Oscar's Best Actress 2024

I think Gladstone absolutely deserved the nomination and would be a worthy winner.

I certainly haven’t. I quoted you verbatim. I ask again, considering that you’ve acknowledged that it’s possible the critics and academy saw something in her performance that you hadn’t (it isn’t like I agree with every nomination either) is it possible you’re wrong to presume it’s based on SJ rather then her abilities?

No.

I think Annette Bening may win because she is getting older and has yet to be anointed by the Academy.

Rather then being so blithe, care to elaborate any further without relying so heavily on anecdotes?

I'll give this a try. I think this is unknowable. It is certainly possible that many Oscar voters liked her performance for many reasons outside of her ancestry, but what is undeniably and unmistakably true is that the focus of her own campaign has been her identity. If she felt confident that her performance was Oscar worthy apart from her identity and the history-making nature of it, she, and her supporters, might arguably be talking more about the performance itself and what makes it stand out as exceptional, or what makes the character special, rather than talking incessantly about her grandmother, stories she heard growing up, how she'd be the first Native American to win an acting Oscar, and how Scorsese transformed the story to cater more to the desires of the Osage community. Although I could be wrong on this, as I'm not an Oscar expert, I have never seen a campaign that is so focused on identity as Gladstone's campaign for Best Actress.

This is a good response.
You’re right, it is unknowable. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her focusing on her ancestry, as she clearly is proud of it. I think a lot of the focus was because they recognized an opportunity to highlight both her acting and her ancestry because of the fact native Americans have been severely underrepresented in the Oscars.
It can be true, after all, that yes she was singled out for her ethnicity and also for her performance. Both can be true simultaneously without taking anything away from her nomination.

Three of these five women have been nominated before, one being a former winner, and it is one of the two first-timers who seems to be the favorite.



This is Annette Bening’s fifth Oscar nomination. She was first nominated as Best Supporting Actress for The Grifters (the year Whoopi Goldberg won for Ghost), an early standout role that rocketed her to stardom. While she went unnominated for the likes of Bugsy, Regarding Henry, and The American President, those roles coupled with her marriage to Warren Beatty made her very well known. Her first Best Actress nomination came for American Beauty, and while her co-star Kevin Spacey won she lost out to Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry. She returned a few years later playing an aging diva in Being Julia and lost to Swank again, this time for Million Dollar Baby. Hilary Swank was not nominated the year Bening was for The Kids Are All Right, but unfortunately for her that was the year of Natalie Portman and Black Swan. She got a taste of that MCU money when she signed on for Captain Marvel and could have easily been nominated for either 20th Century Women or Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool or both. Alas.

She is good as the title character Diana Nyad, retelling the remarkable true story of the aged athlete who could not rest until she completed one more impossible swim. Is it a strong enough performance to finally get Annette her Academy Award? No. Going 0 for 5 won’t put her in the same class as Glenn Close, whose losing streak currently sits at eight noms without a win (Peter O’Toole finished that way, too), but it is starting to seem a bit conspicuous. She has won a BAFTA, two Golden Globes, and a SAG Award among other various international and critics prizes, but the Oscar will continue to elude her. For now.




This is Emma Stone’s fourth nomination, and she is the previous winner, having nabbed Oscar’s Best Actress - and most every other award around - for La La Land. Her other two nods came in the Supporting category, first for Birdman (Patricia Arquette won for Boyhood) and for her previous collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite, where she and her co-star Rachel Weisz both lost to Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk) while their Queen Olivia Colman won Best Actress. Stone’s rise from standout support in comedies like Superbad, The House Bunny, and Zombieland transitioned easily into charming starring roles in Easy A, Crazy Stupid Love, and The Help leading up to her coronation in La La Land.

Since then, rather than chase the typical Hollywood leads she has wisely chosen darker, more interesting projects, including 2023’s ”The Curse” on the television side. She is flat-out fantastic in Poor Things, wringing both the humor out of the outrageous set-up as well as adding empathy and weight to the satire, watching her character’s journey from mental infancy to curious and rebellious teen to confident and stalwart heroine. Had she not already won an Oscar this might well be the performance that put her over the top. Already having one at home oddly lessens her chances of winning again, although Poor Things’ Bella is certainly a wildly different role than La La Land’s Mia and flexes all sorts of thespian muscles. I would not be at all sad to hear her name called again nor shocked, but she isn’t the favorite this time (or even the favourite).




Carey Mulligan does tend to get those “Oscary” kind of roles. Whether in literary adaptations like Far From the Madding Crowd, Never Let Me Go, and The Great Gatsby, historical epics such as Suffragette, Public Enemies, and Mudbound, hot-button social issues like She Said and A Promising Young Woman, and cool indies like Inside Llewyn Davis, Drive, Shame, and Saltburn. But even with that resume she has only had two previous nominations: An Education and A Promising Young Woman. Bradley Cooper is two-for-two in getting his leading ladies’ Oscar nominations, but like Lady Gaga falling short for his directorial debut A Star is Born, Mulligan will probably be an also-ran here as Felicia Montealegre in Maestro. Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein is the showier role, but Carey brings her usual strength and emotional depth to the table. She’s gotta win one of these years – she’s too good and works with too many great filmmakers not to. But not this time.




Sandra Hüller came to international attention in 2016 for Toni Erdmann, the dark comedy that was a bit of a sensation at Cannes, and while she was excellent it was co-star Peter Simonischek who drew much of the attention at the time. In addition to Anatomy of a Fall Sandra was also in last year’s The Zone of Interest, and several of the other stops along this awards season trail have double nominated her (Best Supporting Actress for Zone, Actress for Anatomy of a Fall). She is only really the third German nominated for Best Actress, though Marlene Dietrich was nominated for an American film (Morocco) and Louise Rainer was not only nominated (and won) for American productions (The Great Ziegfeld and The Good Earth) but due to the political climate of the 1930s she hid her German heritage a bit. In Anatomy of a Fall Hüller plays a German woman in the French Alps in a French production where she speaks German, French, and English. Whatever nationality one wishes to classify it as, the performance is strong and at the very center of the film. Anatomy of a Fall does seem to be the title that is gaining some momentum, including among Oscar voters, but the chances of that translating into an Oscar win are extremely unlikely. This nomination plus The Zone of Interest should continue to raise her profile and may lead to some very interesting opportunities down the line.




Lily Gladstone finds herself as the one to beat, having picked up many of the industry prizes to date. While Leonardo DiCaprio was much more prominent in the advertising, Gladstone is his character’s mirror in Killers of the Flower Moon, and for all of his confused malevolence and duplicity there is her quiet assessment of the evils around her and the Osage, until she fully realizes she has been sleeping with the enemy. Like the Osage Nation itself, her character of Mollie – one of the real-life victims in 1920s Oklahoma – suffers injustice upon injustice, and for much of her life and of the film’s running time feels powerless to get to the truth or find a way out. Gladstone’s performance is a slow burn, finally igniting once some impartial federal law enforcement was able to penetrate through the veil of collusion and murder. It may be a more subtle than often wins Best Actress, but it looks like it may win, all the same.

Gladstone is not a newcomer, though this bright a spotlight is new. She had supporting roles in Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women and First Cow and may be better known for her TV roles on Showtime’s ”Billions” and FX’s "Reservation Dogs”. Win or lose, her name is known for sure, now! Her Oscar nomination, along with DeNiro’s for Supporting Actor, make twenty-five acting nominations accumulated from Martin Scorsese films. Of the previous twenty-three there have been five winners: Ellen Burstyn Best Actress for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Robert DeNiro Best Actor for Raging Bull, Paul Newman Best Actor for The Color of Money, Joe Pesci Best Supporting Actor for GoodFellas, and Cate Blanchette Best Supporting Actress for The Aviator. Will Gladstone join their ranks while of course becoming the first Native American to ever win an Oscar for acting? Stay tuned.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

HA! 😀

OK, Marlon, perhaps not the first indigenous person to go on stage at the Oscar ceremony to collect (or rather refuse) a statue, but the first to win one competitively in the acting categories.

Though as for Sasheen Littlefeather's infamous refusal of Brando's Best Actor Godfather Oscar due to the representation of American Indians by Hollywood, her own family later disputed her heritage claims, which makes her appearance super meta. Please stop using non-Natives like me to portray Natives the way I am doing right now. Thank you.

Just watched Anatomy of a Fall, so I have now sene four of the five Best Actress nominees.

@Holden Pike, how do you rank these performances? It sounds like you might favor Stone for the win if you were voting. Do you think Gladstone's performance stands up favorably against the others in this category, and why do you think what you do? Also, is Gladstone's performance not obviously supporting, while the others were very clearly lead performances? I know that this type of miscategorization has definitely happened in the past, and is usually done for strategic campaign purposes, so it shouldn't be disqualifying in my mind, but I think its a relevant concern when you take it in conjunction with the lack of centrality and other aspects of her performance, like a reduced complexity or variability, in comparison with the other actresses who were nominated in the category.

It is my favorite movie of the year, so yes.

I do not think Gladstone being up for Best Actress is "miscategorization". There are no real rules about what qualifies for lead versus supporting, no metrics that it must be a certain percentage of scenes or running time or any such thing. But Lily Gladstone is the lead actress of Killers of the Flower Moon. Clearly. That she is on screen less than Emma Stone or Annette Bening are in their movies is a function of each film's narrative and doesn't make one better or worse than the other. There have always been and will always be wide discrepancies in the nominees. I think it was Clooney who noted in his acceptance speech for Syriana - and others have stated it similarly over the decades - that unless all five nominees play the exact same role, comparing them is inherently a flawed endeavor.



As I said, Gladstone's role as Mollie is one that is very still and calm on the surface until the end, and even when she finally confronts Ernest she doesn't suddenly turn into a wild banshee. Her character, which lines up not only with the historical record of the real Mollie but also the cultural norms as well as the way it functions in the plot and enhances the themes, is very stoic. Had this movie character or her real-life counterpart suddenly turned into a loud siren yelling accusations in the streets she would have gone to the top of the kill list and been instantly silenced. Had she been the one who went to D.C. to lobby for help, she would have been killed in an alleyway. Instead, she absorbed the pain and anger and betrayals until proper authority came in and was able to shed light on the monstrosities the Osage were subjected to.

That is a very different kind of character and acting challenge than an aged Olympian who won't quit or a science experiment discovering the joys and inequities of the world. Different, not less than. If you or an Oscar voter thinks she had a lesser degree of difficulty, fine, you are welcome to that opinion. And you can apply that stance to virtually any Oscar category. But Lily Gladstone is the lead actress of Killers of the Flower Moon and if she wins that is A-OK with me, Kemosabe.

Thanks Holden! Very interesting and thought provoking post. It sounds like you would vote for Emma Stone, so we don't disagree that Lily Gladstone should not win in an ideal world, but you'd be ok with it if she did. However, it sounds like you are much more in favor of considering the role and performance in the context of the film, and judging it on that basis, rather than judging it against the other nominees. I would agree with you that Lily Gladstone is the lead actress of "Killers of the Flower Moon" (there's no other prominent actress in the film), but she is not a typical lead actress in terms of both screen time and the centrality of her role to the story, while Emma Stone in "Poor Things" and Sandra Huller in "Anatomy of the Fall, for example, clearly are. In contrast, although she does have an important role, the actors who move the story forward in "Killers" are Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, not Lily. Also, you appear to be judging whether she is Oscar worthy based on the context of the film and what the demands of her role within the film were, and how she did portraying that. Again, I agree with you that she performed her role well given what was, to me, the limited and somewhat constrained nature of her role. However, for me, I didn't like the film, and I also didn't like her role, and I preferred other actresses performance in the category, such as Sandra Huller, for example, who gave, to me, more impactful performances that were more difficult to execute, in better films. So, I think the point of difference here is very interesting, and that's mainly that I consider whether I liked the film, whether I liked the role, the variability of the performance, and how the role compares to others in the category, while your analysis appears to be within the film itself and how the actress performed in the context of what the role required her to do. Is that how you feel Oscar voters should vote as well? I feel like more of them would evaluate the performance the way I have, comparing it to others that were also nominated, and all the various factors, and less like you did.

Emma Stone for Poor Things has to win for me. What a performance!

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"Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death" Auntie Mame (1958)

I would love this, but i just don't see it happening.

I've never been more disappointed than finding out about those claims. It stood out as such an inspiring speech, what meaning am I even supposed to gain from it now?

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Sacheen Littlefeather isn't even her real name.

Just because she was a fraud, doesn't mean the message changes. It still means the same thing.

I haven't seen Benning or Hiller's films, but as good as both Gladstone and Stone are in their movies, Mulligan's was better.