2025 Oscars: Best Supporting Actress Predictions
Marcus Jones
Nominations voting is from January 8-12, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 17, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7:00 p.m. ET/ 4:00 p.m. PT. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions.
The State of the Race
If there is any acting race where Netflix feels guaranteed to get more than one nomination in, it’s Best Supporting Actress. Coming out of the fall festivals, the streaming service dominated much of the awards chatter around that particular race. “The Piano Lesson” star Danielle Deadwyler and “Emilia Pérez” star Zoe Saldaña are already considered the two frontrunners to win the Oscar, with plenty of debate around whether or not the latter’s co-star, Selena Gomez, gets nominated as well, and who, if any of the title characters from Azazel Jacobs’ “His Three Daughters,” also has a shot at a nod.
From a hierarchy standpoint, there is a much better shot of both Saldaña and Gomez being nominated than there is at both Natasha Lyonne and Carrie Coon being nominated for “His Three Daughters.” The operatic crime musical from Jacques Audiard is already considered a lock for nominations in the Best Picture and Best International Feature categories. But “His Three Daughters” was a TIFF 2023 premiere, so filmgoers making the rounds at different festivals this past year have had a lot of time to marinate on the three-hander between the aforementioned actresses and Elizabeth Olsen. When it first screened, many had Lyonne pegged as the sister with the best shot at awards, so it’s probably good to go with first instincts from a predictions standpoint, but Coon has been a hit with critics since the film finally debuted on Netflix in mid-September.
Looking further out, the hype train has become just so huge for “The Brutalist,” that it is hard not to see Felicity Jones being a big contender once voters finally see the Brady Corbet epic. It takes longer than one may expect for her character to be introduced, but the role certainly feels juicier than the struggling wife role in “The Theory of Everything” that got Jones a Best Actress nomination in 2015.
Having also been nominated before, for her performance in “King Richard,” Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor seems primed for another Oscar campaign, most likely for her role in “Nickel Boys.” However, the Amazon MGM Studios release uses a first person perspective, so it will be interesting to see how members of the Actors branch react to seeing a performance that is meant to literally be seen through the eyes of the film’s dual protagonists. Ellis-Taylor is also great in “Exhibiting Forgiveness,” but that film will not be able to give her as big an awards push.
With music superstars Gomez, Ariana Grande (“Wicked”), Lady Gaga (“Joker: Folie à Deux”), and Jennifer Lopez (“Unstoppable”) all in the running for Best Supporting Actress this year, the Golden Globes will probably have a field day, but Academy voters have a higher chance of highlighting someone like Isabella Rossellini or Lesley Manville, whose roles in “Conclave” and “Queer” are just barely above the level of cameo, but they still remain one of the big highlights of their films.
Contenders are listed in alphabetical order, below. No actress will be deemed a frontrunner until we have seen the film.
Frontrunners:
Danielle Deadwyler (“The Piano Lesson”)
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (“Nickel Boys”)
Felicity Jones (“The Brutalist”)
Natasha Lyonne (“His Three Daughters”)
Zoe Saldaña (“Emilia Pérez”)
Contenders:
Leonie Benesch (“September 5”)
Joan Chen (“Dìdi”)
Carrie Coon (“His Three Daughters”)
Lady Gaga (“Joker: Folie à Deux”)
Selena Gomez (“Emilia Pérez”)
Ariana Grande (“Wicked”)
Lesley Manville (“Queer”)
Saoirse Ronan (“Blitz”)
Isabella Rossellini (“Conclave”)
Long Shots:
Maria Bakalova (“The Apprentice”)
Isabel DeRoy-Olson (“Fancy Dance”)
Carol Kane (“Between the Temples”)
Jennifer Lopez (“Unstoppable”)
Lashana Lynch (“Bob Marley: One Love”)
Elizabeth Olsen (“His Three Daughters”)
Adriana Paz (“Emilia Pérez”)
Margaret Qualley (“The Substance”)
Cailee Spaeny (“Civil War”)
Zendaya (“Dune: Part Two”)
