The Battle of the Stones Heats Up

The Big Picture

• Emma Stone is no longer the clear frontrunner for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. She’s neck and neck with SAG Award winner Lily Gladstone.
• The other Best Actress nominees at the Oscars include Carey Mulligan, Annette Bening, and Sandra Hüller.
• Find out who wins Best Actress at the Oscars on March 10th.

Senior Producer Perri Nemiroff is keeping you up to date on the leading contenders for 2024’s Oscar for Best Actress based on her knowledge of industry trends and whispers. Check in for updates because just when you think you’ve got the race figured out, the game changes.

Here’s where things stand as of February 24th, 2024:

If you were eager to see an acting Oscar race heat up, you got your wish!

After Lily Gladstone was snubbed by BAFTA, not even securing a nomination while Emma Stone took home that win, it appeared as though Best Actress was no longer a “Battle of the Stones,” rather, a race with a very clear frontrunner. The Screen Actors Guild Awards just changed that.

In one of the biggest surprises of the night, Gladstone, not Stone, claimed the win for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role for her work in Killers of the Flower Moon.

The BAFTAs omission was a pretty significant hiccup for her Oscar win chances, but otherwise, she was cruising through awards season. She won Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama at the Golden Globes, the National Board of Review named her Best Actress, and she scooped up loads of critics organization accolades over the past few months. On top of that, Gladstone made history with her Oscar nomination, becoming the first Native American to be nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards. She’s a scene-stealer in Killers of the Flower Moon opposite industry heavyweights like Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro, has racked up a wildly impressive list of nominations and wins, and also continues to make the most of her time in the spotlight as we near the Oscars. Topping all of that off with a SAG win is a big deal in this Oscar race.

Stone’s loss at the Screen Actors Guild Awards is certainly a bit of a setback, but she’s still a formidable force in the category. Her work as as Bella Baxter in the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed film is nothing short of jaw dropping. Something always feels a bit off when comparing performances in drastically different movies, but it’s also hard to imagine someone walking away from Poor Things without being utterly floored by how Stone gives every ounce of herself to that role. It’s a true performance feat requiring Stone to take her curious character on a high-speed coming-of-age journey. When you look at where Bella starts and where she ends up, it shouldn’t be possible in a mere 141 minutes, but Stone does it.

Had Stone won the SAG Award, she would have become the runaway favorite in the category. But, now that Gladstone has the SAG win and Stone has the BAFTA, among other accolades, Best Actress will be one of the most exciting Oscar battles to watch on March 10th. I’m still leaning Stone by a hair, but anything can happen.

The race between Stone and Gladstone tightening also adds another very exciting potential wrinkle to the competition. What if the two split the votes and leave the door open for someone else to emerge victorious? Of the remaining nominees – Annette Bening for Nyad, Carey Mulligan for Maestro, and Sandra Hüller for Anatomy of a Fall – I see it as an opportunity for Hüller in particular to come out on top. It was already abundantly clear that Anatomy of a Fall had a good deal of support going into Oscar nominations morning, but when it was announced in five categories, it became undeniable that there was even more support for the film from Academy members than most expected. If anyone tops Stone and Gladstone, I’m betting it’s Hüller.

And while Bening and Mulligan both give phenomenal performances in Nyad and Maestro respectively, they seem far out of win range this season. Given Bening and Jodie Foster’s nominations, clearly the Academy is behind Nyad, but the film didn’t consume nearly as much of the spotlight as heavy hitters like Poor Things and Killers of the Flower Moon. Not only does Maestro find itself struggling with that same issue, but also, the mixed response to the Netflix release didn’t help Mulligan’s chances much either.

Most Likely to Win Best Actress:

1. Emma Stone — Poor Things

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2. Lily Gladstone — Killers of the Flower Moon

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3. Sandra Hüller — Anatomy of a Fall

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4. Carey Mulligan — Maestro

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5. Annette Bening — Nyad

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For predictions covering all the major categories, visit our complete Oscar prospectus here and keep coming back. This race is only just beginning.