- BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
If Best Actress is the year's bloodbath, Best Supporting Actress is a much softer battlefield. Solid contenders, but there's no sense of "anyone can make it". Before Colman placement in the leading category, the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress was hers to take... Now, it is anyone's game. From the respected Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk) to breakthrough performer Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie (Leave No Trace), this field offers diversity and actresses at the various states of their careers. A note about Nicole Kidman, who is said to deliver an Oscar-worthy performance in Boy Erased - I believe she is more likely to get the Oscar nomination in the Best Actress category for Destroyer, given the kind of rave reviews she got and how transformative her performance is, but if AMPAS members consider they don't have room for her when they can recognize Kidman in Supporting Actress, her presence in this category's nominees shortlist is also possible.
Let me present you my predictions:
1. Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
From a well-known movie actress that never found her award-breaking role to a huge TV star, Regina King has finally found the role that will get her the Oscar recognition she deserves. In Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk, the acting gold doesn't lie in the movie's leads but in the supporting cast, specially in King. She's said to be phenomenal as a resourceful mom from Harlem who goes after the truth so her daughter can reunite again with the man she loves. Critics loved her performance and Oscar prediction folks have been talking about her award chances since the movie was announced... and with Olivia Colman (The Favourite) going lead, there's no clear frontrunner in this field. Right now, King is the big deal... let's wait and see how the movie will perform and how the producers will campaign it.
2. Claire Foy, First Man
In the acting department, Claire Foy might well deliver the most shiny performance of Damien Chazelle's First Man. She's so great in it! A suffering wife, a woman who puts her grief aside so her family can have a future, a woman desperate not to lose her husband. Foy excels and she's elevated when she's alongside Gosling. After some widespread recognition for her role as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown TV series, Foy was taken in consideration as a potential Best Supporting Actress contender in early 2017's Oscar race, but any sort of award recognition never happened. With First Man, I smell things will be a bit different... The movie is good enough to be a major Oscar player (in spite of below expectations box-office numbers) and if the studio campaigns for her, she might even win! Best Supporting Actress is such an open race and Foy is amazing in a traditional kind of role the AMPAS members love - the beautiful suffering wife!
3. Emma Stone, The Favourite
A clear category fraud: Emma Stone goes supporting for The Favourite while Olivia Colman goes leading... According to critics, she's not as good as Colman, but she has the most complex character arc and most screen time, which means a lot when it comes to seduce the Oscar voters. A miserable girl who looks to get employed at the queen's court, Stone's Abigail goes from clumsy to a big game player. The actress is still fresh from her Oscar win for 2016's La La Land and she delivered the best performance of her career so far in 2017's Battle of the Sexes, so I believe there are plenty of Academy members who are still in love for her. She's proving a versatile actress and she's building an interesting career since 2010's Easy A... She's one of the biggest movie stars of the 2010's and the AMPAS often embraces their biggest stars.
4. Rachel Weisz, The Favourite
She has done incredible work in the last 7 years (The Whistleblower, Deep Blue Sea, The Lobster, The Light Between Oceans, Denial and My Cousin Rachel, to name the best), but she excels as an actress in 2018 in Disobedience and, specially, in the Oscar-buzzy The Favourite. In Lanthimos latest, she plays Lady Sarah Churchill, Queen Anne's favorite lady in waiting and a viper in human form... and she nails the role. She might deliver the least showy acting turn of the three The Favourite ladies, but it can be a trickier role that only a matured and gifted actress like Weisz would be able to pull off successfully. Of course, complexity doesn't means direct Oscar love and Stone is ahead of Weisz in the Oscar race, but given the love and awards buzz around the whole movie, I believe both Weisz and Stone will get nominated. Finally, Weisz might get her overdue 2nd Oscar nomination after the her first nod (and win) for 2005's The Constant Gardener! The rave reviews she got for Disobedience won't hurt, for sure.
5. Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, Leave No Trace
She plays a girl who lives in the woods with her dad until they're forced to have a regular life next to the rest of society... and it's a phenomenal breakthrough performance! Critics often compare her acting turn to Jennifer Lawrence's in Winter's Bone (another Debra Granik movie), but McKenzie doesn't have that kind of superstar charisma Lawrence always featured - McKenzie has a kind of a humble effortless grace and she seems destined to be a major character actress, not a regular celebrity-actress. She's such a refreshing presence on-screen and she has the acting chops some older actresses would kill to have. A huge promise and I believe she can surprise during awards season. Or... will she go leading? I don't think so: this way, she can avoid direct competition from Elsie Fisher (Eight Grade) and Amandla Stenberg (The Hate U Give)... No matter what, it is a award-worthy performance and I'm willing to close my eyes when I see "category fraud" and "McKenzie" in the same sentence.
6. Nicole Kidman, Boy Erased - Critics say she and Lucas Hedges are the movie's highlights and while her performance as a mother who can't deny her inconditional love for her gay son might sound "too safe" coming from an actress like Kidman, truth is the AMPAS seems to only recognize Kidman when she's playing safe. With another Oscary performance this year - a never-seen-before kind of performance in Destroyer, in the Best Actress category - it seems hard to predict which one Oscar voters will pick. In my opinion, 2 nominations in the same year sound unlikely to happen to me (too many huge contenders to "waste" 2 nods in Kidman)... she might not even being nominated because of vote spliting! No matter what, it's a great year for the actress who seems to be living another golden years in her career!
7. Sissy Spacek, The Old Man and the Gun - It has been a while since the AMPAS welcomed her at the Dolby Theatre as an Oscar nominee, but she might have a chance at a nod this year thanks to The Old Man and the Gun. She plays a graceful old lady who falls for the charms of Robert Redford's character and develops an emotional relationship with him. Critics loved her performance and the movie is doing quite well at the box-office - a quite limited release that has been expanding successfully. Maybe The Old Man and the Gun is a stronger contender than most people have been predicting!
8. Michelle Yeoh, Crazy Rich Asians - An asian legend who reached international success thanks to Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), she got another (unexpected) international success with Crazy Rich Asians. Her character, Eleanor Young, is the controlling mother of the leading male who starts a war with her son's girlfriend - sounds cheesy, but Yeoh is quite terrific in the part. It's a scene-stealing performance and both critics and audiences loved her. Awards recognition won't be easy to get, but considering the movie's massive success Oscar voters might want to honour it somewhere... and Yeoh deserves that kind of career crowning nomination.
9. Amy Adams, Vice - Everything's so secretive about this movie that I only keep predicting Adams because I really don't know how good is her role, how good is she or how much screen time she has... The movie trailer focused mainly in Bale and Rockwell, but it seems Adams has a few (very) good lines in the movie. Currently, she owns the title of "the eternal nominee" and the Academy used to nominate her for every good performance she delivered... then she started getting snubed after 2013's American Hustle (ignored for her performances in 2014's Big Eyes and 2016's Arrival). Are the AMPAS members waiting for a performance for which she can actually win?
10. Elizabeth Debicki, Widows - She was great in The Great Gatsby... now she has another role that might give her more visibility. Film festival reviews say she has the second best second after Viola Davis' and it seems she excels as a young widow who's thinking about prostitution in order to support herself. She has a good character arc and she's so talented! Experts are predicting Widows to be a box-office success - will the AMPAS pay attention to her? All eyes will be on Viola!
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