11 Best Actor Contenders to Watch

_{A version of this story first appeared on The Ankler .}

As I wrote two weeks ago , a remarkably deep bench of best actress hopefuls is beginning to take shape, ranging from long overdue veterans to Oscar winners returning for a second (or third!) statue. There are so many contenders, in fact, that I forgot to even mention such performances as Fernanda Torres in the Brazilian international feature entry I’m Still Here , or early year standouts Kirsten Dunst ( Civil War ) and Jodie Comer ( The Bikeriders ). You could easily fill three best actress lineups with the amount of talent out there.

But what about the men’s side of things? Well, it’s much slimmer pickings. Despite the general trends favoring men in so much of Hollywood, this feels like it happens a lot. Think of 2021, when Will Smith was walking to victory for King Richard while Jessica Chastain was fending off career-best work from Penelope Cruz, Kristen Stewart and more. Even when Brendan Fraser and Austin Butler were going head to head in 2022, that category was still open enough to make room for two dark-horse contenders— Paul Mescal and Bill Nighy for their performances in the tiny Aftersun and Living .

None of this is to say that best actor lacks for great performances, this year or any other. But this year’s lineup is looking a good bit like 2022, with only a handful of sure-thing leading man performances and a lot of room for a Nighy-style sleeper contender — or even for Mescal himself to make it back into the mix.

So who actually has the potential to make it into a category this wide open? Just as we did for best actress, let’s take a look at the field — and the narratives that will be driving them forward all season.

The Overdue Veterans

There are some people who are so notoriously overdue for an Oscar that their losing streak becomes one of the main things anybody knows about them. (We treasure you for your sense of humor , Diane Warren .) But it might be even more challenging to be someone so ridiculously overdue that many people assume you’ve already won.

I got into a literal argument not that long ago with someone who insisted that Ralph Fiennes had won an Oscar for Schindler’s List , and it took Wikipedia to confirm that, no, he was merely nominated for that and The English Patient , and never again since. Now a decade after his snub for 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (yes, I’m still mad about it), he’s got his best chance yet to end that streak with the Vatican-set drama Conclave .

A pulpy drama about the behind-the-scenes process of selecting a new pope, Conclave rests in large part on Fiennes’s shoulders, playing the cardinal charged with organizing the conclave and sussing out some scurrilous rumors in the process. It’s a surprisingly restrained performance in some ways but all the more compelling for it; in the film’s final scene, his silent reaction to yet another bombshell revelation earned gasps and applause from the crowd in Toronto.

I wrote a few weeks ago that a best picture lineup without Conclave would be exceedingly strange, and the same is true for Fiennes in best actor.

There’s another overdue veteran out there, though, whose path is far less clear. Daniel Craig , Fiennes’ co-star in three Bond films, has never even been nominated , which is a sadly common fate for our James Bonds. Sean Connery had to wait five years after his last Bond outing for his nomination — and win — for The Untouchables .

Though Craig’s Knives Out films have both gotten Oscar attention, this year he has a very different performance on deck in Queer , from Luca Guadagnino . It just premiered at the New York Film Festival, with the sometimes press-shy Craig in attendance, and is set for a Thanksgiving release from A24. Festival responses have been a bit mixed, even among the Guadagnino faithful, but there’s been plenty of praise for Craig. In a best actor lineup this open, might that finally be enough to bring him to the table?

Winners Back For Another Round

I think we can move on fairly quickly from one previous best actor winner who might have once been in the running. In Joker: Folie á Deux , Joaquin Phoenix reprises the character that won him an Oscar, and does some fascinating work stretching the character into musical sequences and toggling between the Joker’s bravado and Arthur Fleck’s sadness. But the movie is already an infamous bomb . There’s no Oscar campaign that can salvage that.

But there’s another previous best actor winner who is very much in the mix. It’s been more than 20 years since Adrien Brody became the youngest ever best actor winner for playing a Holocaust survivor in The Pianist ; now he’s back playing a different, fictional Holocaust survivor in The Brutalist , which you’ve already heard me rave about .

Brody is even better than he was in The Pianist in the central role of Laszlo Toth, a fictional Hungarian architect who escapes the Holocaust to start over in America, trying to fulfill his artistic ambitions while working under the thumb of a ruthless capitalist played by Guy Pearce . It’s a very different movie, but I’m starting to wonder if The Brutalist can be an Oscar heavyweight on the level of another midcentury American saga with gorgeous crafts and a towering lead performance — that would be Oppenheimer .

Previous Nominees Gunning for a Win

This is the most crowded category we’ve got here, representing actors at a wide range of career stages. The most recent nominee of the bunch is Colman Domingo , who had his long-awaited breakthrough first nomination with Rustin last year. With Sing Sing , he is A24’s third major best actor contender, alongside Craig and Brody, which could make for a crowded lineup for a single studio. But I remain bullish on Sing Sing and especially Domingo, who is barnstorming his way across regional festivals this month and ought to win over a lot of voters in the process.

Two more previous nominees await among the few major contenders that haven’t screened widely yet. Paul Mescal is back again in a much larger film than Aftersun , and the early buzz on Gladiator II is pretty bullish — it will screen for selected press in New York and Los Angeles in the next two weeks, so we won’t have to wait too long to know for sure.

And this week’s new trailer for A Complete Unknown confirmed that Timothée Chalamet really is sinking deep into his performance as the young Bob Dylan , and from the sounds of it even performing his own songs. He’s also got Dune: Part Two in the running, of course, but pundits are saving spots for him on their best actor predictions for a reason. Unless A Complete Unknown emerges as a complete disappointment, he should be considered a strong contender. Chalamet has still only been nominated once, for Call Me By Your Name , but he’s as much of an awards heavy hitter as anyone can be under the age of 30.

Finally there’s Jesse Eisenberg , pulling the rare double duty as both a director and lead actor contender for A Real Pain . Though Kieran Culkin has the flashier supporting performance, as the more unpredictable of the two American cousins who go on a tour of Holocaust sites in Poland, Eisenberg is moving, funny and surprisingly raw in his role, too.

A Real Pain , which premiered at Sundance, played for a receptive hometown crowd at the New York Film Festival, and I know some people believe it might be the strongest contender from Searchlight, which is also backing A Complete Unknown as well as Nightbitch .

Mescal, Eisenberg and Chalamet are an interesting trio to be in the mix together. All three received their first Oscar nominations in their 20s and have endured the head-spinning experience of being deemed Hollywood’s Next Big Thing. (Eisenberg did his time as Lex Luthor; Chalamet has the Dune franchise; Mescal is taking his turn with Gladiator II .) Brody remains the only person to actually win best actor in his 20s; Mescal and Chalamet now have the chance this year to become the second.

The Breakouts

Like Eisenberg , Sebastian Stan got his start in teen-centric television — Eisenberg on the short-lived Get Real , Stan on Gossip Girl — and then headed to the superhero factory, with Stan’s many performances as Bucky Barnes in the Marvel Universe earning him a very devoted fanbase. But his dirtbag performances in I, Tonya and Pam & Tommy hinted at what else he was capable of, and now this year’s double-header of A Different Man and The Apprentice may vault him to a new level entirely.

The question remains which of those films might be the more viable awards contender — on Gold Derby’s consolidated odds , Stan appears in the top 10 twice, for both films. He’s remarkable as a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice , but with the election looming it’s hard to know how that film might play by the time voters get started in early January.

Reviews are more uniformly positive for A Different Man , yet another A24 release, this one with a complex setup that has Stan playing a man who was once facially disfigured and now looks like Sebastian Stan — not that it’s made him any happier.

Stan may be competing against himself, but he’s the undeniable focal point in both of his films. Meanwhile John David Washington , who has come close to Oscar consideration in the past with BlacKkKlansman and Malcolm & Marie , turns in another captivating lead performance in The Piano Lesson but as part of a vibrant ensemble cast that also includes best supporting actress hopeful Danielle Deadwyler as well as Ray Fisher, Corey Hawkins and Samuel L. Jackson in strong supporting turns.

Washington and Deadwyler are at the center of the August Wilson adaptation, playing a brother and sister reuniting in Pittsburgh but still sorting out the scars — and literal ghosts — of their past in the South. But Deadwyler is the only prominent female role in the film, which makes a best supporting actress designation simpler; with so many men in the ensemble someone had to go lead, and Washington makes the most sense to do so. But with so many of his fellow best actor hopefuls at the undeniable center of their films, it might make it more difficult for Washington to keep up.

The True Breakouts

The supporting categories are usually where someone who was entirely unknown a year earlier makes a huge splash, but every once in a while it happens in the lead acting races. So let’s take a moment to acknowledge Ethan Herisse , the 24-year-old star of Nickel Boys , as well as Elliot Heffernan , the 11-year-old star of Blitz .

Herisse has a remarkable resume for his age, with a wide range of TV roles including When They See Us before his lead turn in RaMell Ross ’s Nickel Boys . His nomination could be similar to Chalamet’s for Call Me By Your Name — a new-ish actor exploding on to the scene with an undeniable performance.

Heffernan is the child at the center of Steve McQueen ’s World War II drama Blitz , which had its world premiere at the London Film Festival earlier this week and closes the New York Film Festival this weekend. He still wouldn’t be the youngest-ever best actor nominee: Believe it or not — that record has been held for 93 years by Jackie Cooper , nominated at nine-years-old for Skippy at one of the first Oscar ceremonies. But Heffernan could be the second.

Will this be a year for big first-time breakthroughs, or a lineup that leans closer to people who are already more established with Oscar attention? You’ll get tired of hearing me saying it, but it’s wide open. May the best actor win.

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