Oscars Best Actor breakdown: Why Timothée Chalamet has closed the gap on Adrien Brody
Originally published Feb. 9, 2025 at 10 a.m.; updated Feb. 24, 2025 at 11 a.m. following the SAG Awards.
Since the nominations were announced on Jan. 23, the Oscar Best Actor race had narrowed into a two-man battle between a pair of two-time nominees: Adrien Brody of The Brutalist (who won his first time out) and Timothée Chalamet of A Complete Unknown (who didn't). It would be a significant upset if either of these actors didn't cart off the trophy. But shockers happen, as Brody himself knows all too well. If that happens, three other nominees are hoping to pounce: Ralph Fiennes for Conclave, Colman Domingo for Sing Sing, and Sebastian Stan for The Apprentice.
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Let's analyze the Best Actor contest in greater depth.
The Frontrunner: Adrien Brody
Before diving into Brody's Brutalist bona fides, let's climb into the way-back machine to look at the actor's upset win in the category in 2003 for The Pianist. How big a shocker was it? Huge. While Brody had been nominated for a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, and a SAG Award, it was no less than Daniel Day-Lewis, who had been dominating awards season for Gangs of New York. Day-Lewis won BAFTA, SAG, Critics Choice, and New York Film Critics Circle honors, and his triumph at the Oscars was considered a foregone conclusion. Day-Lewis, after all, had already won in 1990 for My Left Foot — which would turn out to be his first of three — and was considered an actor's actor even then.
A distant second choice that year was three-time winner Jack Nicholson for About Schmidt. Previous Oscar winners Nicolas Cage and two-time winner Michael Caine were also nominated. Brody was a mere first-time nominee who had been blanked in the precursors and was, in most predictions, the fifth choice. When Halle Berry opened the envelope from the stage and uttered Brody's name, there was a moment of near-surreal disbelief as he became the youngest-ever Best Actor winner at 29 (breaking the record of 30-year-old Richard Dreyfuss for The Goodbye Girl in 1978).
There will be no such surprise this year if Brody claims the gold. He is, after all, at worst the co-frontrunner, a brand new experience for him. He won the Golden Globe, Critics Choice Award, and BAFTA Awards, and was the first choice of the New York Film Critics Circle. Only his surprise lost to Chalamet at the SAG Awards prevented Brody from running the table as the star of a 10-time nominee in The Brutalist, a film in which he's featured in practically every frame. He won for one Holocaust drama 22 years ago and is looking to make it two for two. As Globes host Nikki Glaser quipped, "Hey, it's two-time Holocaust survivor Adrien Brody." Indeed.
Brody also has some intangibles going for him. In The Brutalist, he plays a Hungarian architect who immigrates to the United States after being imprisoned in a death camp during World War II. Immigration is a divisive issue in the United States, pushed by a president who is not beloved by the industry. This could help sway Motion Picture Academy members who side with immigrants, including a not-insignificant international contingent. And if there's an unlikely Brutalist sweep, Brody could be carried along in that wave.
Brody also can lean into a comeback narrative, which can be irresistible for voters. Between his Oscar bids are two decades of mostly modest character roles, and colorful though they often were (Midnight in Paris, The Grand Budapest Hotel), they are hardly the stuff that befits A-list talent. Brody seemed to acknowledge this in his Golden Globe acceptance speech in January: "There was a time not too long ago that I felt this may never be a moment afforded to me again, so thank you."
But there are some potential speed bumps. Voters might remember how he aggressively kissed Berry onstage while accepting his Oscar two decades back, which might not endear him to Academy members in the post-#MeToo era. There might also been some backlash after the editor of The Brutalist revealed that Brody and costar Felicity Jones's Hungarian-language performance was enhanced using AI. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, veteran Emmy-winning producer Stan Brooks called it a non-controversy, reasoning, "We have been doing this exact same thing in editing suites, sound edit rooms, and mixing stages for as long as I can remember."
Brody's director, Brady Corbet, has also suggested this is a non-issue. “The idea that this diminishes their performance in any way is quite silly — because that’s like saying that using a body double or a stunt double in a wide shot diminishes an actor’s performance because they didn’t actually do the stunt. They still had to do all the work, and [the AI] was only ever used with the Hungarian voice-over. Specifically, there is zero dialogue in English where we use the technology, period,” the filmmaker said to Variety.
Nipping at Brody's Heels: Timothée Chalamet
Chalamet is 29, the same age as Brody when he won his Oscar for The Pianist. Should Chalamet win, he would dethrone Brody as the youngest-ever Best Actor victor by a matter of months. Chalamet also has momentum, with A Complete Unknown's candidacy peaking at precisely the right time, capped by his upset victory at the SAG Awards. While he has chased Brody's tail all awards season long, the SAG win for Best Actor is significant and keeps that Oscar category in play.
Chalamet has closed the gap for several reasons. First, the Academy has a soft spot for actors who portray real-life legendary musicians and singers. Over the past 20 years, three of them have won statuettes: Jamie Foxx for playing Ray Charles in Ray (2005), Rami Malek for playing Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody (2019), and Renée Zellweger for portraying Judy Garland in Judy (2020). Of course, they often lose as well: see Austin Butler's defeat for his portrayal of Elvis Presley in Elvis (2023) and Bradley Cooper's last year as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro. Taron Egerton wasn't even nominated for his portrayal of Elton John in Rocketman (2020).
Chalamet's Bob Dylan biopic is the first film in Academy Awards history to have three actors Oscar-nominated for playing musicians, with Edward Norton as Pete Seeger and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez. Chalamet lost the Globe for drama actor to Brody and failed to win at the Critics Choice Awards or at BAFTA. But it's now very much in the realm of possibility that the flawless campaign run on Chalamet's behalf by Searchlight Pictures will wind up paying off big on March 2.
Searchlight sponsored a Chalamet lookalike contest in New York in October that went viral. The studio had him hosting SNL on Jan. 25 and, in a canny bit of marketing, also served as the night's musical guest as the second coming of Dylan. While he may be under 30, the actor is the furthest thing from a complete unknown, Oscar-nominated once previously for Call Me by Your Name in 2018 and earning awards attention for Beautiful Boy and Wonka. He's a certified superstar in the making and is also endearing to younger audiences in a way that Brody is not.
The Underdogs: Ralph Fiennes, Colman Domingo, Sebastian Stan
No one in this category has a more distinguished acting pedigree than Fiennes. He starred in a pair of Best Picture winners (The English Patient and Schindler's List) that took home 16 Oscars between them. That's not to mention four-time nominee Quiz Show and all those Harry Potter movies. He's been nominated for Academy Awards twice before himself — in supporting for Schindler's in '94 and lead for English Patient in '97. (The latter won nine, but Fiennes wasn't one of them.) Fiennes won a BAFTA for Schindler's, his only major triumph — three decades ago.
The British-born performer is hardly a category slouch after bids from the Golden Globes, Critics Choice, SAG, and BAFTA. His film, Conclave, is, by anyone's measure, a significant contender. However, his role isn't as outwardly showy as Brody or Chalamet's, and Fiennes isn't a prominent campaigner, preferring to let his work speak for itself. However, a significant part of Oscar-winning is Oscar campaigning.
Meanwhile, Domingo has achieved the rare feat of being nominated in a major Oscar acting category two years in a row after last year's Rustin. He's also racked up BAFTA, Critics Choice, Golden Globe, and SAG bids two years in a row. His Sing Sing nomination at SAG is his third in two years (also including one for being part of the The Color Purple cast a year ago). But he probably has a better shot at SAG than Oscar, considering his Sing Sing role is about the power of performing to heal, which is catnip for the Screen Actors Guild.
That leaves Stan. If he claimed an improbable win, it would be an upset on a par with Brody's triumph in 2003. Stan's powerful portrayal of a young Donald Trump deserved acclaim, but he has the longest odds among all the contenders in this category.
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