Oscars Best Actress line-up filled with fictional characters for first time since 2011?
It’s an often-touted cliche that a great way to win an Oscar is for a performer to portray a real-life person. Cillian Murphy won Best Actor earlier this year for playing J. Robert Oppenheimer in “Oppenheimer,” Jessica Chastain took home Best Actress in 2022 for her portrayal of Tammy Faye Bakker in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” and Rami Malek won Best Actor in 2019 for his depiction of Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
It’s curious, then, that Best Actress has often been rewarded to performers playing fictional characters rather than real people. Over the past decade, 28 of the 50 nominations have been for original turns, with a whopping seven of those winning out of 10. Here’s the complete breakdown.
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Two out of 2024’s Best Actress nominees were nominated for playing fictional people. The others were Annette Bening (“Nyad”), Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), and Carey Mulligan (“Maestro”). However, in 2023, four out of five contenders were actresses playing fictional people. The one exception was Ana de Armas, who was nominated for portraying Marilyn Monroe in “Blonde.” The last time all five nominations went to actresses playing fictional people was back in 2011 when Natalie Portman (“Black Swan”), Annette Bening (“The Kids Are All Right”), Nicole Kidman (“Rabbit Hole”), Jennifer Lawrence (“Winter’s Bone”), and Michelle Williams (“Blue Valentine”) were all nominated, with Portman winning.
Six out of the last 10 years have seen more actresses nominated for playing fictional characters than actresses cited for portraying real people: 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2023, and 2024. What’s even more impressive is that seven of the past 10 Best Actress winners have triumphed for playing fictional characters: Julianne Moore (“Still Alice”), Brie Larson (“Room”), Emma Stone (“La La Land”), Frances McDormand (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”), McDormand again (“Nomadland”), Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”), and Stone again (“Poor Things”). It should be noted that Dormand and Stone are responsible for two of these wins each. The only three winners in the last decade who won for portraying real people are Olivia Colman for depicting Queen Anne in “The Favourite,” Renée Zellweger for portraying Judy Garland in “Judy,” and the aforementioned Chastain who played Bakker in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye.”
So how does that shape this year’s race? Well, our current predicted nominees for Best Actress at the 2025 Oscars are Mikey Madison (“Anora”), Karla Sofia Gascón (“Emilia Pérez”), Angelina Jolie (“Maria”), Amy Adams (“Nightbitch”), and Saoirse Ronan (“The Outrun”). Four of these predicted five are playing fictional characters. The only one who is featuring as a real person is Jolie, who will play opera singer Maria Callas. These predicted five very much follow the pattern of Best Actress in this decade.
In fact, the next five actresses in our Best Actress odds chart are also playing fictional characters: Nicole Kidman (“Babygirl”), Ronan (“Blitz”), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (“Hard Truths”), Moore (“The Room Next Door”), June Squibb (“Thelma”), and Demi Moore (“The Substance”). At the moment, there aren’t many competitors in this category who are portraying real people. Kate Winslet plays photographer and journalist Lee Miller in “Lee,” Marisa Abela stars as singer Amy Winehouse in “Back to Black,” and Alicia Vikander depicts Katherine Parr in “Firebrand.” But none of those look like they’re going to enter the 2025 Best Actress Oscar race. So, for now, it looks like it’s going to be another year that emphasizes fiction over fact.
Make your predictions at Gold Derby now. Download our free and easy app for Apple/iPhone devices or Android (Google Play) to compete against legions of other fans plus our experts and editors for best prediction accuracy scores. See our latest prediction champs. Can you top our esteemed leaderboards next? Always remember to keep your predictions updated because they impact our latest racetrack odds, which terrify Hollywood chiefs and stars. Don’t miss the fun. Speak up and share your huffy opinions in our famous forums where 5,000 showbiz leaders lurk every day to track latest awards buzz. Everybody wants to know: What do you think? Who do you predict and why?
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