Oscars 2024: Ranking every ‘Best Picture’ nominee by their lead performance
The Academy Awards are fast closing in, and while the ‘Best Picture’ race is often the most heated, it’s starting to look more and more likely that there’s only going to be one winner.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has been hoovering up trophies left, right, and centre, to the point it’s going to be deemed an upset if any of the other nine candidates end up having their name read out onstage. That’s not to say they aren’t deserving in their own right, but it’s Nolan’s trophy to lose at this stage.
‘Best Picture’ encapsulates the merits of everything that made the movies in question so great, setting it apart from individual categories that focus on one aspect or department above all others. There have been plenty of winners in the past that weren’t recognised for their acting, which could well be the case again.
If the victor was decided upon solely by the top-billed name in the cast and the strength of their work, then the results could be very different, creating an entirely different set of circumstances on which to judge them as a whole.
‘Best Picture’ nominees ranked by lead performance:
10. Maestro (Bradley Cooper)
There’s absolutely no faulting Bradley Cooper‘s dedication and commitment to his latest project, but his regularly histrionic central performance in Maestro gives off the impression of somebody trying way too hard to manufacture an Oscar win.
As the film’s co-writer, director, producer, and star, Copper gives everything he has to the role of Leonard Bernstein, and while he does justice to such a towering figure, Maestro can never shake the fact it seems to be cynically checking off Oscar-baiting boxes one by one.
That’s not to say the leading man’s passion isn’t translated onto the screen, but the filmmaking is regularly superior to his on-camera work, and it’s a lot more subtle in going about it. Maybe he’ll win that elusive gong one day, but perhaps he should make it less obvious next time.
9. Killers of the Flower Moon (Leonardo DiCaprio)
Lily Gladstone is undoubtedly the standout performer bar none in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, but she’s only the third-billed name in the cast behind Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.
The filmmaker’s modern-day muse was a somewhat surprising omission from the ‘Best Actor’ field, but it’s difficult to say with much conviction the part of Ernest Burkhart is destined to be remembered as one of DiCaprio’s very best.
If anything, his performance works as well as it does because he willingly cedes so much of the spotlight, nuance, and pathos to Gladstone’s Mollie Kyle, which in turn renders his own performance as intentionally secondary but still as reliable as expected from someone of DiCaprio’s calibre.
8. The Zone of Interest (Christian Friedel)
Jonathan Glazer‘s The Zone of Interest is one of just two ‘Best Picture’ nominees that didn’t find itself shortlisted in any acting categories, although that’s not to say Christian Friedel isn’t excellent.
As Rudolf Höss, he masters the simplicity and borderline banality of evil, with the Nazi officer going about his daily business leading an idyllic-looking family life, all while the sounds of Auschwitz can be heard in the background. It’s haunting, for sure, but doesn’t necessarily need to lean into its performances to make that abundantly clear.
Of course, a film like The Zone of Interest was never going to be a haven for the sort of grandstanding typically associated with the Oscars, with Friedel happy to hand over the lion’s share of attention to the top-level material and its harrowing thematic resonance.
7. Barbie (Margot Robbie)
There was an uproar when Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig were snubbed in the ‘Best Actress’ and ‘Best Director’ races, but that takes nothing away from the cultural impact made by Barbie.
In what could have easily been a straightforward and broadly comedic performance, Robbie adds depth, complexity, and heart-wrenching emotion to a plastic plaything, no small feat in a movie that also features several musical numbers and an intentionally preposterous beach-set brawl.
The final scene encapsulates Barbie embracing herself, her image, and her new existence through the means of a gynaecological gag, but as important as her performance has been in terms of the movie’s reach and profundity, it’s hard to justify it being among the very best of the ‘Best Picture’ crop.
6. American Fiction (Jeffrey Wright)
Jeffrey Wright has always been an incredible actor, something most people have been aware of for a very long time, but he’s never been any better than in American Fiction, which deservedly landed him his first Oscar nomination.
The star’s grizzled voice and permanently hangdog expressions are the perfect fit for Dr. Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, a frustrated and disenfranchised novelist forced to contend with the hypocrisy he sought to denigrate in the first place when his new book becomes a sensation.
Equal parts bleakly hilarious and thought-provokingly insightful in its cultural and societal incites, American Fiction required a lead performance of the highest quality to navigate its many narrative peaks and troughs. In Wright, writer and director Cord Jefferson found the perfect conduit.
5. Past Lives (Greta Lee)
So much noise was made over Margot Robbie being omitted from ‘Best Actress’ consideration that Greta Lee barely merited a mention, which is arguably a much bigger and significantly more egregious oversight.
The other of the two ‘Best Picture’ contenders that didn’t score an acting nod, it boggles the mind as to how Lee’s fully-realised, achingly real, and emotionally resonant turn as Nora Moon failed to be considered among the five best leading performances by a female actor in the last 12 months.
The final moments of Past Lives alone is capable of rendering the hardest of hearts into bubbling, bawling wrecks, but that was only one scene in a 106-minute masterclass that encapsulated the highs and lows of the human connection in a star-making tour-de-force.
4. The Holdovers (Paul Giamatti)
Paul Giamatti has always been among the industry’s most praiseworthy character actors, so it was no surprise when the rare opportunity of a leading role was seized with such vim, vigour, and comedic expertise.
The Holdovers is phenomenally acted across the board, weaving between Shakespearean tragedy and Capraesque whimsy on a dime. The character of Paul Hunham is a deceptively difficult one to play, not that anybody would realise upon witnessing Giamatti’s effortless mastery.
Having already won a Golden Globe for ‘Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy’, it wouldn’t be either a shock or an undeserving accolade were the star to replicate that success at the Oscars.
3. Poor Things (Emma Stone)
Having already brought out the best in Emma Stone when they first partnered on The Favourite, Poor Things has gone a long way to establishing the actor and Yorgos Lanthimos as one of the most exciting star and director partnerships to come along in a long time.
The outrageous physicality alone is enough to merit a ‘Best Actress’ nod, but it’s the emotional journey undertaken by Stone’s Bella Baxter that takes it to the next level. Essentially a child with an adult’s body, her newfound lease of life is embraced with all the zeal and vigour of a kid playing with their new toys, except this one is built for entirely different things.
The very best performances are the ones that nobody can imagine being played by anybody else after watching the film in question, and that’s perfectly true of Stone and Poor Things, with the performer and part proving to be a match made in outlandish heaven.
2. Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy)
There was only one person Christopher Nolan considered to play the title character in his epic three-hour biographical drama, and it’s easy to see why.
Even though Oppenheimer boasts a cavalcade of big names and esteemed thespians among its monstrous ensemble, the focus never shifts away from Cillian Murphy as the anchor of the story. Period pieces have a way of spreading themselves too thin ensemble-wise to make the most of their star-studded parts, but that’s never something Nolan concerns himself with, to the immeasurable benefit of his star.
It’s no small feat to perfectly embody the inner turmoil, personality quirks, and staunch determination of the man who could have theoretically ended the world had his calculations been off, but Murphy renders every subsequent frame as urgent and important as the last, in what might just be remembered as career-best work.
1. Anatomy of a Fall (Sandra Hüller)
Sandra Hüller probably isn’t going to win the Oscar for ‘Best Actress’, and neither is Anatomy of a Fall expected to win ‘Best Picture’, but the synchronicity between performer, character, and story is what sets it apart from the rest of the nominees.
If another actor played the role of Sandra Voyter, then Justine Triet’s combination of procedural, whodunit, and study of a dissolving family unit would still be an excellent movie. However, with Hüller at the forefront, it’s one of the most strikingly original and captivating European films to emerge in years.
Neither the lead nor director of Anatomy of a Fall has ever been better, and when there are two top talents operating at the peak of their powers on the same production, then inimitable cinematic magic is the end result. That most definitely applies here, even if there’s the distinct possibility they’ll both leave empty-handed.
