadeus:

Picture
Director
Actor
Screenplay
Production Design
Costume
Makeup
Sound

Obviously, it’s likely not winning those specific categories, but it could go something like this:

Picture
Director
Actor
Supporting Actor
Cinematography
Score
Editing
Sound

Believe it or not, that would be considered a near-sweep in this era, and believe it or not, it’s less likely to happen.

Predictions at Gold Derby are kind of all over the place, truth be told, but Joyce Eng has Cillian Murphy winning it, as does Anne Thompson. I still have Giamatti but I am starting to fell less secure about that prediction, just based on the buzz of right now. The buzz of right now will decide the SAG win and the SAG win will decide Best Actor at the Oscars. I feel a very buzzy buzzy energy for Oppenheimer overall. But who knows. We really have no basis for our gut impulses. Still, whoever wins the SAG will likely win the Oscar.

Let’s put it to you, Oscarwatchers. Take our poll.