Vote on Best Actress. (Plus 'How'd they get nominated?')

The Best Actress chart is fully updated for your viewing pleasure with details, stats, and trivia. Here's one curio trivia bit. We believe that this is only the second time in history when all five Best Actress nominees are from different countries! (Usually it's some combo of Americans, Brits, and Aussies). All that plus our semi-annual "How'd They Get Nominated?" breakdown. Before anyone takes offense at the guesstimate percentages (it's all in good fun) please note that these are NOT performance critiques. A truth: You can give the most brilliant performance of all time and still be nominated for other reasons entirely. Awards races, Oscar and otherwise, are meritocracies only in the utopian ideal sense; People are people (including, thus, all voting bodies be they fans, high brow critics, or Academy members) and their reasons for voting in any given way are multiple and varied and heavily influenced by all sorts of things. Plus, it's all subjective too!

Adrien Brody & Ana de Armas in "Blonde" (Netflix)

Let's start with Ana de Armas in Blonde for an example. How'd she get nominated?

67% Role. Awards bodies have always loved Marilyn portrayals which have led to Emmy, Oscar, and Tony nods for various actresses across multiple decades (though not wins curiously enough).
20% Performance. Even people who didn't love the movie admired her work in it.
6% Globe nomination / ceremony shout-outs revived interest in a crowded race.
5% Knives Out + No Time To Die = rapidly ascending stardom (Big stars have a built in advantage in popularity contests) 
2% Early traction! That September release struck while the iron was hot from Venice festival buzz. Blonde was widely seen (via Netflix) before all but one of the major competitors for the nomination arrived (Michelle Yeoh was the exception).

The other four breakdowns are on the Best Actress page where you can vote daily in the "Who SHOULD win?" poll. 

A Record Number of First Time Nominees at the Oscars!

By: Christopher James

Four cast members of Everything Everywhere All At Once received their first career Oscar nominations this year.

Every Oscar year brings both big snubs and wonderful new stats. In particular, this year stands out due to the overwhelming crop of first time Oscar nominees in acting. Out of the twenty acting nominees, sixteen of them are celebrating their first time nominees. This doesn’t point to a green crop of actors since many of them are veterans who have been long overlooked, such as Bill Nighy and Jamie Lee Curtis. In fact, the average age of the Best Actress lineup is 46, which would put it in the top ten oldest Best Actress lineups, based on The Film Experience’s work years ago. Having a healthy crop of new nominees is a sign of health for both the Academy and the film world - they aren’t defaulting to people they’ve rewarded before, but are searching elsewhere for new faces or people they’ve overlooked in the past.  So how rare is it to have this amount of first time nominees?

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Fantasy Cast 2022 Edition: Which Former Acting Winners Should Present For Each Oscar Nominee?

By: Christopher James

Here at the Film Experience, we think the longer the Oscar ceremony, the better - more glitz, more glamor, more movie stars! One of the best examples of this working out was the 2008 Oscars, where previous winners of each acting category gave a special presentation to each acting nominee (see this Supporting Actress example that Murtada wrote about). We did this exercise last year where we paired each nominee with the previous winner we would pair them with for this presentation. Now that we know this year’s acting nominees, we were eager to repeat for the 2022 crop of actors.

See who we would choose after the jump (and Oscar producers, please take these free ideas)...

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Yeoh with the good timing

by Nathaniel R

Michelle Yeoh in "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon"

How's this for campaign timing? While Oscar nominations are announced January 24th (next Tuesday - final predictions right here tomorrow)  Voting on the actual winners doesn't take place until the first week of March (Oscar night is March 12th). In that crucial month inbetween the nominations and the ceremony, look what's coming back to theaters -- CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON (2000) in a 4K restoration! That's right. Michelle Yeoh's other Oscar-worthy Lead Actress performance will be back in theaters on February 17th. Cate Blanchett (TAR) will be hard to beat in Best Actress this time around but this can't exactly hurt the cause to make history in voting for Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All At Once); awards races never happen in vacuums and feelings about whole careers and historical precedent also often enter the room. No Asian actress has ever been nominated for Best Actress and thus no Asian actress has won*... 

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What Are Each Actor's Chances at Oscars Post-SAG Nominations?

By: Christopher James

After a surprise omission at the SAG Awards, what are Michelle Williams' chances at scoring an Oscar nomination for The Fabelmans?Now that the SAG Awards nominations have been announced, we have a slightly clearer picture of the acting races as we get closer to Oscar nomination morning. I use the word “slightly” because there’s always room for surprises. In fact, last year saw four acting nominees earn Oscar nominations without any precursor citations from the Golden Globes, Critics Choice and SAG Awards.

At this stage of the awards race, we have two questions to ask. Which actor with nominations from all three groups will be snubbed by Oscar? Which actor can sneak in without these precursors?

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