Best Actor at the Oscars: What the last 10 winners tell us about this year

As we begin to look ahead to who might win Oscars this year, our anticipation around contenders grows. With that in mind, we’ve done a series of items dissecting the acting nominees starting with Best Actor. Let’s take a look at the last 10 years of Oscars history in Best Actor to figure out which elements matter the most to Oscar voters.

The academy likes their Best Actor champs to be in  Best Picture nominees — nine out of these 10 winners were all in films that contended for the top prize. The only exception was last year’s winner, Brendan Fraser for “The Whale.”

The other big takeaway is the academy’s preference for a good ol’ drama in this category — eight out of 10 winners came from dramas, with only Leonardo DiCaprio with the historical epic “The Revenant” and Joaquin Phoenix with the comic book movie “Joker” the only exceptions.

And what is really interesting here is the academy’s preference for actors who portray real-life people. Six out of 10 of these winners were for real-life roles: Matthew McConaughey (“Dallas Buyers Club”), Eddie Redmayne (“The Theory of Everything”), DiCaprio (“The Revenant”), Gary Oldman (“Darkest Hour”), Rami Malek (“Bohemian Rhapsody”), and Will Smith (“King Richard”).

This is the only one of the four acting categories where real people are preferred to fictional characters. The last 10 winners in each of the other three acting categories have all seen more actors playing fictional characters rewarded than actors who played real people. It feels like the academy’s tastes are a little more traditional in this category.

They also like to reward big-name actors: six out of the last 10 winners are A-listers in McConaughey, DiCaprio, Oldman, Phoenix, Anthony Hopkins (“The Father”), and Smith. However, only two of those 10 winners have been veterans (Oldman and Hopkins) so they prefer a slightly younger actor.

Half of these 10 winners were past Oscar nominees at their time of winning. Hopkins was the only past Oscar winner to win out of these 10 victors; he won Best Actor in 1992 for “The Silence of the Lambs.”

So, how does all of that information affect how we look at this year’s potential contenders? Let’s take a deep dive. Firstly, we are currently predicting that Leonardo DiCaprio (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer”), Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”), Colman Domingo (“Rustin”), and Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”) will be nominated for Best Actor.

Let’s start with Giamatti, who plays a disliked teacher who looks after students at a college during Christmastime in Alexander Payne‘s “The Holdovers.” Giamatti is the only one of our predicted five who is playing a fictional character. While he is a respected, cherished actor, he isn’t exactly an A-list name. But “The Holdovers,” which is a drama, is predicted to land a Best Picture nomination, however. Giamatti was previously nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 2006 for “Cinderella Man.”

Next up is Domingo, who portrays the real-life civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in George C. Wolfe‘s biopic “Rustin.” This looks more like it, as does the fact that this movie is a drama. However, “Rustin” is outside of our predicted Best Picture lineup. He’s also not a huge name like certain other contenders in this list, so he may be up against it like Giamatti.

Then there is Murphy. Now, Murphy is right on the precipice of being an A-lister. His name is big enough for it to give him a boost in this category. He also steps into the shoes of a real person — J. Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan‘s biopic “Oppenheimer,” which tells the story of how the scientist created the atomic bomb. This drama (tick) is predicted to not only be nominated for Best Picture but could well win. If “Oppenheimer” did claim both Best Actor and Best Picture, it would be the first film to do so since 2012, when “The Artist” won both (Best Actor for Jean Dujardin). Murphy has never been nominated for an Oscar before. We think he’s got a great chance of changing that this year.

And then we have Cooper and DiCaprio, two rockstar actors who are most definitely A-listers. They have the right big-name profile and are both portraying real people in dramas, too. Cooper is Leonard Bernstein in “Maestro,” which tells the life story of Bernstein. In “Killers of the Flower Moon,” DiCaprio is Earnest Burkhart, who was involved in the murders of Osage tribe members in the South of the USA in the 1920s. We think both movies will be nominated for Best Picture, with Cooper also directing his film. These two performers check off all the right boxes.

Cooper is a nine-time Oscar nominee, too, so there may be a feeling that he is long overdue a win after nine losses. He has been nominated for Best Actor three times — in 2013 for “Silver Linings Playbook,” in 2015 for “American Sniper,” and in 2019 for “A Star is Born.” He also has four Best Picture nods to his name — for “American Sniper” in 2015, “A Star is Born” in 2019, “Joker” in 2020, and “Nightmare Alley” in 2022. The other nominations came for Best Supporting Actor (in 2014 for “American Hustle”) and Best Adapted Screenplay (in 2019 for “A Star is Born,” shared with Eric Roth and Will Fetters).

DiCaprio, meanwhile, won Best Actor in 2016 for “The Revenant” and has four other nominations to his name in the same category — 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.” DiCaprio was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 1994 for “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” and Best Picture in 2014 for “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

There are a couple of other names to be considered, however: Barry Keoghan (“Saltburn”) and Joaquin Phoenix (“Napoleon”). There are pros and cons to each of these performances.

Keoghan stars in a comedy-drama from Emerald Fennell, with “Saltburn” following a college student who becomes obsessed with his classmate. While he plays a fictional role (strike), “Saltburn” is expected to be nominated for Best Picture (check) and he does star in a drama (check again). However, Keoghan isn’t a big-name star just yet, although he is on his way to becoming one after his Best Supporting Actor nomination earlier this year for “The Banshees of Inisherin.” That is his sole Oscar bid so far.

Phoenix, meanwhile, is a big name who has the respect of  his peers. He is the latest in a line of actors to portray French leader Napoleon Bonaparte. Ridley Scott‘s biopic “Napoleon” is a drama but it is just outside of our predicted nominees for Best Picture. Phoenix previously won Best Actor in 2020 for “Joker” while he was nominated in the same category in 2006 for “Walk the Line” and in 2013 for “The Master.” He also picked up a Best Supporting Actor bid in 2001 for “Gladiator,” his first collaboration with Ridley. Phoenix feels like a genuine contender here while Keoghan is on the bubble.

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