4 Oscar champs we predict will contend again this year … and who could win

Jacob Sarkisian
·6 min read
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Of the 20 acting nominees from the last Academy Awards, only one of them was a previous Oscar winner. That was Cate Blanchett, who was nominated earlier as Best Actress for “Tár” (she won Best Supporting Actress in 2005 for “The Aviator” and Best Actress in 2014 for “Blue Jasmine”). That’s a bit of an irregularity.

In 2022, six of the 20 nominees were previous Oscar winners.  The year before that, five out of the 20 nominees were previous Oscar winners and, in 2020, nine out of 20 were past Oscar winners. So that one out of 20 last year is peculiar.

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But, how about this year? Will the stats return to normal or does last year’s figure indicate a changing shift in the academy nominating more newcomers? We’ve combed through all four of our Oscar acting charts to see how many of our predicted nominees are past winners. The final count is four and, rather neatly, there is one past Oscar winner in each of our predicted lineups for the four acting categories. Here’s the rundown:

Best Actress
Our predicted lineup here is Fantasia Barrino (“The Color Purple”), Greta Lee (“Past Lives”), Sandra Hüller (“Anatomy of a Fall”), Natalie Portman (“May December”), and Margot Robbie (“Barbie”). The first three of those names are all looking for their first Oscar nominations while Robbie is a two-time nominee who has never won. Portman is the past Oscar winner here, having won Best Actress in 2011 for her role in “Black Swan.” This time, she is starring in Todd Haynes‘ drama “May December,” which follows a married couple facing new pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film based on their scandalous past. Portman will play the actress who has been hired to play Julianne Moore‘s character (more on her later). Portman was last nominated in 2017 for Best Actress for “Jackie,” while she was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for “Closer” in 2005. This would be her third Best Actress nomination, her second win in that category, and fourth bid overall. However, we think the nomination will be all Portman gets this time out. Barrino is predicted to win here.

Best Actor
Leonardo DiCaprio (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer”), Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”), Colman Domingo (“Rustin”), and Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”). That’s who we think will be nominated for Best Actor. Giamatti and Cooper are past nominees who haven’t won while Domingo and Murphy are looking for their first bids. DiCaprio, meanwhile, won Best Actor in 2016 for “The Revenant.” He’s also been nominated in this category four other times: in 2005 for “The Aviator,” in 2007 for “Blood Diamond,” in 2014 for “The Wolf of Wall Street,” and in 2020 for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” He’s also been nominated for Best Supporting Actor (in 1994 for “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”) and Best Picture (in 2014 for “The Wolf of Wall Street”). Three of his total seven nominations have come for his work with Martin Scorsese, who he teams up with for “Killers of the Flower Moon.” In this movie, DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, who was involved in the real-life murders of several Osage tribe members in 1920 USA. DiCaprio has great odds here. He’s neck and neck with Murphy for the top spot and we think he has a great chance of landing Best Actor statuette number two.

Best Supporting Actress
We return to Haynes’ “May December” here with Moore, who we think will be nominated alongside Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Taraji P. Henson and Danielle Brooks (both “The Color Purple”), and Emily Blunt (“Oppenheimer”). Henson is a past nominee who hasn’t won; Blunt, Brooks and Gladstone are searching for their first bids. Moore previously won Best Actress in 2015 for Wash Westmoreland‘s “Still Alice.” She was also nominated for the same category in 2000 for “The End of the Affair” and in 2003 for “Far From Heaven,” another Haynes film. Moore also has two Best Supporting Actress nominations to her name — one for “Boogie Nights” (in 1998) and one for “The Hours” (in 2003). Moore is looking for her third Supporting Actress bid and sixth nomination overall. In “May December,” she plays Gracie Atherton-Yoo, an infamous woman who had a sexual relationship with a 12-year-old boy. 20 years later, when the film is set, she is married to that boy (now a man, played by Charles Melton) and has a family with him. Her role is sure to be a meaty one with such a controversial center to the role. However, it remains to be seen if she will officially be campaigned in supporting (reports are that she could easily be seen as a Best Actress contender alongside Portman). Currently, we think that Gladstone will win this category.

Best Supporting Actor
We are predicting that Robert De Niro (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Ryan Gosling (“Barbie”), Robert Downey Jr. (“Oppenheimer”), John Magaro (“Past Lives”), and Domingo (“The Color Purple”) will be nominated for this category. Domingo and Magaro would be first-time nominees while Gosling and Downey Jr. both have two nominations (but no wins) to their names. De Niro is the only past Oscar winner here, meaning that the four past Oscar winners we are discussing here come from just two films, with the men paired in “Killers of the Flower Moon” and the women paired in “May December.” De Niro will play William “King” Hale, who was one of the orchestrators of the murders of the Osage tribe. It looks like this will be a darker, more villainous role for De Niro, who is a two-time Oscar winner. He won Best Supporting Actor in 1975 for “The Godfather Part II” and then won Best Actor in 1981 for “Raging Bull,” another Scorsese flick. He also has four more Best Actor bids to his name: “Taxi Driver” in 1977, “The Deer Hunter” in 1979, “Awakenings” in 1991, and “Cape Fear” in 1992. He also earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination in 2013 for “Silver Linings Playbook” and a Best Picture bid in 2020 for “The Irishman.” We think De Niro has a great chance of making it Oscar win number three here. In fact, we are predicting that he will win.

So, there are our four past Oscar winners. We think that two of them will turn their expected bids into wins: DiCaprio and De Niro. The last time two out of four acting champions were past winners was in 2021 when Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”) and Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”) won. Let’s see if that will happen again this year.

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