Oscar Blitz 2025 – Best Actress

With just over a week to go until the Oscars, the picture of who will actually win the hardware is starting to unfold. I could probably take an educated guess on the winners right now and get at least half of them correct. It’s a bit annoying, because it takes so much suspense out of the ceremony. The major reasons for this are two-fold. On the one hand, momentum and hype are very much real in this scenario. Just like a political campaign, the candidates’ actions are watched very closely, unlike the films themselves. Certain people can rise or fall out of favor, and the moment a palpable shift starts to happen, it becomes a tidal wave. Voters, be they lazy or busy, often take cues from larger bodies that have their say during Awards Season, like the Critics’ Choice, BAFTAs, or Golden Globes. Those outfits in essence set the betting lines, first with their slate of nominees, then with their eventual winners. Film Independent also falls into this group, but to a lesser extent because they don’t consider mainstream Hollywood fare.

On the other, the rest of the undercard ceremonies are determined by people who are also Academy voters. Pretty much all of the major guilds (Directors, Producers, Writers, Screen Actors) are packed to the gills with Academy members, almost like a rhombus/square comparison. Not every union member is in the Academy, but the majority of the Academy is a member of one union or another. This allows for a large degree of cross-pollination, where those in both a guild and the Academy will simply double up their votes. When the plurality of the Directors Guild picks their winner for Best Director, you have to bear in mind that most of them are likely also part of the Academy’s Directing Branch, creating an unofficial voting bloc. Those not in that branch will often still look to those results as a marching order, deferring to the collective wisdom of the experts.

The last of the top unions to weigh in this year is the Screen Actors Guild, which will hand out its awards this coming weekend. Of the four categories shared with the Oscars, three are all but locked. The outlier this year is Best Actress. Across Awards Season, there have been four major venues so far that hand out acting awards, and outside of Best Actress, the results have been near-unanimous, with the only major exception being that the Globes split between Drama and Musical/Comedy for the lead performances. This would normally mean that there’s at least the appearance of a contest for Best Actor, but this year’s winner was Sebastian Stan, not for The Apprentice, but for A Different Man. He’s nominated at the Academy for the former, but not the latter, so consider Best Actor wrapped up.

Only Best Actress offers any real intrigue. Of our five nominees, three have picked up a high-profile trophy so far, meaning it’s essentially anyone’s game. Demi Moore took home the Globe Comedy victory, as well as Critics’ Choice, while Fernanda Torres won the Globe for Drama and Mikey Madison got the BAFTA. Of the two who’ve yet to break through, they still have a fair chance. Karla Gascón had a public breakdown in the media during the campaign, so whatever momentum she had has likely gone away, but voting did open before it happened, so she might have gotten enough support, as the Academy likes “cause” and “history” winners, and just like when they gave Ariana DeBose Supporting Actress a few years ago just to have an openly queer winner, the allure of helping to crown the first openly trans winner will be enough for some. Cynthia Erivo has had the quietest campaign so far, but there are hints that SAG might fall in her favor, as the union is much more high on Wicked than the rest of the circuit, nominating the forgettable Jonathan Bailey for Supporting Actor and the entire ensemble for Best Stunt Cast… even though there were very few stunts. Do they think dancing counts as stunt work?

All I’m saying is, anything’s possible. Once SAG has their say, we’ll likely know which way the winds ultimately blew for the Academy (final Oscar voting ended two days ago), as the results link up about 70% of the time. Literally, in the previous 30 years that the SAG Awards have existed, 21 Best Actress winners went on to win the Oscar, and of the nine who didn’t, they kind of spaced out neatly to have three for every 10 years. So unless we’re going to start off the fourth SAG decade with a statistically unlikely loss, I think it’ll be safe to say that Sunday’s victor will hear her name called again a week later.

This year’s nominees for Best Actress are…

Cynthia Erivo – Wicked Part One

I’ve already discussed the potential odds of victory in the preamble, but what really matters for our purposes here is the quality of the actual performances. When it comes to Erivo, she was honestly my second-favorite of the entire cast (the first being Marissa Bode as Nessarose). I didn’t think too highly of many in the ensemble, including actors who I absolutely love like Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum. Most of them did fine, but they either underwhelmed or simply didn’t stand out. This is by design, because the main pairing of the film – Elphaba and Galinda – were meant to command attention at all times.

I’ll get to Ariana Grande next week, but as for Erivo, I think she pulled it off rather admirably. I like her demeanor, her sarcastic “over it” dismissal of anyone who’d unfairly judge her, and the genuine kindness she displays, even when most normal people wouldn’t. Part of that is the story itself, as we’re meant to see Elphaba as this overly good person and not an evil witch, but Erivo makes it convincing. Even the idiotic way she crushes on Fiyero feels oddly earnest coming from her.

When the film first started, I remember thinking, Hoo boy, this is gonna be rough when Glinda was introduced and the first number played out. It got even worse when we had the CGI nursemaid bear. But when Elphaba finally got to Shiz, and we got past all the awkwardness of her first meeting with Galinda, we were treated to the first truly great musical performance of the film, “The Wizard and I.” It was heartfelt, dramatic, and most importantly, I actually got the impression that Erivo was singing on set. “No One Mourns the Wicked” felt completely staged (in a bad way), and Grande was clearly lip syncing (you can tell because her jaw never separates despite the change in notes or vocal dynamic). But here? Here I believed I was watching a musical at last, rather than a feature length music video.

This will come up again next week, but the other major point in Erivo’s favor is that there’s a moment where you can tell that she’s making this role her own. When Elphaba and Glinda arrive in Emerald City, we get the “One Short Day” number, featuring a cameo appearance from the original Broadway players, Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel. They accompany the new lead pair, and invite them to participate in the song. This is what separates Erivo and Grande as actresses and nominees. I said in the review that I haven’t seen the stage show (though the movie was good enough that I want to now), but I have seen clips online featuring the original cast. Just from those alone, you can tell that Grande is doing an impression of Chenoweth, while Erivo makes no such attempt to replicate Menzel. When they’re on screen together, you can see Grande doing her best to match Chenoweth’s energy, having made the choice to just do what America’s Pixie once did. Erivo, on the other hand, even in this brief scene, you can tell she’s trying to be her own Elphaba. She doesn’t try to sing like Menzel, or move like Menzel. She’s putting her own spin on things, her own interpretation, and she knows it’s a fool’s errand to try to mimic one of the greatest of all time.

Again, I’m not nearly as impressed with Wicked as some others, including SAG. But if there was one performance that was truly worthy of a nomination, it’s Erivo.

Karla Sofía Gascón – Emilia Pérez

It’s impossible to discuss Gascón’s nomination without bringing up her recent controversies, which have likely doomed any chance she has of winning. If you’re blissfully unaware, shortly after nominations came out, journalists uncovered a series of hateful, bigoted social media posts, particularly directed at Muslims and those who supported justice for George Floyd after his murder. She has since deleted her Twitter account, but the damage had already been done, as director Jacques Audiard and others quickly scrambled to distance themselves from her. Aww, now Jacques doesn’t have his one trans friend.

It’s a very sad state of affairs, but let’s be clear, she didn’t deserve to win anyway. She was nominated for the history her potential victory would make, but the performance itself is fucking terrible. Her line readings are unnecessarily overdramatic, she emotes far too much in mundane situations, and her vocal affectations are slapdash at best. When she’s still in “Manitas” form, all she does is grumble through her dialogue, as if trying to do an impression of a gruff, intimidating voice, but only managing a caricature in the form of a low belch.

This performance is horrible because of who Gascón is. Oh I don’t mean that she’s trans, I mean that she’s a telenovela actress. When you have that knowledge in mind, everything she does suddenly makes sense. She’s playing the role like she’s on a Latin soap opera, not a serious film. The melodramatics, the mood swings at the drop of a hat, the cheesy villain moments, it all adds up. No one in their right mind would reward this with an Oscar.

Then, of course, there’s the two-letter elephant in the room, AI. Like The Brutalist, the post-production team employed generative AI to “enhance” Gascón’s singing voice, as she couldn’t hit the high notes. That’s honestly kind of amazing, because it’s not like she could hit the middle or lower range, either. Her singing was god-awful across the board, infusing every lyric with this raspy, three-pack-a-day timbre that made it sound like she was going to hack up a lung with each successive number. So, this was the improved version? Seriously? What did she sound like on set or in the recording booth? The closest thing I can think of is Tracy Chapman getting her vocal cords scraped with a weedwhacker. This is somehow the best iteration we could get? Gee, it’s almost as if making this whole thing a musical was a bad idea or something. If your star can’t sing, what the hell are we even doing?!

The hype around Gascón reminded me very strongly of Audrey Middleton, who was the first transgender contestant on the U.S. version of Big Brother, back in 2015. A lot was made about her being on the show, and she was considered an early favorite just for the novelty. The show did her no favors, mostly using her as a prop for early marketing, and a sneaky and cringe bit (even for 10 years ago) where on the first night all the dudes did thirsty Diary Room commentary about the women, before Audrey revealed that she was trans. It was in poor taste, and it instantly made you wonder if she was cast solely for this moment, where a convincing-looking trans woman could make all the cishet males horny for the sake of a backdoor gay joke via the edit.

Anyway, despite having early support from the whole house for her “bravery,” she quickly overplayed her hand, needlessly lying about the other contestants non-stop, to the point that she couldn’t keep her stories straight when subjected to even the most basic scrutiny. Before long she went from golden child to persona non grata, and as her star fell, she became more emotional and increasingly unstable, and spent her final week in the house basically just lumbering around in a blanket or crying in the Diary Room. She was evicted fourth, an elimination almost entirely of her own making, and at that point allies to the LGBT community wondered if she was cast solely so they could depict trans people as mentally disturbed.

Gascón feels the same way to me. She was nominated on demographic significance, not because of any particular skill in the role. Then it went to her head, and it turned out that she wasn’t this perfect, gracious person, and she essentially torpedoed her own candidacy. She refused to drop out of the race, but when you respond to criticism the way she has, allowing for no self-reflection or humility, it only exacerbates the problem, making you a public spectacle. To quote Gascón herself, “Being LGBT doesn’t make you less of an idiot.”

Mikey Madison – Anora

As I’ve mentioned before, Sean Baker likes to make movies about sympathetic sex workers. However, with Anora, he finally created a fully-formed, layered character, and Mikey Madison breathed life into her perfectly. As Ani, Madison is fully aware of the transactional nature of her job, particularly the use of her body, and she’s almost mercenary in her execution. You see this the first time she has sex with Vanya. The physical act is over in a matter of seconds, because she knows what she’s doing. She takes far longer to seduce the young man than to actually fornicate, because she gets paid either way. No need to prolong things any more than necessary. This is also where we get our first insights into how Ani lets herself believe that this tryst might be genuine, offering Vanya a post-coital second go on repeat visits because he paid for an hour, and eventually “training” him to perform in a way that satisfies her. She’s still primarily doing this for the money, but you can see her attitude change to make sure that she enjoys herself in the process. What’s that old line about never working a day in your life if you love what you do?

When midnight strikes thematically, and the fantasy starts rapidly crumbling, you see the extent of Madison’s range. She can be equal parts loud, aggressive, funny, dramatic, coy, seductive, and warm, and it never once feels tacked on. You see a young woman who’s been hardened by life and the hand that it’s dealt her. She’s definitely made the most of it, but you can also see how devastated she is that her one big chance at a better lot was all an illusion, and how angry she is at herself for letting her guard down and trusting in it. She’s spent her entire adult life operating and exchanging only that which is tangible, and the one time she allows herself to be swept up in a fantasy, it nearly destroys her.

You feel this almost viscerally through Madison’s performance. The way she moves, the way she delivers her lines, you feel like this is a real person who’s just had the world’s biggest rug pulled out from under her, but she’s not going down without a fight. This is her shot, in all probability the only opportunity she’ll have for any sort of social mobility or comfort in life, and she’s not about to let it go because her erstwhile husband is a wuss or his parents are oligarch monsters. She might roll over in bed if it suits her business and pleasure needs, but she won’t roll over and accept being robbed of everything through no fault of her own. It’s what makes the ending realization that she’ll never do better all the more heartbreaking, because like millions of others in the working class, hope is in short supply, and to lose it is worse than never having it at all.

Demi Moore – The Substance

Holy jumping fucking Jesus, what a performance! A lot has been made about this being Demi Moore’s comeback, overcoming years of thankless roles to finally get something that gives her a chance to shine, sort of like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, or Michael Keaton in Birdman. People act like this is a once-in-a-lifetime role to recontextualize her entire career. I can respect the sentiment, because it seems to be well-intentioned, but it misses the point entirely. Moore was always this good. Yeah, she had some shit roles like Striptease, but her talent was never overlooked. This is only a “comeback” in the most literal sense, as she’s returning to acting after a self-imposed state of semi-retirement to raise her kids. She wasn’t forced out of the industry, she left of her own volition, and I’m overjoyed that she’s back to doing what she’s always done. This is her first Oscar nomination, but you could easily make cases for her work in Bobby, Ghost, and A Few Good Men.

All that said, this will be in the argument for the finest performance of her career, just like Robert Downey Jr.’s winning turn in Oppenheimer. The way she plays Elisabeth Sparkle is something rarely seen, a performance where we can project the actor onto the character, so that, in keeping with my main judging criteria for these categories, we see both.

While Moore was never truly exiled from Hollywood for aging, we can certainly believe that she would be. This is because her lesser roles focused on her sex appeal. Even her better turns included it to a degree. She was definitely seen as a sex symbol, so it’s a reasonable conclusion that, just like Elisabeth, she could have been cast aside for losing that aspect of her persona. Her marriage to Ashton Kutcher probably didn’t help matters, as their age difference was treated with the same double standard that any relationship between an older woman and a younger man would be.

But that’s why Moore is so sneakily brilliant here. She’s banking on that misconception to color your initial impressions of her. She wants you to think that she’s going to act like a victim the entire way, and to be clear, what happens to Elisabeth is emotionally devastating to her. She’s addicted to attention and praise, the adoration of the crowd, which is why she’s so easily convinced to take a drug to help her regain that public love. However, she also uses that sympathy to lull the viewer into a false sense of security. She’s not some helpless faded belle. She’s an aggressive survivor, fighting to keep what she’s earned. When “Sue” starts abusing the spinal taps to stay active longer, causing Elisabeth to age rapidly and become more and more decrepit, Elisabeth fights back just as much to prevent the interloper from stealing her hard-earned lifestyle as she does out of pure revenge and preservation instinct. She takes the titular Substance to maintain what she’s built over her career and prevent herself from being discarded. She’s not about to let a clone born from her own back fat undo all that hard work any more than she’ll let misogynistic creeps like Dennis Quaid.

It’s such a rich balance that Moore is able to strike between drive and despair. Yes, vanity plays a huge part in her motivations, but it’s so much more than that. It’s about setting the terms of your own obsolescence. One of the big tragedies of the modern world is in how easy and unceremoniously millions of dedicated people are laid off or replaced in their work. They’ve given everything to their job, because the deal was that if you put in the hours, you could live comfortably, have your financial needs met, and then retire and live off the fruits of your labor. Instead, millions get downsized because some rich asshole wants more money they haven’t earned, or some shareholders want a bigger stock dividend, or some algorithm says it’s cheaper and more efficient to use machines. Those people have to start all over, and many never recover.

That’s what Elisabeth is doing here. She’s established as a smart, savvy woman. She’s not delusional enough about her future to think that she can be a star forever, at least not in the form she was in the 80s and 90s. But she does know that she has more to offer, that there’s more work to be done, and it shouldn’t be up to a Harvey Weinstein stand-in to decide she no longer has value just because she turned 50. She’s fighting back the only way she knows how, and where her fear really comes in is when she realizes what Sue has done, meaning she also has to fight herself.

That’s some really cerebral stuff for a horror comedy, but Moore pulls it off remarkably. Then, just for good measure, she does some amazing physical acting inside the various body suits. The makeup job done on her creates some serious mobility obstacles, but never once does Moore lose her gracefulness. It’s simply translated and morphed into whatever form she has to take in a given scene. We’ve seen award-winning performances that require operating in prosthetics before (Brendan Fraser in The Whale and Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour chief among them in recent years), but this is the rare one where we see the actor working inside and outside of the suit, showing off their talent without the accessories, so that we know it’s not just the physical transformation. Moore was given some extremely difficult things to do here, and she absolutely nailed it.

Fernanda Torres – I’m Still Here

There’s not much I can say about this performance that I haven’t already gone over, so I can keep this entry relatively brief. Suffice to say, Fernanda Torres is the reason why I’m Still Here is as good as it is. In fact, apart from a handful of scenes, she’s the only reason the movie is even memorable.

There are many ways that a character can show strength. Sometimes it’s through overt action, proving physical superiority through sports or combat. Sometimes it’s through powerful words delivered with gusto, asserting one’s value and determination. Sometimes it’s quiet resolve, suffering in relative silence and enduring through trying circumstances.

As Eunice Paiva, Torres demonstrates a different kind of strength, defiance through existence. Living up to the film’s title, Eunice overcomes her tyrannical government by simply carrying on. She goes through the horrific trauma of losing her husband to Brazil’s dictatorship, as well as her own round of torture and interrogation, along with her teenage daughter. But once that’s over, she survives and triumphs through the stalwart act of living a normal life.

She’s very matter-of-fact as she gathers information on her husband’s disappearance, going through the official channels to get the state to admit to killing him as a political dissident. She doesn’t operate in the shadows or do anything clandestine – at least not any more than she was already doing through family friends and underground contacts before her arrest. She acts openly, knowing she’s being monitored, as if to remind them that they haven’t gotten rid of her or frightened her into submission. In fact, she only breaks decorum when the bastards run over the family dog, as any normal person would do. Even when she’s given friendly press exposure, she refuses to be a tool. Photographers want her and the Paiva family to look sad for an article that’s being written about them, but she calmly has the kids smile like any other family portrait. To even frown for the cameras is to admit that the military dictatorship has won, and she’s not going to give them that satisfaction. They’ve taken so much from her, but her rebellion is to continually demonstrate that she’s the same person she always was, the same loving wife and mother, the same badass matriarch who will live on well after they’ve fallen out of power.

She doesn’t have to lift a weapon or raise her voice to prove her strength. Eunice Paiva shows it by remaining Eunice Paiva, and Torres effectively demonstrates that determination. In a film that is very straightforward in its storytelling, she’s the standout, not because she won’t be ignored, but because she won’t allow herself to disappear.

***

I think it’s pretty clear where my head’s at with this one. It’s technically still wide open – at least until Sunday – but for practical purposes this is a three-horse race, and for me, it’s down to two. There’s a clear separation from the top pair, to third and fourth place, and to the rock bottom. When it all comes down to it, this is a contest of youthful exuberance against the wisdom of experience, and in this case, I opt for the tried and true.

My Rankings:
1) Demi Moore
2) Mikey Madison
3) Cynthia Erivo
4) Fernanda Torres
5) Karla Sofía Gascón

Who do you think should win? Vote now in the poll below!

Up next, we wrap up Week 4 with the final random category to get the video treatment. Thankfully, it’s one of my absolute favorites, and for once the field is highly competitive. It’s Animated Feature!

Join the conversation in the comments below! What are the best performances by actresses that you’ve seen? Do you believe in “history” Oscars? No seriously, how bad was Gascón’s voice before the AI? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, and subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!