Last year, I felt the best race to watch at the Oscars was Best Supporting Actor, and it was around this time last year that speculation began to heat up. By the ceremony in February, the race was a procession for Robert Downey Jr. in Oppenheimer. Well deserved, undoubtedly. But stiff competition he faced nonetheless. This year, I’m hoping we’ll see a similar phenomenon. Many suggest that Best Actress is the one too close to call this time. It shouldn’t be.
As ever, there were a bunch of great performances across this year from leading actresses. But one carried the film so completely that to recast her would have transformed the movie entirely, and while other leads shone, I don’t believe they can claim that. The Best Actress of the year was Mikey Madison in Anora, and with any luck awards season will carry her to the prize.
2023’s Most Interesting Race Slowed Down By The End
A lot can change between the start of awards buzz and the medals being handed out. This time last year, I had Ryan Gosling (Barbie) as a fellow frontrunner to RDJ. Though he was nominated, no one gave him much hope of snatching it by February. I also put forth Charles Melton and Dominic Sessa from May/December and The Holdovers as potential nominees, who missed the real deal and were replaced by Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things) and Sterling K. Brown (American Fiction).
Sessa may have been a little ambitious, but May/December ended up being one of the most discussed snubs of the season, especially after Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore were also overlooked as it only scored a single nomination in Best Original Screenplay. I had Robert De Niro in my five, predicting (correctly) that his legendary name in a fantastic turn would carry him through, while also predicting (also correctly) that it was too subtle to challenge RDJ.
Why Mikey Madison Should Win Best Actress
There is no Anora without Mikey Madison. Not just because she plays the title character, she is the title character. She is the movie. I can’t picture anyone else doing even half the job she did. Sean Baker’s films have always needed a little something more to send them over the edge, one last push in pursuit of glory. Madison delivers that push with a roundhouse kick of her pleaser heels.
Playing a sex worker who takes a liking to (or a liking to taking advantage of) an Eastern European rich kid, Madison carries the movie on her back. The tenderness between the pair, always clouded by deception, only works because of the affection she exudes. Likewise, the second half as things fall apart sees the whole movie spin around her. The cast is different, the tone is different, scenes are longer and more aggressive, everything is hectic. Through it all, she balances the ferocity the film needs to survive with the sweetness it needs to soar.
As beautiful as it is angry, it is not just a good part in a good film. It’s the kind of performance that underlines the power of a great actress. Perhaps, even, a Best Actress.
The Favourites For Best Actress
The current front runner for Best Actress is Cynthia Erivo for her role as Elphaba in Wicked. It’s a great part, superbly played. It’s a different, more personal interpretation of the role than Ariana Grande offers opposite, playing a different sort of outcast than Idina Menzel while Grande attempts to recreate Kristen Chenoweth. But she’s hamstrung by it only being half a movie, and while Grande’s airy comedy translates to this division, Erivo is only midway through her character arc. It’s an amazing Defying Gravity, but this win will be more earned next year, I suspect.
Also leading the pack is Angelia Jolie for Maria, a Netflix movie with a limited release. Playing opera singer Maria Callas in her later years, it hits similar notes to La Vie en Rose, for which Marion Cotillard won the Academy Award. However Jolie’s role is less comedic, less tragic, and more centred in subtlety – it feels like a performance from 2024, unlike Cotillard’s 2007 spectacle. It’s a very awards buzz performance, but perhaps cynically, it feels like it’s trying to be in ways Madison’s Anora is not.
The Outsiders For Best Actress
It would be a major surprise if the three names above were not nominated. The winner will highly likely be from that trio, with the rest competing for the two other spots. They do say it’s an honour to be nominated after all. Here are the three with the most compelling stories that could make the race more interesting, if not any closer.
Saorise Ronan has four nominations to her name and no win. At just 30 years old, and potentially making it five (or even six) this year, she could break the record of eight losses to no wins held jointly by Peter O’Toole and Glenn Close. Her turn in The Outrun is all the words you’d usually apply to a Ronan performance. Powerful, intelligent, raw. But especially with a lacking script, it’s not up to the level of Madison, Erivo, or Jolie. Nor is she at the levels she reached in Brooklyn, Lady Bird, or Little Women, all of which felt more deserving of a win.
Ronan is also more likely to push for Best Supporting Actress for her work in WW2 drama Blitz.
I would love to see Demi Moore considered too, but we know how the Academy feels about horror. In my opinion it’s a performance second only to Madison’s for commitment to the role, and the most haunting scene is that rage-filled scrubbing of lipstick in the mirror. It’s not the sort of the role the Academy celebrates, like it or not. I choose not.
Finally, Karla Sofía Gascón. If she were to be nominated for her titular role in Emilia Perez, she would be the first openly trans person to be nominated for an acting Oscar, and only the fourth in any category ever (Elliot Page was nominated prior to his transition and thus is omitted here). On the one hand, that’s great. As a trans person myself, it’s hard not to see a transgender woman being considered for Best Actress as a win.
On the other hand, Emilia Perez is a bad film. Not just poorly lit, disjointedly scripted, or stuffed with trite musical numbers (all true), but bad at a central level. It tells the story of a mob boss who transitions to avoid criminal charges, and it does so badly. It just about establishes that Emilia is actually transgender and not just resorting to extreme measures, but generally fails in whatever else it was trying to do.
This will be nominated for a lot of awards, and many well-meaning people will point to it as a symbol of progress, then will feel very silly in about five years time when they realise how dated, incorrect, and often mean-spirited Emilia Perez actually is. Anyone remember Crash?