2024 Oscars cliffhanger: Will Best Actress category be filled with fictional roles for first time since 2011?

Jacob Sarkisian
·3 min read
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While Oscar voters love nominating performers for portraying real-life people in biopics, it turns out that to win Best Actress it is better to play a fictional character. Over the past decade 29 of the 50 nominations have been for original turns, with a whopping seven of those winning. Here’s the complete breakdown.

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As you can see four out of five contenders last year were actresses playing fictional people. The one exception was Ana de Armas, who was nominated for portraying Marilyn Monroe in “Blonde.” The last time all five nominations went to actresses playing fictional people was back in 2011 when Natalie Portman (“Black Swan”), Annette Bening (“The Kids Are All Right”), Nicole Kidman (“Rabbit Hole”), Jennifer Lawrence (“Winter’s Bone”), and Williams (“Blue Valentine”) were all nominated, with Portman winning.

However, that could happen again this year as our current predicted nominees for Best Actress are Fantasia Barrino (“The Color Purple”), Greta Lee (“Past Lives”), Sandra Hüller (“Anatomy of a Fall”), Portman (“May December”), and Emma Stone (“Poor Things”). All five of those women are playing fictional characters. Barrino, Lee, and Hüller are all hoping for their first-ever Oscar nominations. Portman is after her fourth Oscar nomination overall, her third Best Actress bid, and her second win. She won Best Actress in 2011 for “Black Swan.” Stone is also seeking her fourth Oscar bid. She won Best Actress in 2017 for “La La Land.” That is her only Best Actress bid so far.

Meanwhile, Margot Robbie is on the precipice of a nomination and, she, too, plays a fictional character — Barbie in “Barbie.” Robbie is looking for her third Oscar nomination overall and second Best Actress bid after she was nominated in this category in 2018 for “I, Tonya.”

The closest competitors who are in real-life roles are Bening and Carey Mulligan. Bening stars in “Nyad,” which tells the story of how athlete Diana Nyad swam from Cuba to Florida at the age of 60. Mulligan, meanwhile, is Leonard Bernstein‘s wife Felicia Montealegre in Bradley Cooper‘s biopic “Maestro.” Mulligan has never won an Oscar but she has been nominated twice for Best Actress — in 2010 for “An Education” and in 2021 for “Promising Young Woman.” Bening is a perennial Oscars bridesmaid. She’s had four nominations overall, including three Best Actress bids — in 2000 for “American Beauty,” in 2005 for “Being Julia,” and in 2011 for “The Kids Are All Right.” She was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1991 for “The Grifters.”

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