Oscars predictions: Will Best Actor be filled with first-time nominees for second year in a row?

The 1935 Best Actor lineup at the Academy Awards featured three Oscar newcomers in the forms of Clark Gable (“It Happened One Night,”), Frank Morgan (“The Affair of Cellini”), and William Powell (“The Thin Man”), with Gable winning. Then came an 88-year gap. It wasn’t until earlier this year that voters nominated another lineup in this category made entirely out of first-time nominees. That list consisted of winner Brendan Fraser (“The Whale”) plus Austin Butler (“Elvis”), Paul Mescal (“Aftersun”), Bill Nighy (“Living”), and Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of Inisherin”).

Could history repeat itself quick time, like two delayed London buses arriving at the same time for passengers waiting in the sodden rain of Blighty? According to our Oscars odds chart for Best Actor, Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer”) Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”), Leonardo DiCaprio (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”), and Jeffrey Wright (“American Fiction”) are set to be nominated. Of those names, only Murphy and Wright have never been nominated for an Oscar before. Here’s the breakdown.

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Cooper has nine Oscar nominations to his name but no win. He has received three Best Actor bids — in 2013 for “Silver Linings Playbook,” in 2015 for “American Sniper,” and in 2019 for “A Star is Born.” He’s had four Best Picture bids — for “American Sniper” in 2015, “A Star is Born” in 2019, “Joker” in 2020, and “Nightmare Alley” in 2022. He’s also been nominated for Best Supporting Actor (for “American Hustle” in 2014) and Best Adapted Screenplay (shared with Eric Roth and Will Fetters in 2019 for “A Star is Born”).

DiCaprio won Best Actor in 2016 for “The Revenant” while he has a further six other Oscar nominations to his name: Best Actor in 2005 for “The Aviator,” 2007 for “Blood Diamond,” 2014 for “The Wolf of Wall Street,” and 2020 for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood;” Best Picture for “The Wolf of Wall Street;” and Best Supporting Actor in 1994 for “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” And Giamatti has been nominated for Best Supporting Actor — that came in 2006 for “Cinderella Man.”

There are other newbie names, however, in the mix for a Best Actor nomination this year. Colman Domingo portrays Bayard Rustin in “Rustin.” That would be a classic Best Actor nomination — Rustin plays a real-life character, an iconic figure, in a biopic. Butler did that last year when he was nominated for playing Elvis Presley in “Elvis,” while Rami Malek won in 2019 for playing Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and Gary Oldman won for playing Winston Churchill in 2018 for “Darkest Hour.” This would be Ben-Adir’s first nomination.

Meanwhile, Teo Yoo stars in “Past Lives,” a film that we think will land bids for Best Picture, Best Director for Celine Song, and Best Original Screenplay. We think the academy will love “Past Lives” so Yoo could get taken along for the ride here in the same way that Ryan Gosling did when he was nominated for “La La Land” (Gosling was excellent in that film but the focus was all on Emma Stone‘s performance and Damien Chazelle‘s filmmaking). This would be Yoo’s first Oscar bid.

And Andrew Scott stars in “All of Us Strangers,” another hot contender that could be in the mix for this category. The film follows Scott as a fictional character in a moving, stirring performance wherein he adds real vulnerability to his natural charisma. If this nomination were to play out, it would feel similar to Mescal’s bid earlier this year.

There is good news for some of these names, too, as a few of them found their way into the Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes nominations lineups. The Critics Choice Awards nominated Cooper, DiCaprio, Murphy, Giamatti, Domingo, and Wright. Meanwhile, the Globes nominated Cooper, DiCaprio, Domingo, Murphy, Scott, and Barry Keoghan (“Saltburn”) for Best Drama Actor and Giamatti, Wright, Joaquin Phoenix (“Beau is Afraid”), Nicolas Cage (“Dream Scenario”), Timothée Chalamet (“Wonka”), and Matt Damon (“Air”) for Best Comedy/Musical Actor.

The fact that Scott and Domingo broke into both lineups bodes well for their Oscar chances. However, it remains unlikely that we’ll have a consecutive Best Actor lineup filled exclusively with first-time nominees. Scott, Domingo, and Yoo would have to usurp the might of Cooper, DiCaprio, and Giamatti.

However, we do think that Murphy has a great chance of winning. He’s just ahead of Cooper in our odds chart. Four of the last 10 Best Actor winners were performers who won with their first-ever nominations: Matthew McConaughey in 2014 for “Dallas Buyers Club,” Eddie Redmayne in 2015 for “The Theory of Everything,” Malek in 2019 for “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and Fraser in 2023 for “The Whale.” Murphy could join that club.

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