Best Actress Oscar nomination breakdown, from the locks (Mikey Madison) to the long shots (Zendaya)
With the 2025 Oscar nominations days away, no other category is more difficult to predict than Best Actress. This race has been consistently fluid as new contenders pick up steam, and the expected lineup today looks vastly different from July, when Gold Derby opened our Oscars predictions. (Back then, Lady Gaga numbered among our top five for Joker: Folie à Deux — oopsie!) So who are the current locks, on-the-bubble contenders, and long shots to hear their names called on Thursday? Read on for our Best Actress Oscar nomination breakdown.
Locks
Mikey Madison (Anora) — 37/10 odds
For playing the titular Brooklyn sex worker who marries into the wrong family, this 25-year-old has led the Best Actress race since early September. That’s when she officially took the No. 1 spot from Amy Adams (Nightbitch), who has tumbled to 20th place in our rankings. Madison has accrued all of the relevant precursor nominations a frontrunner would expect to have (Golden Globe, Critics Choice, Screen Actors Guild, BAFTA), plus she prevailed with dozens of critics’ groups either as a lead or a breakthrough, including the National Board of Review and the Palm Springs Film Festival. Madison notably called Anora “the role of a lifetime” at the Deauville Film Festival, and hoped it would “shine a spotlight on sex work.” Will Madison’s “it girl” factor push her over the finish line?
Demi Moore (The Substance) — 4/1 odds
Madison’s biggest awards challenger now seems to be Moore, following her upset triumph at the Golden Globes for her role as an aging movie star who goes to extreme lengths to stay young. Whereas Madison’s Oscar narrative is that she’s a young, up-and-coming actress who’s the breakout star of a Best Picture favorite, Moore’s story is that she’s a veteran, “popcorn” actress finally receiving awards attention at the age of 62 — a resonant storyline that will undoubtedly touch many voters. “This is the first time I’ve ever won anything,” Moore declared breathlessly at the Globes. Don’t forget, two years ago Jamie Lee Curtis rode a similar narrative all the way to the Oscar podium for Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez) — 5/1 odds
The savviest campaign strategy to play out at the Golden Globes was to have Gascón accept the prize for Best Comedy/Musical Film, an honor that typically goes to the filmmaker. (In this case, Jacques Audiard had already given a speech earlier in the evening when Emilia Pérez won for Best Non-English Language Film). “The light always wins over darkness,” Gascón declared. “You can maybe put us in jail, you can beat us up, but you never can take away our soul, our resistance, our identity.” The trans actress would make Oscars history if she were to be nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, a concept that seems more likely with each passing day, especially considering her titular character is the complicated, beating heart of one of the Best Picture favorites, Emilia Pérez.
Cynthia Erivo (Wicked) — 11/2 odds
Alongside her costar/bestie Ariana Grande, Erivo accepted the National Board of Review’s Spotlight Award in early January, where she articulated “the human part of what makes collaboration possible.” If only there was an Oscar for Best Duo! Erivo (as the green-skinned Elphaba Thropp) and Grande (as the pink-loving Galinda Upland) are a packaged pair on the Wicked campaign trail, and it seems to be having the effect of boosting both of their respective Oscar chances in Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress. Erivo has two prior Oscar nominations for Harriet (2019) in Best Actress and Best Song (“Stand Up”), and she’s on track to garner another Best Actress bid this year, particularly after claiming the Black Cinema & Television Award and the Astra Film Award.
The Bubble Bunch
Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here) — 17/2 odds
That brings us to the fifth slot for Best Actress, which has seen a lot of turnover in recent weeks. Currently, Torres is the strongest of the bubble candidates thanks in part to her emotional victory at the Golden Globes for playing activist Eunice Paiva in Walter Salles‘ Brazilian political thriller. Torres dedicated her win to her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, who costars in this movie and who earned a Best Actress Oscar bid of her own for Central Station (1998). “This is proof that art can endure through life, even in difficult moments like this,” an emotional Torres stated at the Globes podium, as Oscar pundits everywhere starting feverishly updating their Best Actress picks.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths) — 14/1 odds
The actress recently told Gold Derby that collaborating with Hard Truths director Mike Leigh was “terrifying, exhilarating, exciting, creative — beyond creative, actually. It’s the most collaborative experience you could ever hope to have.” Jean-Baptiste previously worked with Leigh on Secrets and Lies (1996), for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. Even though she was snubbed at the Golden Globes and SAG Awards for Hard Truths, she earned dozens of other mentions at critics’ groups and film festivals for her role as Pansy Deacon, a deeply unhappy and anxious woman who lashes out at everyone around her. Yes, it’s Acting (with a capital A), and the easy truth is that Jean-Baptiste is still very much in this race.
Angelina Jolie (Maria) — 22/1 odds
“There’s a point where self-confidence becomes a kind of insanity,” Jolie says while portraying famed opera singer Maria Callas in Pablo Larraín‘s Netflix biopic. The same can be said for the world of Oscar punditry, where everyone was confident up until last week that Jolie would receive her third career Oscar nomination (she won for 1999’s Girl, Interrupted and lost for 2008’s Changeling). However, the one-two punch of Jolie missing the BAFTA longlist and being snubbed by SAG definitely hurt her Oscar trajectory. Can she still be nominated? Of course! After all, voters love performers who sing — just ask recent Best Actress champs Renée Zellweger (Judy), Emma Stone (La La Land), and Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose).
Long Shots
Nicole Kidman (Babygirl) — 62/1 odds
Kidman had everyone in tears at the Palm Springs Film Festival when she accepted the International Star Award for Babygirl, the erotic thriller from filmmaker Halina Reijn. Kidman reiterated that “love is the center” of everything, particularly since her life is “different now” because she’s lost both of her parents. Even though the Australian actress has dropped to “dark horse” status at Gold Derby for playing a powerful CEO who begins an affair with a young intern, it’s never smart to count her out. Don’t forget, Kidman has earned five Academy Award bids throughout her career, winning the lead race for The Hours (2002) with just 23 minutes of screen time.
Pamela Anderson (The Last Showgirl) — 100/1 odds
No single Golden Globe nominee elicited more cheers on nominations morning than Anderson, who is arguably having the best year yet of her three-decade-plus career. Everybody loves a comeback story, and her narrative as Baywatch babe-turned-serious actress is one that’s easy to root for. She plays Shelly Gardner in Gia Coppola‘s film, a Las Vegas dancer whose life is thrown into disarray when her long-running show closes its doors. The project is the very definition of an indie — it filmed in 18 days and cost less than $2 million — with Anderson calling it a “labor of love.” If anyone else’s name were attached to The Last Showgirl, it could have been forgotten come awards season. But thanks to Anderson’s star power, it’s now very much in the discussion.
Zendaya (Challengers) — 100/1 odds
Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, and Mike Faist fully disappear into their roles as tennis players involved in a love triangle in Luca Guadagnino‘s steamy dramedy, which still has awards buzz despite coming out last April. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross won the Golden Globe for Best Score in the same ceremony in which Zendaya was the talk of the town for appearing in both Challengers and Dune: Part Two (she was nominated for the former, losing to Moore). Zendaya received the Spotlight Award at the Gothams, where she expressed, “I love what I do so much. I feel so incredibly grateful that I get to do this for a living.” If any Oscar voters were watching her speech, it could have been a nice reminder that she’d make a welcome addition to the winner’s club.
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