Annette Bening
Age: 65
Film: Nyad
Role: Diana Nyad, the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida unassisted, though some contest this achievement. Buoyed by the steadfast support of her lifelong best friend Bonnie, Diana wants women everywhere to know that their life isn’t over just because they turn sixty and the world seems done with them.
Nomination History:
Previously nominated for Best Actress in 2011 for The Kids are All Right (2010), in 2005 for Being Julia (2004), and in 2000 for American Beauty (1999).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1991 for The Grifters (1990).
Why She Should Win:
Nyad is an interesting movie about an athlete because it kind of glosses over the training it takes to pull of such a conspicuous feat of athleticism. (I suppose that makes sense. How long would we want to watch a woman swimming laps.) If I were asked to swim from Cuba to Florida, I immediately would say, “Wait! I can’t do that! I’m not in shape! I’m not a strong enough swimmer. Now I’m turning sixty?! I don’t have the stamina I used to.”
Nyad doesn’t concern itself with any of that. It stays afloat (and, in fact, is joyous to watch) based on its tight focus on two things. To a lesser extent, there’s minor ocean peril. But the big draw is the bubbly, warm charisma between lifelong friends Diana (Annette Bening) and Bonnie (Jodie Foster). Foster and Bening are wonderful to watch on screen together. Their chemistry and camaraderie is the reason for watching this movie.
Diana is not easy to be friends with, and yet it’s impossible not to love her. She’s the kind of woman who announces repeatedly that she doesn’t want a fuss made about her birthday. This is code for, “I want a big surprise party,” whether she knows it or not (but probably she does know). She’s a big person, the kind who fills the room. It doesn’t matter if she’s talking about swimming to Cuba or talking about what she had for breakfast. When she talks, she instantly commands the attention of everyone around her. And she can’t stop talking.
Watching her unsuccessful attempts, I realized very quickly, “These don’t fail because of anything she does wrong. It’s all stuff that keeps happening to her.” If she were a Herman Melville work, she’d be the early stuff—all about adventure at sea, high peril on the waves. (If she were in Moby Dick, of course, she’d be Captain Ahab, but a more fun Captain Ahab who would get that whale eventually, through sheer grit and denial of reality.)
So she’s a fun character to watch, and the movie works entirely because Bening and Jodie Foster are fun to watch together. She’s big, grand, charismatic liked someone who escaped from a Dickens novel or a Shakespeare play. It takes a lot of energy and charisma to play someone like that. As you watch, the performances do seem Oscar worthy, and it’s entirely because the characters are so big and screen-filling and loveable.
Why She Might Not Win:
Nyad is a brisk, upbeat, feel-good movie about how fulfilling life can be when you find the courage to follow your dreams. Yes, there will be adversities and setbacks, but when you believe in yourself and trust the loyal friends surrounding you, you can conquer any adversity. That doesn’t seem like the kind of movie that should be mired in controversy, yet it is. Well, less the film than the woman herself.
The World Open Water Swimming Association refused to ratify Nyad’s swim to Cuba, and subsequently, The Guiness Book of World Records removed the accomplishment. Did she swim to Florida from Cuba? Well, yes. The question is, did she make the swim unassisted. Did anyone touch her? Did she use any forbidden equipment? Why were only some parts of the swim observed and documented? So many questions (and potential irregularities) surround the achievement.
Does that hurt Bening’s chances? I don’t see why it would. She plays Diana Nyad exactly like the type of figure who would be mired in controversy. Bening’s performance reveals Diana not as a peerless model of perfection, but as a one-of-a-kind eccentric. Quite often, she comes across as a bit narcissistic and self-absorbed. It would be all too easy to believe her as an unreliable narrator. Bening’s Diana is a charming and determined person, but she’s one of those people you love in spite of her quirks, not because she has none. Honestly, for all of us who are imperfect out there, that’s the most inspiring part of the story. Most people do not dream of making an unassisted swim from Cuba to Florida, but all of us want friends. From a certain point of view, Diana’s biggest accomplishment is not making a swim unassisted, but, on the contrary, all the assistance she gets from her loyal, lifelong friend.
The bigger issue is that Nyad didn’t get a nomination for Best Picture. The whole thing feels much quieter and less significant than the other nominated actresses’ films. I watched it at home on Netflix, and it felt right at home on the couch with a weeknight dinner. This isn’t a knock on the film, but I could imagine Barbie’s Margot Robbie in this line-up in place of Annette Bening, Sandra Hüller, or Carey Mulligan, but not instead of Emma Stone or Lily Gladstone. Bening gives a captivating performance, but surely either Stone or Gladstone will be the winner.
Lily Gladstone
Age: 37
Film: Killers of the Flower Moon
Role: Mollie Burkhart, the Osage oil heiress whose white husband, Ernest, sincerely believes he loves her. That’s why he gives her medicine to treat her diabetes along with her regular injections of poison. Mollie’s life is a little like Rosemary’s Baby. Practically everyone she knows is either being murdered or part of the conspiracy to kill them off quietly. Neither railing against the injustice nor calmly accepting her fate will save her.
Nomination History:
This is Gladstone’s first nomination.
Why She Should Win:
Mollie Burkhart and her sisters live in a nightmare. Someone is slowly murdering their entire family for “headrights,” i.e. inherited oil money. Deep down, Mollie knows that her family is being murdered and that she herself is being poisoned. On some level, she probably even knows that her husband is the one poisoning her, and that her uncle (the one powerful man who has sworn to help them) is the one behind all the murders. Deep inside, she knows, but how can she face this truth? And what can she do about it? She’s trapped in a horrible situation, every day victim to not just poisoning but insidious psychological torture.
I left the theater raving about Burkhart’s performance. In fact, I was a bit upset she was being campaigned in lead actress since I thought she would win for sure in supporting. (Now I see the wisdom of that move. I hadn’t yet seen Da’Vine Joy Randolph in The Holdovers.)
Ordinarily, I’m not a fan of largely non-verbal performances, but I loved this one. To be clear, Molly can and does speak. She’s just the quiet type who seems to pull in all the energy in the room rather than radiating it outward, not unlike Ryan Gosling’s character in Drive.
Rarely does someone playing this type of quiet character outshine others on screen. Not only does Gladstone manage this, effectively stealing the movie, but the actors she steals the movie from are luminaries Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. The latter didn’t even get nominated for his pretty brilliant work as the conflicted, tortured Ernest somehow enduring a staggering level of cognitive dissonance as he slowly murders his wife’s entire family yet still expects their marriage to work. In another year, that might have bothered me, but honestly, Gladstone’s performance makes such an impression that as long as it is nominated, all is right with the world.
Why She Might Not Win:
Gladstone’s win would be historic. She’s the first Native American nominated for Best Actress, so she’d set another record by being the first Native American to win. And honestly, at this stage, that outcome seems perfectly plausible.
Perhaps some voters won’t respond well to the kind of quietly powerful performance Gladstone gives. The fact that she wasn’t nominated by BAFTA seems to give the edge in the race to Emma Stone.
The more prevalent complaint seems to be that the movie doesn’t showcase Gladstone enough. Why isn’t Killers of the Flower Moon shown to us from Mollie Burkhart’s point of view? I listened to David Grann’s book on Audible last fall. The first part is told from Mollie Burkhart’s point of view. Then in the second part, we shift to the viewpoint of lawman Tom White. Scorsese’s production focuses instead on Ernest Burkhart. Why focus on the white murderer instead of the wronged Osage woman? People have been asking that, and perhaps we should see more complexity within Mollie. Instead of asking why Ernest can believe he loves his wife even as he murders her, perhaps we should get more deeply into Mollie’s head. Granted, though, she’s a less complicated character because she is not murdering her spouse’s family while expecting the marriage to work out. Few people tied in as many knots as Ernest Burkhart. I do think we watch Ernest’s story largely through Mollie’s eyes because the audience keeps literally seeing Mollie’s eyes. We watch her watching him, watching everything unfold. But maybe Gladstone would have the opportunity to give an even better performance if she got a full third of the movie. What if Killers of the Flower Moon were set up more like The Last Duel.
Throwing out a bunch of what ifs like this doesn’t truly demonstrate why Gladstone’s performance shouldn’t win an Oscar, though. With the material and screentime she’s given, she gives one of the most outstanding, memorable performances of the year.
Probably what hurts her chances to win most is the popularity of Emma Stone’s incredible performance in Poor Things. Now, of course, Stone is the central character and protagonist of that story. The whole thing belongs to her. She doesn’t have to share it with De Niro and DiCaprio. But I think Gladstone’s relegation to a less central role (perhaps counterintuitively) helps her make an impression on the audience because we leave saying, “Wow, De Niro and DiCaprio were onscreen the whole time, and yet I couldn’t take my eyes off that Osage actress I’ve (likely) never seen before.” If Gladstone doesn’t win, she’ll likely be losing to Emma Stone because of enthusiasm for Stone’s own performance not because of any defect in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Sandra Hüller
Age: 45
Film: Anatomy of a Fall
Role: Sandra Voyter, an English-speaking German mother whose French husband falls to his death from the upper window of their chalet. Now Sandra and her son face another hardship. She’s on trial for her husband’s murder. The prosecutor is determined to convince everyone she pushed her husband. Can she come to terms with the possibility that he jumped and killed himself so that she can convince the court of her innocence?
Nomination History:
This is Hüller’s first nomination.
Why She Should Win:
One thing that I love about Hüller’s performance is its lack of salacious audacity. So many details of this story could be played for shock value. She might have pushed her husband out the window to his death. She has a disabled child. Her marriage was on the rocks. She’d had an affair. She’s bisexual and might have been flirting with a young woman just before her husband fell. She’s a writer and could (conceivably) think up numerous plots framing her husband. A voice recording suggests to us that she’s violent. Her husband believes she blames him for their son’s injury. The depraved, unhinged creature suggested by the scandal-loving prosecutor could be what Voyter gives us in her performance. She could lean into any one of those alarming qualities.
And yet Hüller chooses to play Sandra with dignity and composure. If anything, she makes her almost boring. She’s just like all of us, a person quietly living her life, facing adversity, struggling to remain composed under adverse circumstances.
Surely, it would be a lot easier to make such a character vibrant and unhinged (like the alarming caricature the prosecutor paints) than to make her real. But Hüller choses to make her real.
Honestly, I’m a bit surprised Hüller got this nomination because she isn’t American, and she’s not giving a glitzy Hollywood style performance. She’s so understated. Despite the film’s success at Cannes, I thought Hüller might lose her place to familiar face Margot Robbie (who isn’t American, either, but is a huge Hollywood star playing Barbie).
Now the film does help her out a lot, making her marvelously sympathetic simply because everyone at that trial is constantly attacking Sanda’s character in ways that don’t seem very fair. She’s quite memorable in the scene when she replies to the psychiatrist’s testimony, saying that a couple “is a little bit of a chaos.” Wouldn’t we all struggle similarly to defend ourselves if every small aspect of our personal lives were brought to light in court and attacked?
Why She Might Not Win:
My husband and I have talked about this a lot. I feel like the ghost of the snubbed Margot Robbie is haunting around these nominations. (Granted, the word “snubbed” is not accurate. This was a crowded field, and it’s highly likely she came in sixth.) When I think of Barbie, I can’t imagine it being such a phenomenal, runaway success without Margot Robbie. It’s hard to imagine anyone else as the character. Similarly, Emma Stone and Lily Gladstone seem perfect to play their roles. Could anyone else even pull it off?
Sandra Hüller is brilliant in this film, yes, but it’s extremely hard not to ask yourself, “But isn’t it the part that’s brilliant?” Could somebody else play Sandra Voyter just as well as Hüller? Well…I mean…probably?
Now that might not be true. I’ll admit it might be bias. Maybe the reason I can imagine other actresses in the role so easily is that this film introduced me to Hüller. Of course, it’s easy to sub in the faces of actors who are huge stars here in this country. I do wonder if her lack of star power might hurt Hüller. Obviously because the film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, serious lovers of cinema will know Hüller by now. But everybody knows Emma Stone. In my mind, this would make an Oscar win by Hüller more of an uphill struggle.
Carey Mulligan
Age: 38
Film: Maestro
Role: Felicia Montealegre, charming actress and arguably ill-used wife of brilliant (but difficult) composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. Felicia does love her husband, and they build a beautiful family together. In the beginning, that’s enough to overcome the annoyance of his dalliances, and she’s able to look the other way. But it gets hard to look the other way when the dalliances start happening everywhere, all the time. How is she supposed to pretend she doesn’t notice when he totally abandons pretense and embraces indiscretion?
Nomination History:
Previously nominated for Best Actress in 2021 for Promising Young Woman (2020), and in 2010 for An Education (2009).
Why She Should Win:
I’m glad Carey Mulligan made it into this category because her performance was by far my favorite part of Maestro. Promising Young Woman is the film that made me a Mulligan fan, but you wouldn’t know she was even the same person here.
What jumps out at me about her performance is something I also love about Emma Stone’s turn in Poor Things. We get to watch Felicia age on screen. Now Stone is doing something a bit different and more complicated (which I’ll mention later), but in Maestro Mulligan plays the wife of Leonard Bernstein. She’s thoroughly convincing as a woman from another era and a more sophisticated culture (than I am). But she’s gradually growing older (and sadder) (and sicker) before our eyes. We watch her lose her youth and perhaps her naïveté, but she retains every bit of her grace, charm, and vitality (even when she is sick). We see the way the relationship with the larger-than-life Bernstein drains her. Can she stand it that he constantly, clumsily cheats on her (usually with young men)? No. Mulligan lets us see that in her face, in her eyes.
She’s so magnificent in the late scene when she meets her daughter and sister-in-law for lunch and admits (perhaps to herself for the first time) that she has herself to blame for her failed marriage because she thought she could handle her husband the way he was. She looks into the face of her own limitations. She’s so sad, yet terribly charming and put together for a person in such crisis. She asks, “Who’s the one who hasn’t been honest?” and her sad, soulful eyes write a symphony of longing and misery.
I know Bradley Cooper prepared for this role for years, but he’s proven himself adept at directing his co-stars. Just like Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born, Mulligan steals the scenes that she’s in. It’s her performance I want to watch again and again. For me, she steals the entire movie.
Why She Might Not Win:
This is a pretty competitive year. If I were tasked to handout a Best of Maestro Oscar, I’d give it to Carey Mulligan for her performance. But that’s not the category. Well made as it is, Maestro doesn’t seem to be a film that has made many people deliriously excited. Unless something huge changes between now and March 10 (which it certainly could), it’s hard to imagine Mulligan pulling off a victory in this category. There’s no reason she shouldn’t win. This sounds tragically boring, but the only reason she won’t win is stiff competition from actresses in more widely embraced, exciting movies.
Emma Stone
Age: 35
Film: Poor Things
Role: Bella Baxter, the laboratory experiment of her beloved mad scientist/adopted father “God.” Despite her unorthodox behavior, Bella quickly wins the hearts of two very different men who are both desperate to marry her, but she’s only just started to live, and there’s so much she wants to learn about the world.
Nomination History:
Won Best Actress Oscar in 2017 for La La Land (2016).
Previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 2019 for The Favourite (2018) and in 2015 for Birdman (2014).
Why She Should Win:
Usually when people play babies in adult bodies it’s a big joke, like a cartoonish joke. I think of those SNL sketches with Beck Bennett or the song “Triplets” first seen in the movie The Band Wagon. It’s an old (weird) gag to dress up an adult as a baby or pretend a baby is the size of an adult. Imagine the difficulty, though, of playing this role not as mere goofy slapstick. Imagine playing it seriously. That’s what Emma Stone does in Poor Things. She’s playing an infant trapped in an adult’s body, and she’s playing it straight. But there’s an additional twist, too. She’s seriously portraying a baby growing up inside an already adult body, but she also is going for comedy. It’s just that for Stone, what’s funny is not that she’s a baby in an adult body. What’s funny is the entire world around her, and (as a baby thrust into strange adult situations), she’s uniquely positioned to see that.
With the wrong actress playing Bella, Poor Things would become unwatchable. Granted, there may be some who find it unwatchable now. It does contain some strange, off-putting material. It shocks like a surprise bucket of cold water over the head. Until we understand what we’re watching, the film is disorienting and shocking—probably exactly how the world seems to Bella Baxter until she gets a hang on life. In a certain sense, the audience experiences a version of the protagonist’s journey and our initial reactions of bafflement to her mirror her reactions to all the rest of us as her knowledge of the world grows.
I can’t imagine the difficulty of playing a character like this. Stone is playing a baby in an adult’s body, making Poor Things a very unusual bildungsroman. An additional challenge here is that the audience must not know Bella’s exact origin story right away. For the movie to work, we have to consider alternative explanations for the character’s strange, limited behavior at the beginning of the film. And we have to believe those possibilities. And then, as the story progresses, as we watch Bella learning and growing intellectually and spiritually, the transition has to be gradual. By the end of Poor Things, Stone seems like an entirely different character. She’s become not only an adult woman, but a feminist and a philosopher. Plus, over time she has become less awkward physically as she’s grow into the use of her body. In the beginning she limps and jerks and stammers. By the end, most of this has disappeared. But its disappearance is so subtle and gradual that we don’t really keep track.
The degree of difficulty of the role is off the charts. It only works in the hands of an actress equally skilled with comedy and drama. If we don’t believe the truth and the heart of the character and her journey, then the movie fails to captivate us. Yet the entire situation is infinitely more pleasurable (and sometimes only bearable) to watch because of the comedy.
As I reflect on the totality of the performance, I’m reminded of the brilliant work of Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything. It would not be easy to portray the gradual progression of a degenerative disease you do not actually have, especially when the scenes are filmed out of order! Redmayne’s performance was layered and difficult. Here Stone is doing the same thing in reverse. She’s gradually becoming more physically and socially adept and skilled. Yet she’s also finding both the pathos and the comedy in practically every moment that she’s on screen. It’s an extremely difficult performance.
Why She Might Not Win:
As of right now, I think Emma Stone will win Best Actress this year, but I would also be satisfied with a win by Lily Gladstone, which would make history.
The only possible strike against Stone might be that the film might be off-putting to some viewers, but since it’s nominated for Best Picture, surely it’s been largely embraced by the Academy. Barring some late-developing scandal, I do expect her to win.