Best Actor in a Leading Role is one of the most historic and prestigious awards in the history of Hollywood. There have been some big wins in the last few years, such as Cillian Murphy finally winning for his commanding performance in Oppenheimer, and his Peaky Blinders co-star Adrien Brody winning the year after for his work in The Brutalist. Brody also had one of the most unexpected wins over 20 years prior for his performance in The Pianist. Other shocking wins include Rami Malekin 2019 for Bohemian Rhapsody, which some critics and experts predicted, but manyfelt that Bradley Cooper should have won for his performance in A Star is Born. All these years later, Cooper is still without a win, despite his 12 nominations.
The Best Actor in a Leading Role nominees this year include a stacked list of performances, as per usual. Michael B. Jordan has been nominated for his dual performances as Smoke and Stack in Sinners, the vampire horror thriller from Ryan Coogler, along with Timothée Chalamet, who earned a nod for his work in Marty Supreme, the A24-backed ping pong biopic directed by Josh Safdie. Leonardo DiCaprio has also earned yet another nomination for his unforgettable performance in One Battle After Another, the latest masterpiece from Paul Thomas Anderson, and Ethan Hawke has been awarded recognition for his performance in Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon. Lastly, Wagner Moura earned his first, well-deserved nomination for starring in The Secret Agent. To the surprise of many fans, Michael B. Jordan has taken home the first Oscar of his career for his performance in Sinners, marking the latest in a long list of awards he’s won for the role.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite 🌀Everything Everywhere ☢️Oppenheimer 🐦Birdman 🪙No Country for Old Men
01 What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02 Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03 How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04 What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05 What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06 Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07 What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08 What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09 How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10 What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Because today is Friday the 13th, let’s march our way through the iconic slasher franchise. Ch-ch-ch-ch. Ha-ha-ha-ha.
2027’s First Best Actor Nod Hits Theaters This Weekend
Everyone is already talking about whom the potential list of nominees could be for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 2027, and one of the first could be in theaters soon. Early buzz from critics is saying that Ryan Gosling could earn another nomination for his performance in Project Hail Mary, the space sci-fi epic directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Andy Weir, who also wrote the sci-fi novel that inspired The Martian, Ridley Scott’s 2015 film starring Matt Damon.
Stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of the Oscars.
