Are the Razzies' Nominees for Worst Actors of 2025 Really That Bad?
We're right in the thick of awards season, and while the Oscars and Golden Globes and various guilds are recognizing the best cinema of 2025, the Razzies are looking to highlight the worst. The Golden Raspberry Awards announced their slate of nominees, with the live-action Snow White and Prime Video's much-maligned take on War of the Worlds getting the dubious honor of the most nominations with six apiece.
Along with those two films, the other nominees for Worst Picture include Netflix's retro-futuristic flop The Electric State, The Weeknd's psychological thriller Hurry Up Tomorrow, and Star Trek: Section 31, a spin-off that was streaming on Paramount+.
The nominees for Worst Actor were Dave Bautista (In the Lost Lands), Ice Cube (War of the Worlds), Scott Eastwood (Alarum), Jared Leto (Tron: Ares), and The Weeknd (Hurry Up Tomorrow). The Worst Actress contenders are Ariana DeBose (Love Hurts), Milla Jovovich (In the Lost Lands), Natalie Portman (Fountain of Youth), Rebel Wilson (Bride Hard), and Michelle Yeoh (Star Trek: Section 31).
The Worst Supporting Actor nominees are Nicolas Cage (Gunslingers), Stephen Dorff (Bride Hard), Greg Kinnear (Off the Grid), Sylvester Stallone (Alarum) and "All Seven Artificial Dwarfs" (Snow White). Anna Chlumsky (Bride Hard), Ema Horvath (The Strangers: Chapter 2), Scarlet Rose Stallone (Gunslingers), Kacey Rohl (Star Trek: Section 31), and Isis Valverde (Alarum) are nominated for Worst Supporting Actress.
Just as the Razzie nominations were announced on Wednesday, one day before the Academy Awards announced their nominations, the Razzie trophies (intentionally cheap statuettes spray-painted gold) will be awarded on March 14, one day before the Oscars.
These Movies and Performances Aren't 'Good,' But Neither Are the Razzies
The Razzies have been mocking the so-called worst films and performances of the year for more than four decades ever since the Golden Raspberry Awards were founded in 1981. Over that time, the organization—which is made up of 650 people who pay to be voting members—has itself been criticized. The Razzies are hardly above taking cheap shots or nominating performers for the sake of getting attention.
Consider how one of the nominees for Worst Supporting Actor this year is seven CGI dwarfs from the live-action Snow White remake. Or how at the 25th Golden Raspberry Awards, George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld won Worst Actor and Worst Supporting Actor, respectively, for playing themselves in Michael Moore's documentaryFahrenheit 9/11. Now, there's plenty to criticize about those two politicians; presenting them backhanded awards for acting kind of speaks to the lack of seriousness about the whole Razzies enterprise. (The Razzies have also been criticized for mocking the work of child actors; after backlash, they announced in 2023 that nobody under the age of 18 would be eligible for a Razzie going forward.)
So, are the movies the Razzies nominated this year bad? For the most part, yes. Prime Video's War of the Worlds, a movie that was almost entirely Ice Cube acting in front of a green screen inside of a Zoom video chat window, is laughably poor cinema. It got a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Do we need the Razzies to tell us this? Often the Razzies are torn between nominating obvious, consensus picks for bad cinema (an increasingly irrelevant niche considering how social media has made it so that everyone can mock bad movies) or finding more obscure films or performances and elevating them for the sole purpose of making fun of them.
Have the Razzies rounded up the 20 worst performances of 2025? No, of course not. There's no doubt countless worse performances in movies that nobody has ever heard of. It's probably for the best that the Razzies aren't dredging them up just to drag them through the mud. Instead, we've just got a crop of middling movies or performances that the average moviegoer may have heard of—and if they've heard of them, they've probably heard bad things. So… what's the point?