The Warren Index: Will They Win a Competitive Oscar Before Diane Warren?

At the 96th Academy Awards, Diane Warren failed to win Best Original Song for the fifteenth time in fifteen tries. Shockingly, “The Fire Inside,” written for the movie about the guy who did not in fact come up with the idea for hot Cheetos, did not win. On the other hand, I’m willing to wager that way more people saw Flamin’ Hot than saw the four previous movies that Warren wrote Oscar-nominated songs for: Tell It Like a Woman, Four Good Days, The Life Ahead, and Breakthrough.

Warren wore a jacket with flaming lapels in honor of Flamin’ Hot to the ceremony. I unironically admire Warren’s sartorial decision to wear an outfit which told us what movie she was nominated for working on. The people who got nominated for Barbie should all have worn a matching pink belt, all the Oppenheimer people could have had a pinky ring with an “O” on it or something. I realize it sounds like I’m being sarcastic, but I am being very serious. It’s just hard to sound serious when the basis for what you’re saying comes from fiery lapels.

It didn’t used to be like this. Once upon a time, Warren wrote for Celine Dion in her heyday, for Laura Branigan and LeAnn Rimes and Michael Bolton. Once upon a time, when Warren was nominated for this award, it was for blockbuster pictures like Armageddon and Con Air. Now it’s for stuff like the hot Cheetos movie, or for an anthology film that I’m not sure ever got beyond VOD.

“Diane Warren is nominated for Best Original Song when the movie in question has no other nominations” is my favorite running gag at the Oscars right now. (“A Martin Scorsese movie is nominated for double-digit Oscars and goes home with zero wins” is my least favorite.) Of those fifteen nominations, nine have come in the last ten ceremonies. Of those nine, only one has come for a movie which got nominated in any other category; RBG was nominated for Warren’s song “I’ll Fight” as well as Best Documentary Feature. The last time a movie with a Diane Warren song nomination won an Academy Award, Pearl Harbor was winning for Sound Editing, a category which technically no longer exists. In the same way that mattress stores are almost certainly money laundering fronts, Diane Warren nominations are omnipresent and unvisited. Yet, like brick and mortar mattress stores, Diane Warren nominations persist.

Enter the Warren Index, an idea my friend and podcast buddy Matt had after the Oscars this year. Will x person win an Academy Award before Diane Warren wins a competitive Oscar? If you’d asked me a couple years ago if the guys from Swiss Army Man were going to win Best Director, I probably would have said no, and yet here are, living in a world where those two nimrods have won the award that Frank Capra and John Ford built.

The question of “Will x person win an Academy Award” is basically unanswerable. Here’s the thing about Diane Warren: she gets nominated basically every year now, and as long as you’re this consistent in a category, eventually you break through. Just ask Kevin O’Connell, the eminent sound technician who lost his first nomination in 1984 and then lost the next nineteen until he finally got that sweet win in 2017. Warren wears more interesting clothes and apparently gets angrier at awards shows than O’Connell does, but her Hacksaw Ridge is very possibly around the corner. Diane Warren sits at the confluence of two potent forces. The first is the might of probability, where things do eventually turn out. The second is the whim of a perverse universe, which seems disinclined to give her that tricky little victory.

We’ll be going through some notable persons (it started as fifty! it’s not ending that way!) in Hollywood who have never won competitive Oscars themselves to decide who’s on the happy side of the Warren Index and who’s on the sad side. I have kept this to actors and directors, primarily, though some of our directors also write, and many of these people produce. Our four possibilities are before (before Diane Warren can win one), after (after Diane Warren can win one), death (after Diane Warren’s presumed demise, which I hope is in the distant future, stop making that face at me, Diane) and, for the times I feel really bold, never. I didn’t count to see if it was mathematically possible for all of these people to win Academy Awards, and neither should you because that’s not the point.

1. Amy Adams

Age: 49
Previous Oscar nominations: 6
Most recent Oscar nomination: Supporting Actress, Vice (2019)
Thoughts: Here’s the list of people with more acting nominations than Adams who never won: Glenn Close (we’re getting there), Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton. Here’s the list of people with as many acting nominations as Adams who never won: Thelma Ritter and Deborah Kerr. The similarities between Adams and Kerr are real, even once you get past the red hair. Both of them are so pretty that it got in the way of getting roles worthy of them for a not insignificant amount of time. Both of them did their best work in genre films that did not yield nominations (Arrival and The Innocents, respectively). Both of them received their first five nominations within a decade. Amy Adams has made a habit of picking just awful stuff to play in, but that doesn’t have to be a terminal condition.
Warren verdict: Before.
See also: Carey Mulligan, Michelle Williams

2. Paul Thomas Anderson

Age: 53
Previous Oscar nominations: 11
Most recent Oscar nomination: Three for Licorice Pizza: Picture, Director, Original Screenplay
Thoughts: Now that Christopher Nolan has won Best Director and David Fincher has made two consecutive movies for Netflix, Anderson has to be at the head of the line for “people r/moviescirclejerk who the Academy also likes.” There’s a real chance that he ends up with an Oscar like Tarantino did for Screenplay, but I’d guess Christopher Nolan’s path (Director, Picture, not Screenplay) is how this ultimately ends.
Warren verdict: Before.
See also: David Fincher

3. Elizabeth Banks

Age: 50
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: Elizabeth Banks isn’t going to get to the Oscars as an actress now if she hasn’t been already, but there’s no one more likely to direct a Barbie sequel or, better still, produce it. Banks’ calling card as a director is her thudding obviousness, so it’s possible that simply moving from comedy to Oscarbait might give her some opportunities.
Verdict: Over my dead body.
See also: Greta Gerwig

4. Angela Bassett

Age: 65
Previous Oscar nominations: 2
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Supporting Actress, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
Thoughts: One of the three most recent honorary Academy Award winners, that alone should probably sink Bassett’s chances at winning a competitive award. For people who look forward to the possibility of Bassett winning an Oscar, giving what is certain to be an excellent acceptance speech, the obstacle to be overcome is probably her involvement on multiple levels with the show 9-1-1, not that she’s won the honorary award. Clearly there is still significant interest in Bassett in the academy, and the last person to win a competitive Oscar after being awarded the honorary Oscar was Spike Lee. They are very different in affect, but in the myopic lens of Oscar prediction, the two of them are both prime candidates for late-career recognition after being shockingly overlooked the majority of their careers.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Ralph Fiennes, Sigourney Weaver

5. Annette Bening

Age: 65
Previous Oscar nominations: 5
Most recent Oscar nomination: Actress, Nyad (2023)
Thoughts: I know we don’t actually know how the voting shakes out within categories, but the narrative about Annette Bening’s Nyad nomination is that she beat out Margot Robbie in Barbie. When I saw Nyad, I could not believe that movie was going to get any Oscar nominations at all. The fact that we are still throwing Bening up there for stuff means she still has hope for a competitive Oscar. More than that, I actually think Bening’s age is an asset, not a detriment at this stage of her career. The tough broad nominations still come out in force.
Verdict: After, though the funniest outcome is one where Warren wins her Oscar at 9:30 Eastern, a full two hours after Bening has won Best Supporting Actress, thus making me barely wrong.
See also: Glenn Close

6. Emily Blunt

Age: 41
Previous Oscar nominations: 1
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Supporting Actress, Oppenheimer (2023)
Thoughts: The Best Actress field is a young woman’s game, and Blunt, while obviously not old by normal human standards, would give the twenty-third oldest performance to win Best Actress if she did it next year. More than that, nine of those twenty-two performances would have been given to previous competitive Oscar winners. Five of those nine belong to Katharine Hepburn and Frances McDormand.
Verdict: After. I don’t want to say “Never,” but like…”Never” has a real shot here.
See also: Toni Collette, Rosamund Pike

7. Sterling K. Brown

Age: 47
Previous Oscar nominations: 1
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Supporting Actor, American Fiction (2023)
Thoughts: Brown is a very fine actor, is probably more famous than some of the movie actors here because of his much-recognized TV work, he seems super charming, and he is sickeningly handsome.
Verdict: Before.
See also: John Goodman, Ryan Gosling

8. Timothee Chalamet

Age: 28
Previous Oscar nominations: 1
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actor, Call Me by Your Name (2017)
Thoughts: The 18-34 demographic might be the biggest fans of Chalamet, but the 35-50 demographic is where most of your Best Actor winners come in. Right now Chalamet feels like he’s en route to some kind of Oscar glory. Color me a little bit skeptical about it coming for Paul Atreides in Dune: Part Two. First, he’d be the youngest Best Actor winner ever. Second, he’d be the only person to win for his work in a sequel.
Verdict: Death.
See also: Maya Hawke, Saoirse Ronan, Anya Taylor-Joy

9. Glenn Close

Age: 76
Previous Oscar nominations: 8
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Supporting Actress, Hillbilly Elegy (2021)
Thoughts: The feel-bad individual of this exercise. I don’t think the win is coming, and furthermore, not only do I think the win isn’t coming, but I think before all’s said and done, Close will break her tie with Peter O’Toole and become the first person to get nine acting nominations and no wins.
Verdict: Never.
See also: Annette Bening, Samuel L. Jackson

10. Toni Collette

Age: 51
Previous Oscar nominations: 1
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Supporting Actress, The Sixth Sense (1999)
Thoughts: On one hand, if it didn’t happen for Hereditary after her other nomination came in a supernatural thriller, then it’s never going to happen. On the other hand, Collette has been such a visible and well-respected actor for many years now. If Allison Janney could do it, so can Collette.
Verdict: After.
See also: Ethan Hawke

11. Ryan Coogler

Age: 37
Previous Oscar nominations: 2
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Original Song, “Lift Me Up” (2023)
Thoughts: After Fruitvale Station and Whiplash came out, if you had asked me to pick which one of their directors would win his Oscar first, I would have gone with the guy who did Fruitvale Station. It’s a better movie, but it’s also a significantly more Oscar movie. Since then, both of them have made three more movies. Damien Chazelle has been absolutely all over the place, and Ryan Coogler has been incredibly consistent. I no longer think Coogler is on track to win an Oscar for Direction, and I don’t think the Academy will be aching to give him one for Screenplay like they finally did for Spike Lee. His chances to spin one (or more) for Picture feel pretty good.
Verdict: After.
See also: Michael B. Jordan, obviously

12. Bradley Cooper

Age: 49
Previous Oscar nominations: 12
Most recent Oscar nomination: Three for Maestro: Picture, Actor, Original Screenplay (2023)
Thoughts: The thing about Bradley Cooper wanting an Oscar so bad is that it’s so, so fine. It is so okay that he wants an Oscar. He’s nearing fifty and his career has been huge since I was in high school, when The Hangover came out. He has outlasted all of the guys from The Hangover, and for all I know he might have murdered Justin Bartha outright. He has made two movies as a director and gotten both to Best Picture nominations. He is a good, if repetitive actor. The memed bit about sleeping with both parents from Maestro is the Emo Spider-Man of this past awards season, which is to say it’s so memorable it’s impossible to say it doesn’t work. What’s becoming truly fascinating is how bad a director Cooper is. At this point I need to see whatever the third movie is, because as accidentally hilarious A Star Is Born was and how truly pointless Maestro was, I have to know what’s closer to rock bottom.
Verdict: Before. He’s going to keep trying, and I just don’t think he’s as cursed as Diane Warren. If the Eagles win another Super Bowl, then I’ll believe it’s Cooper’s year.
See also: Mark Ruffalo

13. Tom Cruise

Age: 61
Previous Oscar nominations: 4
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Picture, Top Gun: Maverick (2023)
Thoughts: Since the 82nd Academy Awards, which mark the now distant nascence of the expanded Best Picture era, they’ve given out fifteen awards for Best Supporting Actor. Two are for repeat winners (Christolph Waltz and Mahershala Ali), and two are for one-hit wonders (Troy Kotsur, Ke Huy Quan). Four apiece have been giving out for ACTING (Waltz the first time, Christian Bale, Jared Leto, Daniel Kaluuya) and character work (Ali the first time, J.K. Simmons, Mark Rylance, Sam Rockwell). That leaves three, and this is the category that Tom Cruise is going to have to fit into if he wants to win a competitive Oscar for acting. Christopher Plummer, older than dirt, won for Beginners. Brad Pitt, who was not flabby, won for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And Robert Downey, Jr., who was playing someone besides Tony Stark for the first time since before the 82nd Academy Awards, won for Oppenheimer. Tom Cruise feels like he should be in this group, but it also really feels like Cruise stopped doing this around the time of the 82nd Academy Awards. He’s done the goofy supporting role thing in Tropic Thunder, he’s done the “remember how serious I can be while also being Tom Cruise?” in Valkyrie. Right now Tom Cruise wants to be Buster Keaton with OSHA and unions behind him, and if he’s decided he’s going to be do this into his seventies, it’ll be his world and his honorary Oscar, not a competitive one.
Verdict: After.
See also: Harrison Ford, Appendix 1

14. Benedict Cumberbatch

Age: 47
Previous Oscar nominations: 2
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actor, The Power of the Dog (2021)
Thoughts: I’m going to put an “after” on Cumberbatch, but if they’d held the Academy Awards on February 27 instead of March 27th, he’d have one already. Cumberbatch showed the range. You get one when you show the range after everyone’s used to you doing something different that they’ve come to rely on and yet have become bored with. Maybe Cumberbatch will do more to avoid being typecast as the icily neurotic British guy in the future, because after he didn’t take it home for The Imitation Game, I don’t think that’s going to do it. We’re all looking for more Bronco Henry handkerchief murmurs now.
Verdict: After.
See also: Ryan Gosling

15. Willem Dafoe

Age: 68
Previous Oscar nominations: 4
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actor, At Eternity’s Gate (2019)
Thoughts: He’s never stopped working, and while he’s working in fairly small roles most of the time, he’s gotten two Oscar nominations since 2018. He’s on people’s minds. I’d feel more confident about this if he’d been nominated for his performance in Poor Things, which was a single Oppenheimer away from being Best Picture this past year. I can’t decide if he’s benefiting from the awards attention that Robert Eggers and Yorgos Lanthimos are getting. Does playing in The Lighthouse or Poor Things keep him on the radar for people, even if no one wants to nominate him for those parts and would rather toss him a nod for playing Van Gogh? He’s got parts in the upcoming Eggers and the upcoming Lanthimos, so we’ll see.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Yorgos Lanthimos, Edward Norton

16. Ana de Armas

Age: 35
Previous Oscar nominations: 1
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actress, Blonde (2022)
Thoughts: Elizabeth Taylor was 35 when she won her Academy Award for playing Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a performance where she is haggard and shrill and probably a million years old. Ana de Armas is 35. You can’t convince me we don’t have a very different relationship to age than we used to. Anyway, thirst-posting aside, de Armas strikes me as a really interesting test case for this exercise because her CV in America is overwhelmingly thriller, action, and crime stuff. Another way to say this is that she’s had, if you count the lead in Knives Out, two performances which might be Oscar-adjacent at all. She’s gotten nominated for one. Maybe she’ll start doing crustier work for established studios rather than action movies for streamers?
Verdict: Before.
See also: Andrew Garfield

17. Caleb Deschanel

Age: 79
Previous Oscar nominations: 6
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Cinematography, Never Look Away (2018)
Thoughts: Deschanel is tied with Bruno Delbonnel among living/active DPs with the most nominations without a win. I don’t know that I’ve ever rated him in the top tier of the profession presently, let alone historically, but there are two things I want to note. First, Deschanel has two marvelous examples of cinematography which puts a lot of emphasis on aerial movement, which makes him special: The Right Stuff and Fly Away Home. Second, Deschanel shot National Treasure and The Passion of the Christ, which came out in the same year. I would read a very long article where Deschanel talks about the differences between working for peak crazy Mel Gibson and presumably normal neocon nepo baby Jon Turteltaub.
Verdict: Never.
See also: Appendix 7

18. Adam Driver

Age: 40
Previous Oscar nominations: 2
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actor, Marriage Story (2019)
Thoughts: I don’t think Adam Driver wants an Oscar, because if he wanted an Oscar, I’m fairly sure he would have one already. The pace has slowed since the torrential slate of big movies he was cranking out through the back half of last decade, a combination of “big movies” as in “Star Wars” and “big movies” as in “the smart set will always return to him in Jarmusch, Carax, etc.” I’d like to see Driver win an Oscar. I’d like to continue seeing him in good movies. I am begging him to block Ridley Scott’s phone number, and I am begging him to just like, get coffee with Noah Baumbach instead of doing his mid movies. I’d tell him to go work with Scorsese again but like, we don’t give out awards for anything that guy does. Sorry.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Don’t even look for Lily Gladstone on this list, by the way, she’s going to get Yalitza Aparicio’d or Angela Bassetted

19. Lena Dunham

Age: 37
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: Oh hey, accidental Girls reunion. You know how every time someone wants to make a crack about how tone-deaf your average starfucking Democrat is, they namedrop Lin-Manuel Miranda? (Before, btw, as long as Billie Eilish takes a break sometime.) And if they don’t namedrop him, they namedrop Lena Dunham? Hollywood is filled with such vacuous people, and even though Girls is so far in the rearview mirror that Allison Williams’ breakout has deadbounced outside recent memory, Dunham is still working. It takes just one script, or just one produced documentary, or one well-placed deal with Apple. If Diablo Cody could win for Juno, I believe that Lena Dunham, who is better at this than Cody, can fire something off that hits people the right way.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Paul Thomas Anderson, Richard Linklater

20. Robert Eggers

Age: 40
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: Four movies in ten years is not much to go on, although, depressingly, Eggers might be one of the preeminent Millennial talents among American directors. Let’s say he continues to make movies at something resembling this clip for the next few decades, and let’s say he makes one that breaks through the genre wall, something mediocre and tame (if the sex is so wild, why does it feel so tame?) like The Shape of Water. It could happen. He’s much more likely to get something to happen for Jarin Blaschke.
Verdict: Death.
See also: Will Ferrell, David Fincher

21. Cynthia Erivo

Age: 37
Previous Oscar nominations: 2
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actress and Best Original Song, Harriet (2019)
Thoughts: Do Daytime Emmys count for EGOT? If they do, then this is the last one she needs. If Primetime Emmys do, then she’s one away, but if that’s all she’s missing it’ll be fine. There’s a chance that we see Erivo win for playing Elphaba in the next couple years, although the movie looks…bad. It looks bad. I don’t know if how bad it looks is going to weigh on her campaign much. Either way, I feel good about Erivo’s chances. The more I watch Widows, the more I find myself watching her.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Greta Gerwig, Maya Hawke

22. Colin Farrell

Age: 47
Previous Oscar nominations: 1
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actor, The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Thoughts: Maybe if we got Colin Farrell to play the Joker, we’d see him garner more attention around awards season? You know I can’t get a handle on how tall Colin Farrell actually is? The Internet says he’s 5’10”. I believe it. It’s a perfectly normal height, but man, he just seems really small in most movies. (They pair him up with taller people, obviously: John C. Reilly in The Lobster, Brendan Gleeson in Banshees, and wonderfully, Nicole Kidman in The Beguiled.) I’m saying this because one of the things I value most in acting is physical performance. You can screw off with your accent work; show me what you can do physically to get into character. Farrell’s great at physical work. Oscars are not usually for physical work you see onscreen.
Verdict: Death.
See also: Keanu Reeves

23. Will Ferrell

Age: 56
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: I don’t think Jim Carrey is going to get one either, but the likelihood Ferrell cowrites an Oscar-winning song is not out of the question.
Verdict: Never, though, let’s be real.
See also: Man, I didn’t even include Jim Carrey. You know what, this wouldn’t even bother me this much if Adam McKay hadn’t won an Oscar.

24. Michael Fassbender

Age: 46
Previous Oscar nominations: 2
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actor, Steve Jobs (2015)
Thoughts: I don’t know if his heart is in it the same way it was 10-15 years ago. Is he more interested in driving race cars? Creating a little army of ubermenschen with Alicia Vikander? God (he said, raising his arms to the heavens), I still haven’t been as excited by an up-and-coming actor’s work as I have been by his, and the older I get the more dubious I become. I don’t know that the guy from Hunger and Shame is in there anymore. I started to worry he wasn’t when he was perhaps the worst part of 12 Years a Slave, where the intensity yielded to overacting. He was not good in two bad X-Men movies. He was in The Snowman, which was DOA and then got double-tapped by the memes. Fassbender has a tremendous ability for finding name-brand directors and working with them on material that never sniffs awards season. Since that shockingly good performance as Steve Jobs, he’s worked with Ridley Scott twice, Tomas Alfredson, Lenny Abrahamson, Terrence Malick, David Fincher, Taika Waititi. Zilch to show for it. Maybe he needs to go work with Yorgos.
Verdict: Death.
See also: Oscar Isaac, Kristen Stewart

25. Rebecca Ferguson

Age: 40
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: Rebecca Ferguson is a name? I have learned this from people on the Internet and in podcasts. Maybe if I’d seen The Last Showman I would know that she is a name, but I don’t know that that’s true, because I’ve seen two of the Mission: Impossible movies she’s in and I had no idea she was in them until I looked her up on IMDb. I thought she was totally anonymous in the first Dune movie. However, I’ve said Lily James is a movie star based on way less evidence than this, so here we are.
Verdict: Before, why the hell not, sooner or later she’ll do a movie that’s not based on pre-existing IP
See also: Margot Robbie, Anya Taylor-Joy

26. Ralph Fiennes

Age: 61
Previous Oscar nominations: 2
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actor, The English Patient (1996)
Thoughts: How bad were the 87th Academy Awards? They were so bad that after some years of not caring about the Oscars, I came back to the Oscars. How bad were the 87th Academy Awards? They were so bad that even the people I’m glad to have seen rewarded (J.K. Simmons, Julianne Moore, Chivo Lubezki) were committing absolute highway robbery against far superior work. How bad were the 87th Academy Awards? They couldn’t even nominate Ralph Fiennes for Grand Budapest Hotel when they gave the stupid thing to Eddie Redmayne. I don’t really have any interesting analysis on this, other than to express my frustration.
Verdict: After.
See also: Amy Adams (not even nominated for career-best work)

27. David Fincher

Age: 61
Previous Oscar nominations: 3
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Director, Mank (2021)
Thoughts: Our third member of this unhappy club for consideration who is 61 at this writing. I’ve gone “after” for both Tom Cruise and Ralph Fiennes, who seem to be in a kind of Oscar hell where they keep working and the Academy stopped caring before Y2K. What’s interesting about Fincher as a creature of awards ceremonies is twofold. One, he’s shown that he can produce something as middlebrow as House of Cards, or make a movie as stolid as Mank, and he’ll get recognized for it. He has this capacity to be dull in a way that is compelling for people his age. Two, he really wants to keep producing a Mindhunter, or make a Gone Girl or a The Killer, and no one will ever reward him for those impulses.
Verdict: Before, but I kind of don’t think it’ll be for Direction.
See also: Paul Thomas Anderson, Denis Villeneuve

28. Harrison Ford

Age: 81
Previous Oscar nominations: 1
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actor, Witness (1985)
Thoughts: Witness went two-for-eight at the 58th Academy Awards. It won for Original Screenplay and for Editing. These were just victories. It also would have won just victories in the following category: Picture! Director! Original Score! Cinematography! And as much as any of those others, Actor! See Appendix 2 for more details on how Harrison Ford was brutalized by the 1980s Academy Awards. Anyway, this guy hasn’t sniffed an Oscar in my lifetime, and he’s almost the same age now that Christopher Plummer was when he set the (short-lived, haha) record for oldest actor win a competitive Oscar. Ford keeps playing lead roles, but I’m absolutely not going to rule him out for a Plummer-esque career of typecasting before ultimately stealing an Oscar as a very old man in a cute part.
Verdict: After, but this moves to Never if he keeps flying planes.
See also: Appendix 2

29. Andrew Garfield

Age: 40
Previous Oscar nominations: 2
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actor, Tick…Tick…Boom! (2021)
Thoughts: I spent most of Andrew Garfield’s thirties thinking, “Man, he’s so much older than he looks, he’s not really a great fit for playing, for example, Spider-Man.” And now that he’s forty I’m like, “The whole world is in front of him, roles for everything from early 30s to early 50s characters is reasonably on the table.” This says more about me than it does about Andrew Garfield. I find him unremarkable most of the time, but when I love his work, I love his work. It is wild to me that he was not even nominated for The Social Network. He should have the Supporting Actor trophy that Christian Bale won for The Fighter, but at the very least he should have the nomination that Jeremy Renner got for The Town, a performance so bad that it drags down a mediocre movie to pure crap. People are usually five to ten years behind on how good a late-stage Scorsese movie is, so we’re finally getting some people learning that Silence is, for most directors and their casts, a once in a career great effort. Garfield is terrific in Silence. He’s even good in stuff like Hacksaw Ridge. He’s got a couple nominations already, and he’s more versatile than a few of the other guys who have only been nominated twice.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Adam Driver

30. Ariana Grande

Age: 30
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: I include Grande here because she’s a big star, she’s obviously talented, and she got her start in front of a camera. See the Erivo stuff above about whether or not Wicked will help or hurt. I have no idea what Ariana Grande wants in terms of movies going forward. My verdict here is me saying “I have no idea,” but in bold.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Maya Hawke, Zendaya

31. Greta Gerwig

Age: 40
Previous Oscar nominations: 4
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Adapted Screenplay, Barbie (2023)
Thoughts: Greta Gerwig has been nominated for four of these things, and in fairness I think we’re all a little angrier about the two times she wasn’t nominated (Director for Little Women and Barbie) than we are about the times she’s lost. I’m sympathetic to Lady Bird, but most of us understand why Get Out won Screenplay that year. I thought Cord Jefferson’s screenplay for American Fiction was pretty bad, but as picturesque as a win for the happy couple would have been, Barbie wasn’t a special screenplay and a different happy couple got a Screenplay win anyway. The problem is 2019. On one hand, Parasite, a phenomenal movie which is unique in Oscars history. On the other hand, Joker, a not very good movie which no one would shut up about for months. Little Women and The Irishman both suffered, and the film they suffered at the hands of most was Jojo Rabbit, which won Original Screenplay despite having…one of the worst screenplays of the decade? I think that’s safe. We’re going to get there with Greta Gerwig. It’ll probably be in Screenplay, but it’s not hard to imagine her winning as a director at all. And maybe she’ll do this the weirdest way possible and pick up a Supporting Actress win. Anyone still mad about her not being nominated for Greenberg?
Verdict: Before.
See also: Yorgos Lanthimos, Ridley Scott

32. Paul Giamatti

Age: I’m not telling you. Guess, and then I’ll tell you.
Previous Oscar nominations: 2
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actor, The Holdovers (2023)
Thoughts: I liked Oppenheimer a lot more than I liked The Holdovers, and I liked Cillian Murphy more than I liked Paul Giamatti. I am still hoping very, very much that Giamatti gets that Oscar soon. Everyone loved Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems except the Academy, but Sandler’s work in Uncut Gems is very much from the school that Paul Giamatti comes from, where all of this frustration is rippling and bubbling (or in Sandler’s case, probably farting) in embarrassing ways. There’s a lot more in there, although I tend to find him a little one-note in leading performances. If we could get J.K. Simmons an Oscar for Supporting Actor, that means we can get one for Giamatti.
Verdict: He’s 56! I had no idea he was 56! He looks like he could keel over at any second! Before.
See also: Willem Dafoe

33. John Goodman

Age: 71
Previous Oscar nominations: That’s right, zero!
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: This is mostly here so Matt can read it at some point and get mad about Goodman’s lack of recognition. Hey buddy. Goodman would have been a success at any time. He is one of the only character actors you could have sent back in time to the silent era of Hollywood, the Golden Era, to pre-nouvelle vague France, to British noir, to Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Germany, any of it. He’d fit anywhere. He’d be great anywhere. Don’t tell the Academy. It’s still too late. He was a good presence in two flat bad Best Picture winners in the first part of the last decade, he was great in Inside Llewyn Davis, and the better part of his performances since have been voice acting.
Verdict: Never.
See also: Appendix 3

34. Ryan Gosling

Age: 43
Previous Oscar nominations: 3
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Supporting Actor, Barbie (2023)
Thoughts: Can a performance at the Oscars get you on the path to an Oscar win in the future? If you’re Rob Lowe, absolutely not. Remains to be seen with Gosling, who has never been the favorite in the three years he’s been up for an award. The Barbie boat hit rocky shoals as soon as Margot Robbie’s nomination failed to come through, and as awards season went on, it became clear pretty fast that RDJ was going to get this win. I’m not sure that Actor is going to be where this ultimately lands for Gosling, but I feel a lot better about him winning an Oscar after losing at the 96th than I did before anyone won anything that night.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Carey Mulligan, Michelle Williams

35. Ethan Hawke

Age: 53
Previous Oscar nominations: 4
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Supporting Actor, Boyhood (2014)
Thoughts: When it didn’t happen for First Reformed, man, it just sort of put a hole in my hopes that Ethan Hawke would ever get an Oscar. When the critics’ groups are going for you and the peak corruption Golden Globes don’t and then the Golden Globes end up being right…that has to hurt. Two of these are for co-writing the Before movies. One of them is for backing up Denzel Washington in Training Day. My heart says he will eventually get one of these, but like Fassbender, I think you have to wonder if he’s ever going to choose projects that make it likely for him to be in contention. He’s a name and the work is always going to be reviewed well. It’s just about catching lightning at the right time.
Verdict: Death, in the sense that I think someone might have to be ritually sacrificed for Hawke to win an Oscar.
See also: Michael Fassbender, Adam Sandler

36. Maya Hawke

Age: 25
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: The lesson from pro sports is that you pay for what they’re going to do, not what they have done, and we’re going to project out some for Maya Hawke. Does it worry me a little that most of her credits are for movies and television that she’s done with one of her parents? You betcha. (I mean, look, I wouldn’t have included her if her parents weren’t famous.) She’s also the right age to get into the mix for Best Actress now that she’s in her mid-twenties. Get some non-TV roles, you’re already a big name, and you’re in the mix.
Verdict: Before, and definitely before her dad, too.
See also: Taylor Swift

37. Oscar Isaac

Age: 45
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: Hey look, another guy who did Moon Knight back when that looked like a smart business decision. It seems like Isaac should have at least one nomination by now, right? I don’t know that he’s going to give a performance as good as he gave in Inside Llewyn Davis ever again, but that says more about the heights he reached and less about his ability. He’s here more because I think he’s one of the very best actors working in film, not because he’s shown any kind of ability to play the awards season game. He’s not working nearly as hard as Bradley Cooper, and it shows; he’s not getting the recognition Cooper is. On the other hand, you know what the last two Best Actor winners have in common? Neither Cillian Murphy nor Brendan Fraser had been nominated for anything before winning.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Sterling K. Brown

38. Hugh Jackman

Age: 55
Previous Oscar nominations: 1
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actor, Les Miserables (2012)
Thoughts: Huge Ackman has to act with some huge urgency. Speaking realistically, he’s got maybe a fifteen-year window to get his EGOT? They just aren’t going to give him an Oscar for being Wolverine, which, if I am counting correctly, he’s going to play in Deadpool & Wolverine for the ninth separate movie in under 25 years. And I don’t think they’re going to give him an Oscar for song and dance stuff, either, because if they wanted to do that, they could have. It’s going to require more of what he’s doing now, but…not as bad. The Front Runner, The Son. Bad Education was actually a really good film, and if that had ended up basically anywhere but HBO, I’d wager he would have picked up another Oscar nomination to add on to his Jean Valjean. He’s got the right idea for what he needs to do if he wants to be in the Oscar conversation, if not the right roles just yet.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Melissa McCarthy

39. Samuel L. Jackson

Age: 75
Previous Oscar nominations: 1
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Supporting Actor, Pulp Fiction (1994)
Thoughts: He has the honorary award, which he actually won the year before Warren won hers. The real reason Jackson isn’t going to win this thing competitively is because I don’t know how he has time to do anything besides hang out with Charles Barkley and Spike Lee in between takes for Capital One commercials.
Verdict: Never.
See also: Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford

40. Scarlett Johansson

Age: 39
Previous Oscar nominations: 2
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actress, Marriage Story and Best Supporting Actress, Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Thoughts: At this point, Johansson is in that awkward immediate post-prime for Best Actress winners, and in truth, lead performances have never been her strong suit. There’ll be some supporting performance that will come around when she’s older, a time when, presumably, she will not trot herself out for another set of franchise movies.
Verdict: Death.
See also: Timothee Chalamet, Sigourney Weaver

41. Rian Johnson

Age: 50
Previous Oscar nominations: 2
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Adapted Screenplay, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022)
Thoughts: The real answer is that if Johnson really does want to make Benoit Blanc movies indefinitely, he might be able to land something in Adapted one of these days. The answer that I like better, and given that the new market inefficiency in the screenplay categories is “romantic partners,” let’s make a wish and say that Johnson and Karina Longworth do a Polly Platt biopic starring Julia Garner, adapted from the You Must Remember This season. Done.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Greta Gerwig, Todd Phillips

42. Michael B. Jordan

Age: 37
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: In a similar boat with Adam Driver, in the sense that I thought both of them would have picked up the hardware by now. In a similar boat with Oscar Isaac, in the sense that I thought both of them would have at least gotten nominated by now. In a similar boat with Scarlett Johansson, in the sense that I thought both of them would have put down the franchise work by now. Except that it’ll probably involve Ryan Coogler, I really have no idea what the next ten years looks like in Jordan’s career.
Verdict: After.
See also: Oscar Isaac, Margot Robbie

43. Barry Keoghan

Age: 31
Previous Oscar nominations: 1
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Supporting Actor, The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Thoughts: Just the weirdest little guy in British and Irish film right now, and I’m really impressed with the way that he’s threading the needle between IP movies and off-kilter dramas. He was in an MCU movie; people do not talk about the MCU movie he was in, and even when they do it’s about ripped Kumail Nanjiani and not about moody Barry Keoghan. He was supposed to be important in the recent The Batman, but Paul Dano was the real baddie and the subject of the film’s memes. Dunkirk is a serious blockbuster, and he got to play a serious part; Saltburn, based on vibes, feels like a blockbuster and he got to do silly things that people took seriously. He’s already got an Oscar nomination. The star is rising for Keoghan, even though I’m not longer sure what he does well. If you’d asked me in 2017, when he co-starred in The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Dunkirk, I would have said he had a gift for the uncanny. The gag is a little stale now, but I presume it will pay off.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Aubrey Plaza, Rachel Sennott

44. Yorgos Lanthimos

Age: 50
Previous Oscar nominations: 5
Most recent Oscar nomination: Two for Poor Things: Picture and Director (2023)
Thoughts: No one can agree which Greek it was who first said, “Call no man happy until he is dead.” When I saw Dogtooth, I was spellbound by it. Here is a novelistic film, I said to myself, a film which is fascinated by the idea of language itself, and which uses language in ways I’ve never really come across in a movie before. It is provocative, sure, but it’s provocation that reeks from some unknown, unfixable place rather than provocation that is merely sticky on the fingers and easy to wash away. What happened to this guy? I never did see Alps, but The Lobster was almost as wonderful as Dogtooth, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer nearly as provocative. They worked. They worked well, and in those films there are images which linger. The crawling girl of Sacred Deer comes to mind, or the way that The Lobster, in the heady days of impossibly dark cinematography, veers towards deep, dark, sensuous brown-black in production design for the woods filled with single people. Of course, I might be the only person on earth who likes The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and so it seems that Lanthimos has decided only to make movies which are easy to like. The Favourite and Poor Things are just Peeps, down to the intonations of “Oh, it’s so wicked of me to indulge in this!” that one hears sliding unironically from the mouths of blue-haired prudes.
Verdict: Before. I’m kind of curious to see if he can win two separate prizes for Director before Warren can win any for Original Song.
See also: Greta Gerwig, Todd Phillips

45. Richard Linklater

Age: 63
Previous Oscar nominations: 5
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Boyhood (2014)
Thoughts: You know how many people have won Best Director after the age of sixty? It’s way less than I thought. Clint Eastwood did it twice, at 62 and 74. (Clint, that ridiculous geezer, is the only person to win Best Director after seventy.) Roman Polanski did it just shy of his seventieth birthday, which we really don’t talk about as much as we should; sometimes I think #MeToo was an out-and-out miracle. Carol Reed and George Cukor directed ’60s musicals to Best Picture and Director, among other things, in their sixties. The last person on our list of folks to win Best Director after turning sixty is Martin Scorsese, who is the closest corollary we’ve got for Linklater in both age and resume, whose Raging Bull was a significant influence on a pre-Slacker Linklater.
Let’s pretend Richard Linklater wins Best Director at the 97th Academy Awards for Hit Man, which he won’t. He would jump Scorsese as the fourth-oldest Best Director on record. He would win Best Director twelve years after making what many people consider his magnum opus, a story reflective of the people in the place where he grew up. He would win Best Director thirty-one years after making a name for himself with a much-acclaimed breakout film. And why not? Scorsese won Best Director sixteen years after making what many people consider his magnum opus, a story reflective of the people in the place where he grew up. He won Best Director thirty years after making a name for himself with a much-acclaimed breakout film. I’m going to choose hope here, though who knows, maybe he’ll actually finish Merrily We Roll Along and he’ll get a second chance at the whole extended timeline business.
Verdict: Before.
See also: David Fincher

46. David Lynch

Age: 78
Previous Oscar nominations: 4
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Director, Mulholland Drive (2001)
Thoughts: Mulholland Drive is eighth on the 2022 Sight and Sound poll. He’s got an honorary Oscar. He’s doing television (I don’t care how good it is, Twin Peaks Season 3 is not a movie). He’s probably making a blues opera which is shot on Play-Doh film. Perhaps more than anyone else on this list, he’s too good for the Oscars. There’s a sadder, slightly darker alternate universe where David Lynch gets slipped pills for dreamless sleep. ABC’s David Lynch looks like a potential Oscars heavyweight: a guy who got his two seasons of Twin Peaks, never made another, and made movies more like The Elephant Man and The Straight Story. Great movies, beautiful movies, and movies that Academy dirtbags can almost understand.
Verdict: Never.
See also: yeah, no, this is the okapi of American cinema.

47. Rachel McAdams

Age: 45
Previous Oscar nominations: 1
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Supporting Actress, Spotlight (2015)
Thoughts: The nomination for Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret was always a longshot, but it kills me that after seeing so many people nominated for Supporting Actress for crap work playing crap moms, McAdams didn’t get a nomination for playing a normal mom. She was wonderful in that film, a mom who is also a daughter who is also a wife, a person who wants to be right for her family and who feels so wrong with a family that gave up on her. As long as she keeps playing these people, I don’t know that she’s ever going to get her due during awards season, but there’s a little ray of light. She did it once for Spotlight. As she gets older and the whole “sweet old lady” business comes into play, could lightning strike for her?
Verdict: Never.
See also: Andrew Garfield

48. Melissa McCarthy

Age: 53
Previous Oscar nominations: 2
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actress, Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018)
Thoughts: See above in the McAdams section, though McCarthy can do sloppy, see Bridesmaids, and middle-aged pathos, see Can You Ever Forgive Me, with more Oscarbait dash. They keep trotting her out for awards presentations, and her movies continue to make money even as the number of types of jokes seems to get smaller each time out. The time will come when she plays someone’s horrible mother and cashes the check for it.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Paul Giamatii

49. Viggo Mortensen

Age: 65
Previous Oscar nominations: 3
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actor, Green Book (2018)
Thoughts: It’s distinctly possible that Viggo Mortensen is simply too weird to ever win an Academy Award, and I respect that. It’s also absolutely nuts that the Academy did not nominate him for Best Actor for 2003, when Return of the King was winning everything else. You know who else wasn’t nominated that year? Russell Crowe for Master and Commander. I recognize that Crowe had been on the ballot a lot in the previous few years, and that Mortensen was playing a fantasy character. But those two performances are not playing the same sport as Sean Penn in Mystic River or, heaven help us, Jude Law in Cold Mountain.
Verdict: Never.
See also: Hugh Jackman

50. Carey Mulligan

Age: 38
Previous Oscar nominations: 3
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actress, Maestro (2023)
Thoughts: She’s younger than I remember her being, which is a positive sign, and two nominations in four years is nothing to sneeze at. (Mulligan in Promising Young Woman, a propos of nothing, is my unlucky case study for one of my favorite Oscar prognostication tests: is this person really the favorite in this category, or do the people who think s/he is the favorite just a big fan of the movie itself? This stopped me from picking Mulligan that year, but it did not stop me from picking Lily Gladstone.) I think about her work in Wildlife sometimes, which is a contender for the best performance of 2018. Hopefully enough people will notice her when she does something else that’s as good, though maybe the path to the Oscar will ultimately lie in a funny bit part like the one she had in Saltburn.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Ryan Gosling, Appendix 4

51. Edward Norton

Age: 54
Previous Oscar nominations: 3
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Supporting Actor, Birdman (2014)
Thoughts: Here’s that cursed 2014 field raising its disappointed head again. Don’t worry, we’re not done with it after this either, you’ll have another chance to be kind of annoyed. There’s a very good case to be made that the only good part of Birdman is Edward Norton’s incredibly funny, and understood to be somewhat autobiographical, performance as a nitpicking, arrogant actor. It might be my favorite performance of the group. I just don’t think you’re likely to win an Oscar if they couldn’t give you an Oscar for making fun of yourself…ten years ago.
Verdict: Never.
See also: Ethan Hawke

52. Barack Obama

Age: 62
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: Barack and Michelle’s production company has been on fire for nominations at Netflix. American Factory won Best Documentary Feature a few years back, Crip Camp and American Symphony have both been nominated in that category, and this past Oscars, Colman Domingo picked up a nomination for Best Actor playing in Rustin. The Obamas are on Rustin and Leave the World Behind. They are moving in for narrative films, and anyone who has ever looked at Obama’s amusingly curated “best movies of the year” list knows that the man presents himself as a big sucker for Oscarbait. They gave one to Kobe Bryant for an Animated Short. It’s only a matter of time until Barack Obama (presumably with Michelle!) wins Best Picture. The real question is whether it will be for a movie that was written or directed by the mysterious new filmmaker “Malia Ann.”
Verdict: Before.
See also: Taylor Swift

53. Robert Pattinson

Age: 37
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: When Pattinson was in his late twenties and early thirties, it was fun to see him team up with David Cronenberg and Claire Denis and James Gray. Now that he’s getting close to forty, I wonder if he’s become a little weary. I thought his Bruce Wayne was pretty solid, but even being in a superhero movie didn’t provide much of a departure for Pattinson’s extremely reticent, quiet acting style. He still hasn’t picked up an Oscar nomination. I’m not entirely sure that he should have one.
Verdict: After.
See also: Benedict Cumberbatch

54. Todd Phillips

Age: 53
Previous Oscar nominations: 3
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay, Joker (2019)
Thoughts: It’s still weird to me that Phillips is someone who’s worth including on a list like this. I just mentioned The Batman, and like, I don’t have Matt Reeves, who is four years older and who has also made a career in genre, as someone to watch. Why is Todd Phillips someone to watch? And then I’m like…it won the Golden Lion at Venice. Does Lucrecia Martel know something I don’t know? Do Rodrigo Prieto and Mary Harron know something I don’t know? What’s happening?
Verdict: Never. I still have to believe that there’s some small logic in the universe.
See also: Will Ferrell

55. Rosamund Pike

Age: 45
Previous Oscar nominations: 1
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actress, Gone Girl (2014)
Thoughts: I like Julianne Moore. I like Julianne Moore a lot more than I like Rosamund Pike. I don’t like Gone Girl. But you know what movie was like, actively bad, actively bad even though it was chuck full o’ talented people? Still Alice. Still Alice was really bad. Julianne Moore was not good in it. Rosamund Pike should probably have an Oscar for Gone Girl, which is about as close as I get to sharing an opinion with people in the Big Picture Facebook group. I hesitate to say that Pike has missed the opportunity entirely, but similarly intense roles have not yielded the awards season results that she might have hoped for.
Verdict: Never.
See also: Michael Fassbender, Appendix 4

56. Aubrey Plaza

Age: 39
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: Perhaps the first person here who I think is more likely to host the Oscars than win an Oscar. The majority of Plaza’s movies have been festival detritus, but every now a little bit of that wind garbage tumbleweeds its way into the Dolby, and as we’ve been saying this whole time, it only takes one. My guess, though, is that Plaza would need to be about ten years younger to have a chance.
Verdict: Never.
See also: Lena Dunham

57. Florence Pugh

Age: 28
Previous Oscar nominations: 1
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Supporting Actress, Little Women (2019)
Thoughts: There are two performances in Oppenheimer which took me by the throat. (Benny Safdie’s took me by the hand and then the elbow and then the shoulder as he did a secret handshake that was a secret to me as well. He was awesome in Oppenheimer.) One of them was Josh Hartnett’s Lawrence, who is almost as brilliant as Oppenheimer but remembers that he is an employee of the American government and not of anti-Nazism, a sane, grounded, representative of bureaucratic malevolence. The other is Florence Pugh’s Tatlock, who breathes an entirely different blend of gases than anyone else in the film. Pugh has this gift, especially in supporting roles, to vibrate, and to be highlighted in that vibration the way the Muses are in Xanadu. I thought she was stunning. And while Laura Dern was very good in Marriage Story, that trophy really should have gone to Pugh. She’ll have more chances.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Saoirse Ronan

58. Keanu Reeves

Age: 59
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: Remember how I wrote that big paragraph up there about Tom Cruise and how the move for big name male stars without an Oscar is to go for Supporting Actor? Yeah, same for Keanu Reeves, whose dearth of Oscar nominations is the second-best proof for Prestige Hollywood’s disdain for action movies. (The first-best proof is making it seem like they were going to announce some version of a Best Stunts award during the 96th ceremony, and then just pulling away and being like, Hey, hope you guys liked that neat montage!) If Reeves wins an Oscar, I’d even be happy about it, which is more than I can say for Cruise.
Verdict: After.
See also: Tom Cruise, Appendix 1

59. Margot Robbie

Age: 33
Previous Oscar nominations: 3
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Picture, Barbie (2023)
Thoughts: Margot Robbie not getting an Actress nomination for Barbie brought out literally Hillary Clinton in support of her, which, there’s a sentence I wish I could have thrown around when The Wolf of Wall Street came out to see what people did. If Robbie had never been nominated before, then that would concern me. But she’s been nominated twice for acting, once for a supporting part in Bombshell which amped up the blonde, and once for the lead role in I, Tonya which amped up Robbie’s propensity to downplay her beauty. She’ll get there, even though I don’t think the evidence suggests she’s going to be a likely nominee every time she does something.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Scarlett Johansson, Saoirse Ronan

60. Saoirse Ronan

Age: 29
Previous Oscar nominations: 4
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actress, Little Women (2019)
Thoughts: There are two paths forward for Saoirse Ronan, who I could have sworn had passed thirty. The first path is the Jennifer Lawrence path, where she’s racking up nominations left and right, and ultimately taking at least one of them home. This would be appropriate, because Ronan is a better actress than Lawrence and I don’t think it’s all that close. The second path is the Amy Adams path, where twenty years from now we’re saying, “Man, she still doesn’t have one of these, how is that possible?” Remember that I still think Adams will win one of these eventually.
Verdict: Before, because the thought of virtually anyone in contention getting an Oscar before Ronan ticks me off a little.
See also: Florence Pugh

61. Mark Ruffalo

Age: 56
Previous Oscar nominations: 4
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Supporting Actor, Poor Things (2023)
Thoughts: Ruffalo has averaged a Supporting Actor nomination about once every three years since his first, for The Kids Are All Right. (One of them was, you guessed it, during the annus horribilis of 2014.) He seems to be pretty well-liked, and the roles he gets nominated for tend to be at least two of the following three things: affable, funny, determined. One of these days the stars will align for Hulk just like they aligned for Iron Man.
Verdict: After.
See also: Rebecca Ferguson, Carey Mulligan

62. Adam Sandler

Age: 57
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: This was the first name Matt gave me, and my answer to him was that he’s going to get his after Diane Warren. Warren is trying, and Sandler, at present, is definitely not. I am in awe of how figured out his life appears to be right now. He makes many, many buttloads of money, and in return he spends his time onscreen with his friends and, increasingly, his family. You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah isn’t good, but it has this unmistakable kindness at its base that makes the film charming and its leads vulnerable. So no, a Sandler who is pushing sixty does not seem to me to be likely to start making films that will win him Oscars, regardless of what he might be producing or writing or co-starring in. However: Noah Baumbach and Paul Thomas Anderson still exist. I’m not going to deny the possibility of this happening as long as PTA is still making movies and, presumably, still has the Sandman’s phone number.
Verdict: After.
See also: Samuel L. Jackson

63. Rachel Sennott

Age: 28
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: Maybe this should be Ayo Edebiri, but Edebiri seems like she’s going to be on television with the tenacious continuity of Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Sennott has the writing credits with Emma Seligman to back her up if nothing else, but if she ever gets out of the same circle she’s been in since the start of her movie career, then we might see her get some kind of meaty supporting part.
Verdict: Death.
See also: Barry Keoghan, Melissa McCarthy

64. Lea Seydoux

Age: 38
Previous Oscar nominations: 0 (but five Cesar nods)
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: I don’t know if Seydoux really wants to go into Anglophone cinema full time, because I doubt very much she’s going to get a part as good as she had in France. If she wants it, though, then she’s going to have plenty of opportunities to star. Marion Cotillard seems like obvious corollary, but Cotillard’s Oscar is for a French movie; I think the right answer is more like Simone Signoret in 1959, for Room at the Top. Signoret was about the same age when she won as Seydoux is now.
Verdict: After.
See also: Rosamund Pike

65. Kristen Stewart

Age: 33
Previous Oscar nominations: 1
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actress, Spencer (2021)
Thoughts: It’s telling that Stewart has been nominated a grand total of one time, and that it was for a part that the Academy could grade against a bunch of grainy news footage from the ’80s. Stewart, as much as she’s a generational icon for people my age, has the quality that the greatest of the old Hollywood stars had. What could you verify in Garbo or Dietrich or Laughton? You either look at them spellbound or you look at them soulless. Stewart, who has this delicate ability to fold herself into singular emotional origami, only got some recognition once Pablo Larrain dropped Jonny Greenwood’s score on her like a cinderblock. I dunno. Maybe they’ll award Stewart for having an obscenely confident sexuality in her films instead. Haha. Ha.
Verdict: Never. I’ve been working on this a long time and I’m choosing violence.
See also: Cynthia Erivo, Florence Pugh

66. Donald Sutherland

Age: 88
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: God laughs at all of us, but at least His cruel laughter must sound kinder in the ears of a Canadian. He has the honorary Academy Award, but…cruel laughter.
Verdict: Never.
See also: Appendix 4

67. Taylor Swift

Age: 34
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: On one hand, Taylor Swift wrote and performed “Carolina” for Where the Crawdads Sing, and that song couldn’t even win a Golden Globe. There’s a weak spot in the armor! On the other hand, Taylor Swift has taken the next step from “pop star who got roped into Cats” to “maybe the most famous person on Earth” since that awfully strange movie came out. Maybe she’ll convince the Academy that she deserves an Oscar for co-directing the next film about her concert tour, “Taylor’s Actual Version This Time, I Promise.”
Verdict: Before, possibly as soon as the 97th Academy Awards.
See also: Barack Obama

68. Anya Taylor-Joy

Age: 27
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: I feel like I have to qualify this a little bit, because not only has she never been nominated for an Oscar, I don’t think she’s even been particularly close. I would be surprised if Furiosa got her a nomination, if for no other reason than the Academy didn’t even toss Charlize Theron a nomination for playing that character in a movie which I’m going to assume is better than this prequel. This is mostly based on name recognition, a couple forays into pop horror from last decade, and the fact that people won’t stop logging The Menu on Letterboxd. On the other hand…Emma Stone was popular in the sense that she was in bargain bin Marvel stuff, she’d been in some raunchy teen comedies from the last decade, and then all of a sudden she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Birdman.
Verdict: Death.
See also: Ana de Armas

69. Tessa Thompson

Age: 40
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: She’s done her part. She has had to stomach way more Taika Waititi than any sane person should have to do. And she’s been the Adrian in three Creed movies now, which is about as much time as Talia Shire had to put in. Thompson is already stretching out into production, which is a good sign, and she’s a little different in each movie she plays in. It makes her exciting to come across. She’s playing confident in Sorry to Bother You as well as Creed as well as, I guess, the Thor movies, but in each one she’s so different. She’s playing a little bit mousy and very competent in Annihilation and Passing, but the characters in both bear no resemblance to one another. I think she has a good shot at this. Goodness knows I’d like to see her get nominated for something one of these days.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Robert Pattinson

70. Denis Villeneuve

Age: 56
Previous Oscar nominations: 3
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay, Dune (2021)
Thoughts: The best thing that could have happened to Denis Villeneuve, even more than making a lot of money off Dune 2 and what looks to be a 92% Fresh rating on everyone’s favorite site for sane critical appraisal, Rotten Tomatoes, was Christopher Nolan winning Best Director. The discourse has shifted. Now Villeneuve is the technically gifted director who makes hundreds of millions of dollars who has never won his prizes at the Oscars. (See Appendix 5.) What’s funny about Villeneuve is that I think there’s a perception (at least from people in the Big Picture Facebook group!) that Dune 2 is going to come to the Oscars and obliterate the competition. I think that’s a distinct possibility, but if it does, I think it’ll happen in the same set of categories it happened in before. Last time, that did not include Villeneuve. Incendies won International Film, but as we all know and think is funny, that prize is awarded to the nation that submitted it, not to producers or directors. I don’t think we actually know what the Academy makes of Villeneuve just yet. The only nomination is for Arrival, which, as we’ve seen earlier, was not even so popular that it could carry Amy Adams to an Actress nomination. The runway is a lot clearer for Villeneuve than it was this time last year, but let’s remember also that Christopher Nolan is three years younger than Villeneuve and obviously further along on the trajectory.
Verdict: After.
See also: Yorgos Lanthimos, Appendix 5

71. Sigourney Weaver

Age: 74
Previous Oscar nominations: 3
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Actress, Gorillas in the Mist and Best Supporting Actress, Working Girl (1988)
Thoughts: Up there in the Scarlett Johansson blurb, I wrote that Johansson seems like she should be on track to win an Oscar, probably in some supporting role, because she’s been nominated a couple times, has been in enormous movies for what feels like ages, and she’ll probably nab some supporting role as she gets older. After all, Johansson got two nominations in one year, which is not usually a good way to win that year, but it tends to speak volumes about how your peers view you. The nightmare awards track for Johansson is that, before forty, she will never be nominated for an Oscar again. Sigourney Weaver was the same age that Johansson is now when she received her last two nominations.
Verdict: Never.
See also: For other cheerful news, see fellow sci-fi deity Harrison Ford

72. Michelle Williams

Age: 43
Previous Oscar nominations: 5
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Supporting Actress, The Fabelmans (2022)
Thoughts: Here’s a very specific list, made of actors meeting the following qualifications: a) never won an Oscar for acting, b) nominated at least three times for Lead, c) nominated at least once for Supporting. Montgomery Clift, Saoirse Ronan, Michelle Williams, Bradley Cooper, Albert Finney, Richard Burton, Glenn Close. (See Appendix 6 for more details.) I’ll let the chart do some of the talking for me, but Williams has a more even split among this group than anyone but Glenn Close, who is split evenly. This is already a list of some outstanding actors, and I think it’s nice for Bradley Cooper that he’s included with them. Of all the young Method adopters, for me Clift rates above Brando and Dean. Albert Finney is one of the few performers who has ever really been boisterous on screen. Glenn Close is a pure technician. Richard Burton was a genius. And right now, Michelle Williams is my pick for the best American actor presently working. She’s in this group of people who have never won but who are also just so, so good. The Academy likes her. She keeps sharing her time between Kelly Reichardt and showier projects. Maybe one day they’ll go together and there will be peace in my heart.
Verdict: Before.
See also: Appendix 6

73. Frederick Wiseman

Age: 94
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: Another one of these folks with an honorary Oscar, which, you know, the very least they could do for a guy who has a real claim to be the greatest documentary filmmaker in the history of the genre. What gets me about Wiseman is that Titicut Follies, which came out in 1967, was made when he was in his mid-30s. He had produced before but never made a feature himself. It’s not as good as Citizen Kane. (Welfare, which he released less than a decade after he began making movies, is as at least as good as Citizen Kane.) No American director since Welles had arrived with so much magnificent sureness of his future style. No American director since Wiseman has. Anyway, his career has been completely ignored by the Academy except for the handoff of a statuette he got, which is sweet. It’s not like he made over forty of these for you guys to check out!
Verdict: Never.
See also: David Lynch

74. Lukasz Zal

Age: 42
Previous Oscar nominations: 2
Most recent Oscar nomination: Best Cinematography, Cold War
Thoughts: Hello, my baby, hello, my honey – hello, my ragtime Zal.
Verdict: Before. Getting cinematography nods for movies that aren’t even in English is probably a good sign.
See also: Appendix 7

75. Zendaya

Age: 27
Previous Oscar nominations: 0
Most recent Oscar nomination: n/a
Thoughts: I’m in an uncomfortable place trying to predict what’ll happen with Zendaya, because the buzz for her is based on her appearance in two franchises where she is playing second fiddle to Twinkledee and Twinkledum, respectively, and a television program. I do not know what the kids are watching on television, or, indeed, what the adults are watching on television. (I know they’re watching Yellowstone but I don’t think she’s ever been on Yellowstone.) She’s entering the sweet spot for
Verdict: Before.
See also: [searching for clicks voice] DID YOU KNOW THAT SYDNEY SWEENEY, A BUXOM BLONDE, WAS IN EUPHORIA WITH ZENDAYA

Appendix 1: Pie Chart for Supporting Actor Wins Since 82nd Academy Awards

Appendix 2: Harrison Ford in the 1980s: How Many Oscars Should He Have?

1980 / Actor – Robert De Niro in Raging Bull v. Harrison Ford in The Empire Strikes Back
- De Niro wins this, sorry nerds. Ford is 0-1.
1981 / Actor – Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond v. Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark
- Alas for you, Hank. In a better world you won for The Grapes of Wrath anyway. Ford is 1-2.
1982 / Actor – Ben Kingsley in Gandhi v. Harrison Ford in Blade Runner
- Once again, being the last person in the world who thinks Gandhi is good bites me in the butt. For me it comes down to Ford being less essential to Blade Runner than Kingsley is to Gandhi. Ford is 1-3. (Also this should have been Dustin Hoffman’s year anyway.)
1983 / Supporting Actor – Jack Nicholson in Terms of Endearment v. Harrison Ford in The Return of the Jedi
- It’s not my favorite Nicholson performance, but again a tie is broken because Sam Shepard, who art in Heaven, will return to earth to beat Oscar voters in the shins with the statuette he should have gotten for The Right Stuff. 1-4.
1984 / Temple of Doom is here, 1-5. This is the first year in this appendix where Ford doesn’t even come up as a consideration for an acting Oscar. All of the nominees in Actor that year were deserving, and that’s before we get to people who would have made good winners outright: Harry Dean Stanton for Paris, Texas, Philip Baker Hall for Secret Honor, Victor Banerjee for A Passage to India, and, dare I say it, Eddie Murphy for Beverly Hills Cop?
1985 / Covered this up top, but hey, 2-6! Congratulations to Harrison Ford on winning two Best Actors in five years. You did it, Real Harrison Ford.
1986 / Actor – Paul Newman in The Color of Money v. Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast
- Mmmm…I like Newman getting this okay. Ford is great in The Mosquito Coast and should have been Our Representative of the Monroe Doctrine to the Oscars this year instead of James Woods in Salvador. 2-7.
1987 / No movie! Michael Douglas and Sean Connery win these by default, which…fine? Still 2-7.
1988 / Supporting Actor – Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda v. Harrison Ford in Working Girl
- I mean, I like him in Working Girl, but no, absolutely not. 2-8.
1989 / Actor – Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot v. Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Boring movie versus boring pick. Wait. Wait, I see something. Something off in the distance. Oh my God, it’s Tom Cruise in a wheelchair! He’s really pushing those wheels hard! He’s – he’s coming for the statuette! He’s pointing a gun at Daniel Day-Lewis, who is also in a wheelchair! Day-Lewis hands it over! Oh my, Cruise has won for Born on the Fourth of July, we have solved so many Oscar problems at one time.

Appendix 3: The Coen Brothers Collaborators Oscar Power Ranking

The Coens are richly underappreciated by the Academy, and it’s no surprise that many of their most frequent collaborators are also underappreciated. What follows is a brief power ranking of the most likely Coen collaborators to pick up Academy Awards:

Bruno Delbonnel. We mentioned him up there in the Caleb Deschanel section. Six nominations for Cinematography ain’t bad!
Mary Zophres. The four-time nominee for costume design was nominated twice for the Coens, but she’s also been nominated twice for working with Damien Chazelle, on La La Land and Babylon. It typically takes a while for costume designers to work their way into the winners’ circle, but once they get nominated a fair bit, the time seems to come.
Steve Buscemi. He’s sixty-six right now, but he’s looked sixty-six for about sixty years, so that’s fine. As we learned in Appendix 1, about twenty-five percent of recent Supporting Actor wins have come for people working in character mode, which is a manageable number for Buscemi to work within if he’s going to get his first nomination.
Carter Burwell. Now that Burwell doesn’t have those Coens to keep him down (who even thinks the Fargo score is good anyway), who knows what heights he may ascend. He’s gotten three nominations for Score in the past decade, and it seems like he and Martin McDonagh have an understanding.
Tim Blake Nelson. The guy writes, too, so he’s got more angles than the next two on the list.
John Turturro. TV is good to him.
Stephen Root. TV is not quite as good to him.

Appendix 4: Pride and Prejudice

Appendix 5: I Have to Get Away from Normie Film Twitter

Appendix 6: Three Lead Nominations, One Supporting, No Oscars

Name	# of Nominations	Age at Last Nomination
Richard Burton	7	52
Montgomery Clift	4	41
Glenn Close	8	74
Bradley Cooper	5	49
Albert Finney	5	64
Saoirse Ronan	4	25
Michelle Williams	5	42