Ever since the Oscar nominations were announced last week, one statistic has really stuck with me: For the first time since 1978, all five best-actress nominees come from films that are also nominated for best picture.
There are a couple of different ways you could look at that statistic. One is that the recent push to diversify the academy has actually paid dividends: For a long time, female-led movies just weren’t given the same canonical weight as the ones that starred men. Now that more women have become Oscar voters and the best-picture field has expanded beyond five nominees, the kinds of movies that are thought of as the most important of the year have finally changed, too.
That’s the highbrow way of looking at it, anyway. The part of me that simply enjoys a suspenseful Oscar race sees that statistic as proof that this is the strongest best-actress lineup we’ve had in ages. Any one of the five nominees has a competitive case to win and below, I’ll lay them all out.
Cynthia Erivo, ‘Wicked’
With Oscar voters, esteem tends to accrue, and the 38-year-old Erivo has emphatically proven that she’s no flash in the pan. The sole contender in this category to star in a bona fide blockbuster, Erivo is also the only one who’s been Oscar-nominated before, having picked up actress and original-song nominations for the 2019 biopic “Harriet.”
Still, would the academy rather wait a little longer to reward her? In its transfer from the Broadway stage to the big screen, “Wicked” was split into two parts, and the character arc of Erivo’s not-so-wicked witch won’t be complete until the sequel, “Wicked: For Good,” hits theaters in November. Though Erivo sends viewers out on a high by belting “Defying Gravity” in Part 1’s finale, there’s still the nagging feeling that when it ends, she’s just getting started.
For Erivo to truly contend, she’ll need to pull out a win at one of the two coming ceremonies that are most favorable to her. A victory at the SAG Awards (Feb. 23) may be the most plausible, since those voters went so gaga for “Wicked” that they even nominated her co-star Jonathan Bailey in the supporting-actor category. But Erivo could also score at the BAFTAs, the British equivalent of the Oscars: With that voting body, Erivo’s at least got a home-turf advantage.
Karla Sofía Gascón, ‘Emilia Pérez’
If “Emilia Pérez” is the front-runner for best picture, then Gascón, 52, is good as gold. The last two best-picture winners, “Oppenheimer” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” also took lead acting Oscars, and with a field-leading 13 nominations, I’d consider “Emilia Pérez” to be the current favorite for Oscar’s top prize.
Still, that’s not the only thing buoying Gascón, nominated for playing a Mexican cartel boss who transitions in secret. She is the first openly trans actress to ever be nominated for an Oscar, and liberal academy members may see their vote for Gascón as a repudiation of President Trump, who has promised to roll back protections for transgender people.
Gascón’s co-star Zoe Saldaña is also in a strong spot this season: She has already won a supporting-actress Golden Globe, and if voters are only willing to hand “Emilia Pérez” one acting trophy, Saldaña’s probably got the better shot. But why would they hold back now? Across so many different branches, academy members have amply indicated their love for “Emilia Pérez,” and that supersized nomination haul could portend an equally generous tally of wins that includes Gascón as their favorite movie’s title character.
Mikey Madison, ‘Anora’
In the two decades before the academy diversified its voter rolls, the best-actress race was thought of as a younger woman’s game. Oscars typically went to fresh-faced contenders like Jennifer Lawrence (“Silver Linings Playbook”), Emma Stone (“La La Land”), and Brie Larson (“Room”) since Oscar voters, who were primarily older men, were more inclined to reward a young ingénue instead of a woman their own age.
If we still lived in that era, the best-actress favorite would surely be Madison. In “Anora,” the 25-year-old actress plays an exotic dancer romanced by a caddish Russian heir, and it’s a breakout, brashly accented role with big comic beats and an emotional finale. In other words, it’s the sort of star-is-born performance that Oscar voters typically love to give their seal of approval to.
But times have changed, and so has the academy. As more women have been invited to become Oscar voters, the average age of the best-actress winner has risen, and nearly all of the recent winners have been over 40. If it’s a seasoned candidate voters are looking for, this race offers better options than Madison; still, I think the old guard will be enamored enough to keep her competitive.
Demi Moore, ‘The Substance’
When it comes to the best-actress contest, nothing helps like a good narrative. Think of two years ago, when this category saw one of the most formidable matchups in its history, as Cate Blanchett (“Tár”) faced off against Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”). Both women won major prizes all season, but ultimately, Yeoh’s narrative helped put her over the top: Her Oscar win was history-making and emotional in a way that two-time winner Blanchett’s simply wouldn’t have been.
This year, no best-actress contender boasts a better narrative than Moore, 62, who used her Golden Globe acceptance speech this month to signal exactly what an Oscar victory might mean for her. “This is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor,” she said, as she recalled being dismissed as a “popcorn actress” who would never be considered a serious talent. Those critiques became so constant and pernicious that eventually, she has said, even she began to believe them.
That narrative dovetails nicely with the plot of “The Substance,” with Moore as a movie star on the wane who loses her job hosting an exercise program when executives dismiss her as over the hill. Moore’s fellow actors will be able to relate to that fear and she’s got a killer Oscar clip that exemplifies it, in which she smears her makeup in a self-hating fit as all of her character’s insecurities come to the fore.
Though leading women in horror-tinged films have won before, like Natalie Portman (“Black Swan”) and Jodie Foster (“Silence of the Lambs”), those movies didn’t hit the over-the-top body horror highs of “The Substance,” which covers the lens with fountains of blood by its climax. Still, all that gore hasn’t seemed to faze Oscar voters, who also showered “The Substance” with nominations for director, best picture and best screenplay. There’s still more than a month to go but right now, Moore is our front-runner.
Fernanda Torres, ‘I’m Still Here’
When I woke up early to watch the announcement of the Oscar nominations on YouTube, I was struck by how much the live chat was dominated by Brazilians spamming the emoji of their nation’s flag. That Torres, 59, made the best-actress lineup is a point of significant national pride as she is the first Brazilian to be recognized in this category since her mother, Fernanda Montenegro, was nominated for the 1998 drama “Central Station.”
Montenegro’s awards campaign was waged by Michael Barker and Tom Bernard of Sony Pictures Classics, who have also steered the slow but steady ascent of Torres nearly three decades later. Though Sony Pictures Classics doesn’t flood the awards-season zone the same way that a deep-pocketed campaigner like Netflix can, no studio is better at patiently coaxing older voters to check out a small prestige drama.
That’s how the specialty imprint pulled off dark-horse victories like Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”) beating Chadwick Boseman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) for the best-actor Oscar four years ago, or Torres herself topping contenders like Nicole Kidman and Angelina Jolie when she won the Golden Globe for best actress in a drama earlier this month. And it’s why, even though Moore’s Oscar bid has plenty of momentum, I wouldn’t count Torres out: As Eunice Paiva, an activist who tries to keep her family together after her dissident husband is disappeared by Brazil’s military dictatorship, Torres delivers a much more traditionally Oscar-friendly performance than Moore.
Still, the biggest advantage for Torres is that her film is the freshest in the race. Many voters hadn’t caught up with “I’m Still Here” but surely will now that their fellow academy members have pushed it into contention in three major categories, including best picture and best international feature. It often pays to be the last film that voters watch, and with Torres so well-positioned during the final leg of this contest, the best-actress race is still anyone’s game.