Hollywood has shifted its priorities away from actor-driven content. Last year, for instance, all five of the Best Actress contenders were in Best Picture, but only three out of five Best Actors were in Best Picture. That is a reversal of the status quo, which may or may not signal a trend.
1934-It happened One Night
1936-The Great Zegfield
1939-Vivien Leigh, Gone with the Wind
1942-Mrs. Miniver
1975-One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
1977-Annie Hall
1983-Terms of Endearment
1989-Driving Miss Daisy
1991-Silence of the Lambs
1998-Shakespeare in Love
2004-Million Dollar Baby
2020-Nomadland
2022-Everything Everywhere All At Once
2024-Anora
That’s it for Best Actress–Best Picture. If you’ll notice, they happen more frequently in the expanded ballot eras. Now let’s do Best Actor–Best Picture:
1934-It Happened One Night
1944-Going My Way
1945-The Lost Weekend
1946-The Best Years of Our Lives
1948-Hamlet
1949-All the King’s Men
1954-On the Waterfront
1955-Marty
1957-The Bridge on the River Kwai
1959-Ben-Hur
1964-My Fair Lady
1966-A Man for All Seasons
1967-In the Heat of the Night
1970-Patton
1971-The French Connection
1972-The Godfather
1975-One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
1979-Kramer vs. Kramer
1982-Gandhi
1984-Amadeus
1988-Rain Man
1991-The Silence of the Lambs
1994-Forrest Gump
1999-American Beauty
2000-Gladiator
2010-The King’s Speech
2011-The Artist
2023-Oppenheimer
What we see from history is that women win more often in the expanded ballot eras vs. the five-ballot eras. That makes sense, considering they want to spread the wealth more. The Academy should shrink Best Picture back down to five, considering that times are tough and movies aren’t making money, which is why they did it before, more or less.
We’re living through a collectivist era now, or at least the last gasp of one. Hollywood hasn’t yet gone back to mostly male-dominated films, though if they ever want to make big money again, that is what they’d have to do. It is perhaps controversial to say so, but it is just the truth.
Either way, we don’t know what the future looks like this year in terms of Best Actor. What might look appealing from our vantage point now? First, let’s look at movies that revolve around a male performance coming up.
Top Tier:
Matthew McConaughey, The Lost Bus (Paul Greengrass)
Christian Bale, The Bride (Maggie Gyllenhaal)
Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Brad Pitt, F1 (Joseph Kosinski)
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Roses (Jay Roach)
Dwayne Johnson, The Smashing Machine (Benny Safdie)
Denzel Washington, Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee)
George Clooney, Jay Kelly (Noah Baumbach)
Timothee Chalamet, Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)
Jaafar Jackson, Michael (Antoine Fuqua)
Paul Mescal, Hamnet (Chloe Zhao)
Jeremy Allen White, Deliver Me from Nowhere (Scott Cooper)
Then:
Alfie Allen, McVeigh (Mike Ott)
Oscar Isaac, Frankenstein (Guillermo Del Toro)
Oscar Isaac, In the Hand of Dante (Julian Schnabel)
Paul Walter Hauser, The Luckiest Man in America (Samir Oliveros)
Austin Butler, Caught Stealing (Darren Aronofsky)
Paul Mescal, The History of Sound (Oliver Hermanus)
Colin Farrell, Big Bold, Beautiful Journey (Kogonada)
Glen Powell, Running Man (Edgar Wright)
Joaquin Phoenix, Eddington (Ari Aster)
Idris Elba, The Untitled Kathryn Bigelow Project
Miles Teller, Eternity (David Freyne)
Tom Hiddleston, Life of Chuck (Mike Flanagan)
I have put in bold the ones I think have the best shot at a Best Picture nod (although seriously, with this new Academy, who even knows).
Most of the time, the Best Actor race is decided by two things:
The fame of the actor
The fame of the director
First dibs will be the big names. So you can see it filling it up fast with:
Matthew McConaughey, The Lost Bus (Paul Greengrass)
Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Denzel Washington, Highest 2 Lowest (Spike Lee)
Jeremy Allen White, Deliver Me from Nowhere (Scott Cooper)
Timothee Chalamet, Marty Supreme (Josh Safdie)
Then:
Jaafar Jackson, Michael (Antoine Fuqua)
George Clooney or Adam Sandler, Jay Kelly (Noah Baumbach)
Brad Pitt, F1 (Joseph Kosinski)
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Roses (Jay Roach)
Dwayne Johnson, The Smashing Machine (Benny Safdie)
Paul Mescal, Hamnet (Chloe Zhao)
It’s all very early and therefore, rather pointless. We aren’t seeing many strong leading men here. A very “flawed male” kind of list, with a few notable exceptions.
The Lost Bus and maybe Bruce Springsteen’s story appears to have two heroic roles. The Lost Bus, in particular, is the story of a real-life hero who saved a bus full of kids in one of the worst fires in California history. Higher stakes here.
Jeremy Allen White plays Bruce Springsteen and we’ll have to see how well he does at that. Springsteen is a beloved icon and very much an “insider” in Hollywood. Here’s Bruce hanging around on set:
And Bruce again on the set:
But who knows what will be the driving force for Best Actor next year. We’ll have to wait and see.
