The Best Actor field seems to get slimmer and direr by the week, as presumed contenders keep dropping off, and even sleeper bubble picks can’t seem to stay on the bubble. With “Gladiator II’s” Paul Mescal now looking like he’ll need to ride a few coattails to have a chance, the Best Actor contenders still consist of Adrian Brody, Ralph Fiennes, Colman Domingo, Timothee Chalamet if “A Complete Unknown” doesn’t bomb, Daniel Craig, maybe Sebastian Stan – and almost no one else to speak of.
More and more, a top 10 for Best Actor is getting far harder to fill out than a top five – and even a top five might be way too hard to round out soon. However, if Academy voters had the vision to look beyond such a dire collection of contenders, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to reach for 10 – or even five – names to choose from.
In a more perfect world, in more ways than one, these performances would greatly uplift a bubble straining for other options right about now. For various reasons, a couple of them realistically have no chance of being recognized beyond the Indie Spirit Awards and a few critics groups. Nonetheless, it would be nice and perhaps all too helpful to voters if they could take off further – since it’s not like many ‘realistic‘ projected contenders are.
Keith Kupferer – “Ghostlight”
The category already has a frontrunner who finds healing and redemption through theater in “Sing Sing’s“ Domingo. But on the opposite side of the same coin is “Ghostlight’s“ Kupferer, whose character is in more of a figurative prison of grief than a literal one until he stumbles onto a local theater troupe and eventually brings what remains of his family in with him.
Though “Ghostlight“ and Kupferer had limited exposure this summer – even less so than “Sing Sing’s“ limited release – they are as baity, emotional, and cathartic as almost every other contender this year. Combined with his extra charged scenes with real-life daughter Katherine Mallen Kupferer and extra comedic scenes with stage partner Dolly de Leon, Kupferer may have this year’s best leading man performance that few others even know about.
Justice Smith – “I Saw The TV Glow”
In a different world, Smith’s trajectory from big-budget supporting player to indie breakthrough would be a very interesting narrative. After sharing the screen with dinosaurs, Dungeons and Dragons, and a talking Pikachu, Smith faces the influence of 90s supernatural TV in “I Saw The TV Glow“ – and does everything he can to hide from what it awakens from him.
Jane Schoenbrun’s trans allegory/homage to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer“ spoke volumes to a very specific audience—perhaps too specific for certain Academy voter demos. But if not for that, and if not for A24 having three Best Actor contenders this year, maybe there would still be time to recognize Smith and his part in what is still the most haunting and heart-aching final act of the year.
Sebastian Stan – “A Different Man”
Since A24’s Best Actor collection is so crowded, since Stan already has a far more infamous role up for Best Actor consideration in “The Apprentice,“ and since “A Different Man” hasn’t even cracked $1 million at the box office, his second major performance of the fall has already dropped off the map. But if voters want to honor him in January yet can’t bring themselves to vote for him as Trump – for whatever reason by then – this is still right there as another option.
Stan’s prosthetics in the opening act are already baity enough and increasingly meta enough in full context. But once he is “cured“ of his facial disorders and awakens like a newborn to take the world by the horns, it all gets more ironically distorted from there. Whereas Stan dominates the second half of “The Apprentice“ by becoming more and more Trumpian, “A Different Man“ elevates Stan via a string of escalating meltdowns as his seemingly perfect new life collapses – and/or is stolen by someone else.
“The Apprentice“ would still make Stan a worthy first-time nominee if voters really have no other options left by the New Year – but so would this too. Besides, it would technically spare voters from struggling to find another name for a fifth nominee.
Glen Powell – “Hit Man”
Stan’s “A Different Man“ work may also fall by the wayside because, for whatever reason, mostly comedic performances don’t carry much weight with voters anymore. In that regard, Powell would be much more out of luck with “Hit Man,“even though it might have been exactly the kind of thing that was recognized a few decades ago.
Between Powell’s rising star narrative, juggling about a half-dozen different identities in one movie, working and even co-writing with established auteur Richard Linklater, and being part of one of the steamier/twisted love stories of the year, this would be a prime contender for a surprise, headline-making nomination in some long ago 90s/early 2000s season. If things get any more dire in this year’s field, it might just be a surging contender by default this year anyway – especially if the Golden Globes comedy voters help him out later.
Jesse Plemons – “Kinds Of Kindness”
It is now a modern-day Oscar tradition for Plemons to be part of a Best Picture nominee, even if he’s only gotten one nomination himself for it. Yet if voters don’t want to break with tradition in 2024, their best option to get him back is to remember he was the first actor to win a major prize this year.
Plemons’ Best Actor Cannes win for “Kinds Of Kindness” didn’t lead to the film joining the Yorgos Lanthimos pantheon of crossover hits and would-be Oscar contenders this summer. Nonetheless, his increasingly unhinged and untethered parts in the first two stories of this “triptych“ anthology rivaled most anything in Lanthimos’s vast collection of acting showcases, and most anything Plemons has done in all his much bigger Oscar contenders of the last five+ years.
Once it fell off the map this summer, it wasn’t considered to be a big deal since several other actors seemed poised to fill out the top five and the bubble this fall. Yet now here we are anyway, with maybe seven people at most with a realistic nomination shot and seemingly no one else left to come to the rescue – unless Tom Hanks in “Here,“ Nicholas Hoult in “Juror #2“ and Bill Skarsgard in “Nosferatu“ rise from the ashes of their film’s low expectations or voters genre bias.
But if they can’t, if “Gladiator II“ is only big enough for Denzel Washington to be its sole recognized actor, if “Queer“ is too small and too out there to get Craig over the hump, if “The Apprentice“ carries too much Trump PTSD to help Stan – and if there’s a five-alarm disaster scenario of “A Complete Unknown“ being somehow too mediocre or worse for Chalamet to automatically get in after all – then voters might need to get way more creative, and way more willing to look at last-ditch emergency options like the ones above, very very soon.
So what do you think? Who day you have predicted for Best Actor at this year’s Oscars? Do you think we could get a surprise nominee? Please let us know in the comments below or on Next Best Picture’s X account, and be sure to check out Next Best Picture’s latest Oscar predictions here.
You can follow Robert and hear more of his thoughts on the Oscars & Film on X @Robertdoc1984
