After winning the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Supporting Actor, plus receiving an Actor Award nomination and a mention on the BAFTA Longlist, Jacob Elordi’s rising Oscar chances are spelling out a likely scenario for “Frankenstein” to pair a Best Makeup & Hairstyling Academy Award win with an acting win.
One of the clearest Oscar trends to emerge over the last 15 years is the correlation between acting wins and Best Makeup and Hairstyling wins. The Academy loves watching performers physically disappear into a role, especially when heavy prosthetics are involved. Top prosthetics designer Mark Coulier won three Oscars in 15 years — his first win, shared with J. Roy Helland (Meryl Streep’s longtime makeup artist), was for transforming Streep into former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher across decades of British history in “The Iron Lady.”
Coulier went on to win the category again for “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (shared with Frances Hannon) and, most recently, “Poor Things” (shared with Nadia Stacey and Josh Weston), another film that exemplifies the makeup + acting win trend. Emma Stone’s portrayal of the otherworldly Bella Baxter in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Frankenstein-esque story landed her a second Best Actress Oscar win. The film additionally won Oscars for Best Production Design and Best Costume Design. Given how the 2026 Oscar predictions are taking shape, the awards trajectory of “Poor Things” offers a fitting parallel for our most win-competitive crafts contender this year: Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein.”
Since placing as the first runner-up for the People’s Choice Award at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the passion behind “Frankenstein” has only strengthened. Between enthusiastic audience responses, star-studded FYC screenings, and multiple nominations across guild and industry awards, there has been plenty of love to go around. And with each new precursor, the film has climbed in predictions across several more categories, including places initially considered on its periphery of awards recognition. For example, on the Oscar shortlists, “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” is missing Best Visual Effects, and “Marty Supreme” is missing Best Sound, making room for “Frankenstein” (which placed on the shortlists for both categories) to now ascend in prediction rankings.
The “Frankenstein” love fest continued at the Critics’ Choice Awards (CCA), the first major televised award show of the year. The film picked up four wins — Best Supporting Actor (Jacob Elordi), Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling — continuing its dominance in the crafts categories. Combined with wins at the Hollywood Creative Alliance (HCA) Astra Awards, alongside nominations at the Art Directors Guild (ADG), Costume Designers Guild (CDG), and Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild (MUAHS), it’s safe to consider “Frankenstein” as the Oscar frontrunner in production design, costume design, and especially makeup. But the film’s biggest story out of the CCA awards was Elordi winning Best Supporting Actor over critics’ group favorite Benicio Del Toro (“One Battle After Another“), who was (and still is) leading the precursor win score board.
Pre-CCA, Elordi already had the strength of starring in a major across-the-board contender that was accumulating craft awards (particularly for makeup, which boosts his Oscar chances). Elordi’s CCA triumph solidifies the passion behind his performance and places him in a win-competitive conversation. He’s also hot off the heels of his first Actor Award (formerly known as SAG) nomination. “Frankenstein” received additional Actor Award nominations in Outstanding Action Performance by a Stunt Ensemble and Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. The ensemble cast recognition speaks to how strongly actors have embraced this film, as well as Elordi’s work. Assuming Elordi wins the Actor award and goes on to win the Oscar, he’d become the 14th Best Supporting Actor winner since 2010 to achieve this overlap. And assuming that “Frankenstein” also wins the Oscar for Best Makeup, Elordi would become the ninth SAG/Actor award winner (across all four acting categories) since 2010 whose film also won the Best Makeup & Hairstyling Oscar.
The BAFTA Longlists gave “Frankenstein” and Elordi another boost; the film showed up in 12 categories, including Best Film and Best Supporting Actor. Guillermo del Toro missing Best Director was the film’s first major surprise snub of the season, though his DGA nomination still keeps him very much in the conversation. BAFTA has also further solidified “Frankenstein” as our strongest (and most win-competitive) crafts player of the season.
Another major win for Elordi, either at the Actor Awards or BAFTA, would place him in the top-two-contender conversation and keep the acting + makeup Oscar pairing theory alive. It helps that “Frankenstein” is the presumed Oscar frontrunner to win Best Makeup & Hairstyling, and that his performance directly benefits the most from said makeup compared to other films (“Sinners,” “Wicked: For Good,” and “One Battle After Another“) contending in makeup and acting categories this year.
Prosthetics makeup artist Mike Hill, who worked on del Toro’s “Cabinet of Curiosities” anthology series, in addition to the Oscar-nominated “Nightmare Alley” and the multi-Oscar-winning “The Shape of Water,” designed The Creature (Elordi) in a manner that also embodied the actor’s personal features, from his lengthy height to expressive eyes. The Creature, with its geometric lines and marble-like finish, resembles a work of art more than a grotesque monster. Along with his talented team, Hill helps visualize a transition from childlike vulnerability to grown-up sensibility, as the Creature’s overall appearance becomes more mature throughout the film. And by design, the crafts allow for a certain level of recognizability of Elordi, as he embodies The Creature through his physicality. The makeup achievements showcase Elordi most in “Frankenstein,” which puts him at a significant advantage given the acting + makeup Oscar trend.
From 2010 onwards, seven films that won Best Makeup and Hairstyling also won for acting: three times in Best Actress (Meryl Streep in “The Iron Lady,” Jessica Chastain in “The Eyes Of Tammy Faye,” and Emma Stone in “Poor Things“) and Best Actor (Matthew McConaughey in “Dallas Buyers Club,” Gary Oldman in “Darkest Hour,” and Brendan Fraser in “The Whale“), once in Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway in “Les Misérables“), and once in Best Supporting Actor (Jared Leto in “Dallas Buyers Club“). Whether a biographical recreation, a contemporary-set story, or a work of science fiction and fantasy, it’s not enough that these Oscar-winning transformations simply made the actors look different. Each performer also embodied their character through changes in movement, whether through facial expressions or body language. These acting wins tend to fall into two categories: they are paired with only a makeup & hairstyling nomination/win (“The Iron Lady” and “The Eyes Of Tammy Faye“), or they are backed by several other nominations and/or wins for the film (“Poor Things,” “Dallas Buyers Club,” “Darkest Hour,” and “Les Misérables“).
“Frankenstein” is shaping up to align most closely with the Oscar-winning “Poor Things,” which took home one acting win and three craft wins. Elordi’s The Creature and Stone’s Bella Baxter, pieced together by scientist father figures, both embody a journey from possessing childlike wonder to learning the harsh ways of the world. The makeup in both films showcases performances that lean into their transformations to the point where the craft and character completely intertwine. And both performances add layers of detail that are wholly individualized to their roles, through studied body movements and changes in dialogue patterns.
Conversations focused heavily on the makeup tend to boost a performance’s chances of winning, but sometimes they can overshadow the performer’s accolades. For example, leading up to last year’s “The Substance” makeup win (shared among Pierre-Olivier Persin, Stéphanie Guillon, and Marilyne Scarselli), there were discussions about the film potentially pairing makeup and acting wins, given Demi Moore’s chances for Best Actress. The Best Actress Oscar ultimately went to Mikey Madison (“Anora“), and in retrospect, “The Substance” falls into a category of lone makeup wins in which the makeup plays a more independent role in telling a character’s story. While Moore’s performance stood out against the unforgettable artistry of Elisabeth Sparkle’s transformation into Monstro Elisasue, the design also served as a thematic visualization and extension of Sparkle’s character, drawing more attention to the makeup achievements. Similarly, with David Cronenberg’s “The Fly,” another lone makeup win (shared between Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis), the makeup elevated Jeff Goldblum’s immersion into Brundlefly while also taking on a life of its own.
With “Frankenstein,” the makeup is not the film’s most talked-about element, nor does its achievement eclipse the reception of Elordi’s performance. The makeup isn’t an extension of The Creature; rather, it wholly defines the film’s adaptation of him, and in turn, Elordi’s portrayal of him. Several hours in the makeup chair later, every detail of Elordi’s performance, from his dialogue patterns to his movements, is showcased through The Creature’s physicality. And in watching Elordi transform from newborn energy to grown-up hurt and rage, we get an emotional reflection of The Creature’s internal journey, a journey the makeup elevates at every turn.
Do you think Jacob Elordi will win the Oscar for his performance in “Frankenstein?” Especially if the film is also winning Best Makeup & Hairstyling. Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account, click here for the most recent tally of awards season winners, here for Next Best Picture’s precursor tracker, and here for their current Oscar predictions.
