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

Oscars season is almost upon us. Well, it’s almost almost upon us. Still, as the train taking us toward the next Academy Awards begins to slowly pick up steam, so, too, does our excitement about who could be giving out speeches and accepting statuettes at next year’s Academy Awards. To whet Oscar fans’ whistles, then, we are taking a look at the contenders in the major categories, continuing here with Best Actress. We’ll assess this year’s current top contenders but, first, let’s take a look at the last 10 years of Oscars history.

First things first. The Academy clearly prefers actresses who play fictional characters over performers who play real people — that is very interesting as we often assume as playing a real person is a surefire way to the Oscars podium. Not in this category. Only three of the last 10 Best Actress winners have won for playing real people: Jessica Chastain for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” Renée Zellweger for “Judy,” and Olivia Colman for “The Favourite.” The rest were all fictional.

The academy also appreciates experience in this category, which again goes against another Oscar notion — ingenues were often touted as typical winners in this category but seven out of the last 1o winners here have all been performers who were already Oscar nominees or winners: Chastain, Frances McDormand (for both “Nomadland” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”), Zellweger, Emma Stone (“La La Land”), Julianne Moore (“Still Alice”), and Cate Blanchett (“Blue Jasmine”). Out of those, McDormand and Blanchett were the only ones who had already won Oscars at their times of winning — McDormand won Best Actress in 1997 for “Fargo” and Blanchett won Best Supporting Actress in 2005 for “The Aviator.” The only complete Oscars newcomers who won were Brie Larson (“Room”), Colman, and Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”).

The academy also slightly prefers their Best Actress winners to be part of big Oscar players rather than movies that pick up a couple of bids but don’t really make an impact; six out of the last 10 of these winners won for films that were also nominated for Best Picture. The only actresses who won for non-Best Picture nominees were Blanchett, Moore, Zellweger, and Chastain. It’s the same ratio — six out of 10 — for genre, too. The academy like drama here, with six out of those 10 winners coming from drama, but they are open to other genres. There were two winners from comedies (Blanchett and Colman), one winner from a sci-fi (Yeoh), and one winner from a musical (Stone”). This suggests that the academy are actually open to many different kinds of performances, typified by Yeoh’s win for the zany “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Indeed, they like a colorful performance — Yeoh, Chastain, Colman, McDormand (for “Three Billboards”), and Blanchett all fall under that umbrella.

The profile of winner is interesting here, too. Yeoh, McDormand (twice), Blanchett, and Moore could all be considered veterans. The academy likes that, while they also like a big name in this category — Blanchett, Stone, Zellweger, and Chastain are all huge names, while the others are no slouches either. Now, let’s use this information to dissect this year’s Best Actress challengers. Currently, we think that the following performers will be nominated for Best Actress: Fantasia Barrino (“The Color Purple”), Greta Lee (“Past Lives”), Sandra Hüller (“Anatomy of a Fall”), Natalie Portman (“May December”), and Margot Robbie (“Barbie”).

Let’s start with Barrino, who plays a fictional character in the musical “The Color Purple,” which follows the struggles of an African American woman living in the South of the USA in the early 1900s. Barrino has never been nominated for an Oscar before, nor is she a veteran or a big name. That puts her position at the top of our odds chart into question. However, she does play a fictional character and we do think that “The Color Purple” will be nominated for Best Picture. But while Stone won for the musical “La La Land,” not many others have picked up bids for musicals in this category, which is a surprise. In fact, apart from Stone, the last Best Actress nominee for an out-and-out musical was Zellweger, who was nominated for “Chicago” all the way back in 2003 (it’s Best Supporting Actress that does best in musicals). It looks like Barrino is on shaky ground. However, Whoopi Goldberg was nominated for this exact role in 1986 for the original version of “The Color Purple.” Perhaps history will repeat itself.

Then there is Lee and Hüller. Like Barrino, they have never been nominated for Oscars, nor are they big names or veterans. Lee stars as a fictional character in “Past Lives,” a drama that follows two childhood friends reconnecting years later, while Hüller features in the thriller “Anatomy of a Fall,” which tells the story of a fictional wife who murders her husband but then realizes that her blind son was the only witness to the crime. “Past Lives” is predicted to earn a Best Picture nomination but “Anatomy of a Fall” is not. Lee doesn’t look like a sure thing at all, while, based on this information at least, it feels like Hüller will actually drop out of our predicted five nominees completely. It doesn’t feel like things are aligning for Hüller.

Portman and Robbie, however, are better prospects even though they are at the tail end of our Best Actress odds chart. Portman plays a fictional character in the drama “May December,” which follows Portman as an actress doing research on a married couple who had a scandal years earlier. That film isn’t expected to be nominated for Best Picture at the moment, but we do think it will pick up steam in the coming months as more people see it. Robbie, meanwhile, plays the fictional Barbie in Greta Gerwig‘s comedy film “Barbie,” which follows Barbie having an existential crisis. “Barbie” is expected to reap a Best Picture nomination, while the colorful, zany nature of both Robbie’s performance and “Barbie” as a movie very much fits the pattern of winners in this category. Plus, both Portman and Robbie are huge names who already have Oscar history. Portman won Best Actress in 2011 for “Black Swan” while she was also nominated for the same award in 2017 for “Jackie” and picked up a Best Supporting Actress bid in 2005 for “Closer.” Robbie was nominated for Best Actress in 2018 for “I, Tonya” and Best Supporting Actress in 2020 for “Bombshell.” Both of these stars feel like very strong contenders who will only climb upwards in our odds chart.

There are a few names outside of our predicted five nominees who could have something to say about this race, however: Emma Stone (“Poor Things”) and Carey Mulligan (“Maestro”). Mulligan will play Felicia Montealegre (the real-life wife of Leonard Bernstein) in Bradley Cooper‘s “Maestro,” which depicts the life of composer Bernstein. She’s playing a real person, sure, but “Maestro” is expected to land an Oscar bid for Best Picture, it’s a genre the academy like (drama), and Mulligan has an Oscars history. She was nominated for this award in 2010 for “An Education” and in 2021 for “Promising Young Woman.” Stone, meanwhile, plays a fictional character in what looks to be a very colorful performance in Yorgos Lanthimos‘ comedy-drama “Poor Things,” which follows a woman brought back to life by a scientist (Willem Dafoe). “Poor Things” isn’t predicted to land a Best Picture nomination but Stone is a huge name who has a good Oscars history, too. She won Best Actress in 2017 for “La La Land” and was twice nominated for Best Supporting Actress — for “Birdman” in 2015 and “The Favourite” in 2019.

So, after all that dissection and discussion, it feels like Robbie and Portman are actually the two strongest contenders by far while Barrino, Lee, and, in particular, Hüller, are all at risk — with Mulligan and Stone keenly nipping at their heels. Let’s see how things play out here.

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