Oscar Volley: Is "Best Actress" tied up with a bow for Jessie Buckley?

The Oscar Volleys continue. Today, LYNN LEE and NICK TAYLOR discuss the surprisingly stable Oscar race for Best Actress.

Jessie Buckley in HAMNET | © Focus Features

LYNN: At the risk of stating the obvious, Nick, Best Actress has been the most predictable stable of the four acting races by far. Is there a world in which Jessie Buckley doesn’t take this? And are we basically fine with that?

NICK: I mean, where else is there to start? Buckley’s the surest winner of the acting categories, and among a handful of artists (PTA, Ludwig Göransson) who have to know they’re winning the Oscar. I’m not complaining. Buckley’s been delivering ambitious, awards-worthy turns since she debuted with Beast in 2017, and her turn as Agnes is such an ideal use of her screen persona. The practical intelligence, the precise-yet-walloping emotions, the way her characters are so irreducibly themselves that their odd edges and peculiar beliefs doom them to black sheep status even when things are looking their way. She’s incredible, and just because the grieving mother is an easy type for awards groups to notice shouldn’t diminish how powerful her work is in Hamnet...

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All Four Acting Categories -- Some Fun Through Lines & Connections

by Nathaniel R

Elle Fanning made her acting debut opposite Sean Penn in I AM SAM (2001) - both are up for Supporting Oscars in March 2026

When we're looking at Oscar trivia we're often focused on individuals. Once that's done it's fun to widen the view a little and think about the year's twenty nominated thespians as a unit. So here are some connections and percentages of note...

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The Best Actress Race: Nomination Tracks & Frankenstein Fusion

by Nathaniel R

I should probably switch this up as I've been doing it annually, but I can't resist. I love imagining a Frankenstein-fusion of the parts of all the  BEST ACTRESS nominees.  If you smoosh or stitch Renate, Kate, Emma, Jessie, and Rose together our Best Actress Category Avatar is a mid-career still-ascending brunette star on her second nomination. She's also dabbled in musicals, played Sally Bowles in "Cabaret", and BAFTA recognized her genius before Oscar voters did!  Maybe she has false memories of winning an Oscar but this is only her second nomination. Her director has a proven track record with guiding actresses -- she may have even worked with them before -- to stellar performances. She's a fire sign with earth rising, a wife, a mother of two, and she just turned 40.

The movie she's nominated for is a drama about a young grieving mother struggling to balance her artistic career ambitions, with her obnoxious needy child--- wait, is she Alice from Alice Doesnt Live Here Anymore?. No uh, never mind, the movie is weirder than that. There's a darkly comic subplot about incels and mysterious holes in her ceiling but the main thrust of the narrative is that the most important man in her life (was it her dad or husband? I forget) is perpetually absent, consummed by his own artistic career ambitions, and has no time for her needs! 

See the updated Best Actress chart 
The chart includes a daily poll, "How'd They Get Nominated?" speculation (not meant as judgment -- nobody is nominated on performance alone!), stats, anecdotes, and trivia. 

“OBAA” stays on top but “Sinners” is on the rise

by Cláudio Alves

SINNERS is gaining steam and catching up. | © Warner Bros.

It’s been two weeks since our last update on regional critics prizes and other such organizations. Much has happened in the meantime, though One Battle After Another remains the frontrunner with the most wins. And yet, Sinners is starting to show some strength. So far, Coogler’s southern gothic vampire proto-musical mélange is the only film to take Best Picture honors away from PTA’s latest. That’s not to say these are the only choices on voters’ minds. In a season already full of repetition, when notions of “spreading the wealth” are thoroughly repudiated, the runner-up mentions often tell a more interesting story than the winners' list. Just look at the LAFCA…

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One Award After Another

by Cláudio Alves

Jafar Panahi on the set of IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT | © Neon

In the blink of an eye, the awards season goes from a sleepy little non-starter into a breakneck race for gold. In the past few days, various organizations announced their prizes, so it's time to start doing more of these round-ups. Though, if things continue to go the way of these first few groups, you'll soon grow tired of reading One Battle After Another at the top of these things. PTA's critical darling won the top honor at the Gotham Film Awards, from the New York and Atlanta critics, as well as the NBR.

But that wasn't the only story of the past few days. Iranian dissident director Jafar Panahi has, again, been sentenced to prison, banned from travelling or making films. As the It Was Just An Accident auteur has been living outside Iran since his last travel ban was lifted in 2023, the proceedings were conducted in absentia, and Panahi remains free. However, he has said he'll return to Iran to complete his sentence after the season ends. May these awards and encompassing media circus provide a platform for the director to speak up before he is silenced once more…

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