Nominations voting is from January 8-17, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 23, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7:00 p.m. ET/ 4:00 p.m. PT. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.
The State of the Race
Much metephorical ink has been spilled here and across the web about this year’s Best Actress Oscar race. How fun for it to be so up in the air, even though it makes the job of prognositcating all the more harder.
Ultimately, while almost all of the women listed on the frontrunners and contenders list did work objectively worthy of the nominations they have already received, the contenders that seem most likely to get a nomination are the ones where you could make the strongest case they could win. (What fun is that?)
Taking things all the way back to the Cannes Film Festival 2024, the jury was won over by so many female-led films that they forgoed tradition and gave a Best Actress prize to the ensemble of “Emilia Pérez.” Still, in addition to praise for the star of that film, Karla Sofía Gascón, there were already rumblings about the Best Actress Oscar going to Mikey Madison, star of Palme d’Or winner “Anora,” or Demi Moore, star of Best Screenplay winner “The Substance,” when the festival wrapped.
As more and more awards have been announced, all three actress have consistently been nominated, with Moore finally triumphing over the other two at the Golden Globes, the first televised awards show of the year. That acceptance speech for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy was the icing on the cake, securing her frontrunner status going into Oscar voting.
The other winner of the night? Brazilian star Fernanda Torres, whose film “I’m Still Here” has become a serious dark horse in the Best International Feature race (“Emilia Pérez” is probably too big of an awards juggernaut to defeat, but the extra Globes attention means it definitely moved up voters queues in time for voting.)
All that said, the contender who has won the biggest critics prizes so far, with the rare NYFCC, LAFCA, and NSFC sweep is “Hard Truths” star Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Sure, the last actress to win those and not recieve the Oscar nomination was Sally Hawkins for another Mike Leigh film, but Hawkins was not a former Oscar nominee the way Jean-Baptiste is. There is likely credit to be given for her and Leigh coming back together all these years after her Best Supporting Actress nomination for his film “Secrets and Lies,” and hitting it out of the park again.
Once again, this race is so tight that this list is counting out several former Oscar nominees (and winners) like Angelina Jolie (“Maria”), Nicole Kidman (“Babygirl”), and Saoirse Ronan (“The Outrun”), but the only one who really does seem like she has a shot, based on her SAG and BAFTA nominations, for example, is “Wicked” star Cynthia Erivo. But we’re only one year off from Margot Robbie charting a similar path with “Barbie,” and ultimately not making the cut, even though her male co-star did.
Contenders are listed in alphabetical order, below.
Frontrunners:
Karla Sofía Gascón (“Emilia Pérez”)
Marianne Jean-Baptiste (“Hard Truths”)
Mikey Madison (“Anora”)
Demi Moore (“The Substance”)
Fernanda Torres (“I’m Still Here”)
Contenders:
Amy Adams (“Nightbitch”)
Pamela Anderson (“The Last Showgirl”)
Cynthia Erivo (“Wicked”)
Angelina Jolie (“Maria”)
Nicole Kidman (“Babygirl”)
Saoirse Ronan (“The Outrun”)
Tilda Swinton (“The Room Next Door”)
June Squibb (“Thelma”)
Kate Winslet (“Lee”)
Zendaya (“Challengers”)
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