2025 Oscars: Best Supporting Actor Predictions

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

The same can be said for almost all the other acting races, but wow does the proposed Best Supporting Actor lineup look a lot different than it did at the top of awards season. The only constant has been “A Real Pain” star Kieran Culkin being most expected to win.

Besides receiving the majority of critics awards, the Emmy winner took home the Golden Globe for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture, kicking off the televised portion of his Oscar run.

The actors he has been nominated against the most are Yura Borisov (“Anora”) and Edward Norton (“A Complete Unknown”), whose films both have a stronger chance at Best Picture (for instance, their films are nominated for Best Ensemble at SAG, while “A Real Pain” is not.)

“The Brutalist” star Guy Pearce would be the next closest to being nominated, but the one knock against him is that he did not receive a SAG Award nomination, and SAG is the one group that has the biggest overlap in voters with the Actors branch, which determines Oscar nominations. Still, a rising tide lifts all ships, and the boost star Adrien Brody and director Brady Corbet received by winning at the Golden Globes, a televised awards show, should move the needle for Pearce enough to make the final cut.

It is the fifth slot that has proven the hardest to predict. So far, it seems like Denzel Washington (“Gladiator II”) and Clarence Maclin (“Sing Sing”) may have peaked too early, but the Academy has kept diversity in mind in recent years, and they were the two most viable contenders of color, with Maclin having the edge due to “Sing Sing” being more of a Best Picture contender. However the A24 film not winning over SAG, despite being all about how the craft of acting can transform lives, was taken by many as proof that its awards prospects have declined.

“Wicked” and “Conclave” are the other two Best Ensemble nominees at the SAG Awards that have Supporting Actor contenders like Jonathan Bailey and Stanley Tucci, respectively, with the former getting a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the guild award as well, but the pair of actors have been recognized almost nowhere else.

With nothing being set in stone, the current consensus is that “The Apprentice” star Jeremy Strong will get the fifth slot, having been nominated for SAG and BAFTA Awards recently. The film has not done super well with American audiences, but if the afterglow of “Succession” is strong enough to push Culkin to the top of the Best Supporting Actor race, then why not count on Strong’s strong take on Roy Cohn making the cut.

Contenders are listed in alphabetical order, below.

Frontrunners:
Yura Borisov (“Anora”)
Kieran Culkin (“A Real Pain”)
Edward Norton (“A Complete Unknown”)
Guy Pearce (“The Brutalist”)
Jeremy Strong (“The Apprentice”)

Contenders:
Jonathan Bailey (“Wicked”)
Mark Eydelshteyn (“Anora”)
Brian Tyree Henry (“The Fire Inside”)
Samuel L. Jackson (“The Piano Lesson”)
Clarence Maclin (“Sing Sing”)
John Magaro (“September 5”)
Josh O’Connor (“Challengers”)
Adam Pearson (“A Different Man”)
Stanley Tucci (“Conclave”)
Denzel Washington (“Gladiator II”)