15 Best Actor contenders for the 2024 Oscars
Here are the names to watch—including Cillian Murphy, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joaquin Phoenix, and Nicolas Cage—as awards season heats up
Film Features the 2024 Oscars
As the weather outside cools down, awards season is heating up, with prestige releases arriving weekly from now until the end of the year. Which means it’s time to start looking ahead to the Academy Awards, as well as the other awards shows that lead up to Hollywood’s biggest night. With actors and producers currently in talks that may end the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, the industry’s biggest stars may soon be back on red carpets to promote their films and court voters.
From epic biopics to social satires to thrillers to genre-defying indie gems, there’s no shortage of fascinating films featuring a wide field of leading men. We’ve narrowed the list to 15 contenders who seem deserving of recognition. Some of them, such as Nicolas Cage, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joaquin Phoenix, and Anthony Hopkins, have graced the Oscars stage before, while others, like Jeffrey Wright and Andrew Scott, are new to the awards but no less welcome. In case you’re wondering why Ryan Gosling isn’t here, Warner Bros. opted to submit him in the category of Best Supporting Actor rather than lead for his performance in Barbie.
Here, then, is our alphabetical list of the actors we predict will be part of the awards conversation this year. And if you’re following the awards as closely as we are, be sure to check out our guide to all the films in the race for Best Picture in 2024, and look for our predictions for Best Actress and Best Director contenders in the coming weeks.
30 Comments
I’m nitpicking, but I think Leo used prosthetic teeth.
Beat me to it. Those teeth are far more distracting than Bradley Coopers false nose.
I also think he had wires implanted to pull the corners of his month down.
And butt-inserts! It was all I could think about during the spanking scene
Rumor has it he will next play George Washington with wooden teeth made from that infamous Titanic door.
I don’t think Cillian Murphy was the best actor in Oppenheimer. He’s naturally the lead, but Robert Downey Jr. had an amazing turn. Hopefully RDJ will get best supporting actor nods. I enjoyed his performance much more than Murphy’s.
It’s clear that Josh Peck deserves best supporting for pushing the button to initiate the test.
You have to put yourself in the shoes of self important Oscar voters. Cillian Murphy is a lock because the Oscar voters will all want to pump up the “Serious” movie that competed against Barbie.“Yes, Barbie is was good fun, peons, but Oppenheimer was art.”
everything everywhere all at once literally won best picture last year
I’ll split the difference. Murphy will get a nod in the lead category, but Oppenheimer will win for RDJ in the Supporting Actor category. He gave a legitimately great performance, and at this point, it will be a tacit lifetime achievement award, a recognition for how he weathered a lot of ups and downs. The Academy loves a good comeback story.
Leo, Cillian, Colman, Bradley, and either Joaquin or Driver rounding out the 5.
Phoenix seems to bring the same dour facial expression to every role these days. Cheer up, FFS!I’d find room for Giamatti in there.
I’d include both Phoenix and Driver over DiCaprio. Watching him once again felt like watching a senior starring in his high school’s big play. You’re rooting for him to vanish into the role, but he never really does.
I wanted to punch DiCaprio in the face halfway through that movie. The jutted out jaw and downturned mouth over and over and over…
I want Hopkins to get it. I want another three time Brit. Fuck America
You’re intentionally overlooking Ryan Gosling.
is he NOT Kenough for you?!?! /cries
He could definitely get a jokey supporting actor nod. It would be a good way to bring in Barbie jokes through out the show.
This is not a shot against you, but it really is kind of a bummer that it would be considered a “jokey” nomination. It’s a shame that comedies are still viewed that way (mostly by the Academy), and almost never get their due.
COVER YOUR MOUTH WHEN YOU SNEEZE, GODDAMIT
They submitted him for supporting
It’s wild that a recent Best Actor winner, who has four nominations, can star as fucking Napoleon in a movie directed by Ridley Scott… and it’s considered a dark horse.
I suppose it depends on how good the movie is. Every time Ridley Scott directs a film, the gods flip a coin.
leaves nothing on the table in his tour-de-force performance as legendary American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, adopting a mid-Atlantic accent and a specific physicality to match the man himself.But does Cooper have a scene where he uses Bernstein’s rather unorthodox shifting technique?
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/16/913561880/-2038-bernsteining-the-clutch
American Fiction sounds a lot like Bamboozled.
Lately Nicholas Cage seems to be making about 10 films a year. And so many straight to VOD. I can’t take him seriously anymore as an actor.
If an actor makes 10 movies a year, and only one of them is good, you know what that makes him? An actor who makes a good movie every year, which is better than most other actors do.
“Lately Nicholas Cage seems to be making about 10 films a year.”According to imdb he was in:* 2023: six movies, of which one was a few seconds uncredited in The Flash, so really five* 2022: two movies* 2021: three movies* 2020: two moviesNot sure how we get to ten per year when that averages about three per year? And as you say, if even one of them every few years is as good as Pig I’m very okay with the guy.
I mean, at least with Cage, we still get some gems like Mandy, Color Out of Space and Pig sprinkled in with the crap, which is more than I can say for other actors his age who moved to VOD fare like Travolta and John Cusack. Also Dream Scenario and Butcher’s Crossing both look pretty stellar to me.
Did too many people see, Oppenheimer, in too many theaters, making too much money, for it to be considered artsy enough to win awards. I thought the awards went to strange arthouse movies that only played in LA and NY and that only are seen by film nerds. (SNARK, mostly)
Fassbender doesn’t have a shot in hell of getting nominated but I thought he was pretty great in The Killer.