The New Best Actress Field. Who Will Be Nominated?
Monday, May 4, 2015 at 8:30PM We saved the best for last. The complete April Foolish Oscar Predictions are up with the Best Actress chart finally complete. As is usual for this beleagured actress psychic, once I've thrown the first charts up in all categories I immediately feel a tidal wave of "no, no, that's all wrong!" though the years have proven me relatively adept at first wave guesswork. At least comparatively speaking.
Which next generation Oscar darling will rise?
After fixing up a chart that included 3 older women who happen to be 3 of the 4 most recent winners (Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep) I immediately realized that this surely could not come to pass and regretted hitting publish. But you have to get the first wave predictions up eventually, so published it stayed. And a truth: everyone is going to be wrong this year because it looks highly competitive with multiple promising leading roles for women.
Recognizing the over 40s in Best Actress has never been AMPAS's strong suit so surely the tide will turn sharply this year or next after so many older winners and even a year with the oldest lineup of all time in terms of nominees in this category (2013). Perhaps this year's lineup will include none of those darlings and skew very young: Saoirse Ronan, Carey Mulligan, Ellen Page, Alicia Vikander (with 8 movies opening something is going to stick), and Jennifer Lawrence (again)... though I personally hold out hope that Lily Tomlin's bravura turn in Grandma can win some "career tribute" style press and make a play for her second nomination 40 years after her first for Nashville.
Or maybe they'll finally make room for my riskiest hunch, Emily Blunt and give her her first nomination at 32 years of age for playing a young FBI agent up against a swarm of dangerous men. Shades of Jodie Foster in Silence of the Lambs anyone?
Please do check out the chart and let's get busy discussing!
Rooney: Do you think we'll be nominated again, Cate?
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Reader Comments (66)
cal roth: Oscar bait written AND directed by the writer of The Amazing Spider-Man. Yeah, when the choice is between something auteurist and somethings that's probably crap you bet on auteurist.
I couldn't help myself and read the CAROL screening reviews and basically everyone is saying that Cate Blanchett is luminous and has never looked more dashing in a movie.
The movie is Oscar-tailored on way too many levels. It doesn't even have to be that good since it has Harvey pulling the strings of a lesbian drama in everyone's favorite period, the 50s.
For anyone saying that March media confrontations will harm Blanchett's chances of a nomination a year later you're mistaken. She was almost directly rude to Peter Travers (an actual asshole) and David Letterman during her Blue Jasmine campaign. That + the Woody Allen controversy right in the middle of voting. She made fun of Judy Garland when winning the Golden Globe, she confronted a camera man at SAG. And she WON ;)
The Academy doesn't really care what you say or do as long as you don't go overboard like Russell C. and Blanchett is Class Act. I actually think most of the journalists appreciate her sense of humor.
No Jennifer Lawrence. Please.
I think Ricki will be Meryl's 20th nomination for sure. Very excited for the trailer to debut tomorrow.
Off-topic, Nat, are you going to update the Oscar page banners with the latest winner? Now that you have new predictions up there, it would be great to see Julianne Moore with an Oscar in her hand next to Cate Blanchett with hers... :)
This is a yawn-fest of a category. Yes, we al (some of us)l love (some of) them, but if those are the names in contention, does that mean that those are the same names we'll have to consider every single year or whenever one of those familiar faces has a movie released? What excites me the most are the non-default nominees. Rampling would be great (has she ever given a bad performance?), but I would love to have an older (over 40) actress in a foreign language movie blow everyone ways and receive a nomination. That has happened before (Montenegro, Riva, Roth (no? really?). Or maybe Sally Hawkins suddenly has a vehicle released this year. Something like that...
I know it's too "arthouse," but I would love to see some love for A Bigger Splash. Tilda and Ralph together for Guadagnino?
Also, any potential love for "Youth"? Keitel, Caine, Weisz, Fonda ... all together for Sorrentino.
Mr. Goodbar - I've only seen Rampling give one bad performance and that was on TV in Series 2 of Broadchurch. Given that Marianne Jean-Baptiste was also terrible I levy all the blame towards a script so bad that even they were unable to lift it.
I'm cautiously Team Mulligan so far (though am always Team Haynes, contradictions notwithstanding) - she is very much in the Keira Knightley model - a limited actress (though not one awarded Chanel campaigns so there was no media backlash) who identified her strengths, worked constantly in challenging movies to improve herself and is now a fucking great actress.
watched Far From the Madding Crowd. Good film. Carey Mulligan is officially the actress of her generation, she is REAL throughout and we see this quality in all of her movies. Matthias Schoenaerts does not do a convincing English accent. He should have sounded more countryside, instead he goes for something similar to RP (the easier option) and fails. Schoenaerts and Sheen are mostly doormats while Sturridge feels unnecessarily evil.
1. Tomlin
2. Ronan
3. Blanchett (Carol)
4. Lawrence
5. Streep
6. Blunt
7. Mulligan (Suffragette)
8. Moore
9. Kidman (Secret in their Eyes or Queen of the Desert)
10. Cotillard (Macbeth)
mr goodbar -- i absolutely agree. i just got so indecisive and i know how Oscar tends to stay in ruts no matter what actually happens. For a time. and then they move on... sometimes
This is sooooooo exciting & fun!!! look like a super competitive yr for actresses..
My Best Actress Dream-list as of now: Blanchett/Mulligan/Moore/Tomlim/Rampling...
& yes Streep look like she's gonna b nom again...that's an unspoken rule tt if La Streep delivers a good or decent performance, they HAVE to nom her & Ricki looks good as an Oscar bait (Astray Mom returning to atone for her abandonm o family & she get to sing all her songs no less!!)...sadly if Streep claimed the last spot, then Rampling will be the one left out as she was never well known in the US
Current Best Sup Dream-list: Mara/Page/Vikander/Steward/Cortillard
not forgetting Streep (again!), Bonham-Carter & Mirren
I'm not so convinced Streep with get a Lead nomination. Perhaps her best chance is BSA in Suffragette. Just not clear on how big her role may be in Suffragette. Maybe she'll get 2 nominations, BA and BSA. Wouldn't that be something!
Just saw the new trailer for Ricki and the Flash and.. well it's not good (https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=144&v=x8PVK6Hky2A)
I think she has a much stronger Streep has a much stornger shot on best supporting with suffergate than with this. this... this does not look good.
Rooting for:
Blanchett
Blunt
Rampling
Mulligan
Binoche
Crossing my fingers for a non Lawrence Streep year
You're all wrong.... BRIE LARSON is going to win Best Actress for 'Room'. Need proof?
"(Brie Larson) began to tell the story of her preparation. The Method Journey might be an Oscar-nominee cliché, but hers was more interesting than most. Larson didn’t leave her house or use her phone for a month, stuck to a diet of mostly apples and protein shakes, and built 20 pounds of muscle in the interim. Her first real food upon emerging was a crack pie from Momofuku, she said. “It was amazing.” It was her physical trainer who provided her, indirectly, with a professional epiphany, by showing her an ultrasound of his wife’s child, “which is crazy,” she said. (So she and Scott Walker at least agree on that.) “I lived this moment of Ma, having this recognition that there’s something outside myself that I have to survive for,” she said."
I've read the book. This is the kind of part actresses dream of getting. Larson is winning. Concluded.