2022 Oscar Predictions — Actor & Actress

Who is going to win Actor & Actress at the 2022 Oscars? Here are my predictions! #oscarnominations #oscars #academyawards #bestactor #bestactress #oscarpredictions #brianrowevideo

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[Ernie]

Jessica Chastain has been my favourite since I saw the film in September and I will continue rooting for her. Just like I did last year with Carey Mulligan.

[omegaaa]

my rank for actress:

1. Stewart
2. Chastain
3. Colman
4. Kidman
5. Cruz

Stewart has the best peformance imo Chastain behind her very closely

[joycetyler]

Since 2019, when Parasite won big, I've been wondering what happened that made AMPAS allow a subtitled film to win Best Picture. The answer I came up with was this obvious variable: New blood, newly admitted AMPAS members who actually took the process seriously and watched the films (like Chastain has done since she became a member). That's why, on the one hand, some categories are difficult to predict this year, and on the other, why Will Smith and Jessica Chastain should win and will win in the lead acting categories.

[christianknight]

My prediction for Best Actor is Will Smith and my prediction for Best Actress is Jessica Chastain.

[DamienHurts]

Lucille Ball is Hollywood royalty, I wouldn’t rule out Nicole Kidman winning for this performance. Jessica Chastain definitely has a strong chance, but somehow, I feel like the Oscars will pull a shocker and give it to Kristen Stewart or Nicole Kidman… can’t wait to find out, such a hard category to predict

[bondisteve]

WILL WIN: Jessica Chastain
SHOULD WIN: Penelope Cruz or Olivia Colman
POSSIBLE SPOILER: Nicole Kidman
SHOULD’VE BEEN NOMINATED: Renate Reinsve

WILL WIN: Will Smith
SHOULD WIN: Andrew Garfield
POSSIBLE SPOILER: Benedict Cumberbatch
SHOULD’VE BEEN NOMINATED: Hidetoshi Nishijima

[oswaldotorres]

I wish Jessica Chastain finally wins the Oscar; she deserved it! 🙏🙏🙏

[filmnoirpic]

Smith won the Globe, SAG, BFCA, BAFTA and King Richard is up for Best Picture. Cumberbatch couldn't even win BAFTA. The Colman "upset" isn't comparable. She won BAFTA, the Globe and The Favourite was a Best Picture nominee. Close was the only nominee for her film.

[BFA]

The Imitation Game was more than a few years ago in 2014 to be exact. I agree with both Will Smith and Jessica Chastain to win.

[indigoblues]

I’m already prepared for Stewart to win 🤦🏾‍♂️ She & NEON have pulled out all the stops to campaign her performance. Even though every precursor said “nope”, it’s the type of prestige biopic role voters will love. However, Chastain or Colman are my current prediction. I’m personally rooting for Cruz.

[eaudenikita]

I've been rooting for Nicole from day one and will continue. Nicole for the Oscar!

[queenb]

Will smith and Jessica chastain are both winning the Oscars

[MrHootiedean]

My hopes are for Cumberbatch and Kidman. I agree Benedict gave the most resonating performance of the Actors and Kidman should already be a multiple Oscar winner so if it happens for The Ricardos, then so be it. Nicole was also the best thing in a muddled film.

My picks though are Smith and Chastain. Will has been chasing an Oscar for decades, he has the "narrative" and has already swept. Jessica's been better and for me the makeup obscured her performance BUT she also also has a "narrative" that she's overdue which I don't necessarily agree with but she's also the best thing in another muddled film.

This year nothing really pops. I guess that's due to the pandemic but everything just feels low energy except for the one film no one really saw: West Side Story. Thankfully Ariana DuBose seems like a lock.

I hope you do a last minute prediction list because the narrative seems to change daily and I think Sam Elliot's homophobic, misogynist and completely out of touch comments have rallied support around Power of The Dog (my pick for Best Film) which may lead to some ripples where there was none before. We shall see.

[raymondtitano]

If it comes down to Chastain vs. Kidman, one factor could include a narrative on involvement: that Chastian has had the rights to Bakker/Messner's story for a decade and worked to get it made, while Kidman was cast in a production that was going t0 happend regardless of her involvement. Who knows. Just a theory. Unrelated, it's a bit of the kick that ten years removed from the Twilight series, Robert Pattison is leading a box-office blockbuster at the same time Kristen Stewart is earning her first Oscar nomination.

[cooperwesley]

I do agree that Will Smith is going to win, but I'm not convinced that it's 100%. I saw the film, and wan't impressed with any of it. With that in mind, I also saw MacBeth, and I thought both DW and the film were fantastic. The academy really loves Denzel, so if there's an upset, I'd guess Denzel over Benedict. As for actress, yeah, probably Chastain, but I'm kinda pulling for Stewart, and would not be upset if Kidman claimed her second one this year.

[B.Arthur]

Two brutally tough categories with a surprising lack of easy answers.

I’m not as ready to dismiss Denzel as you are, I think he’s more likely to win his third Oscar this year than Garfield is to win his first, but you’re bang on to say that Bardem is just happy to be there.

The narrative, as nebulous a thing as it may be, is indeed in Will Smith’s favour.

I hadn’t connected Smith vs Cumberbatch 2022 to Close vs Colman 2019 until you mentioned it here - that’s an inspired comparison, and I think it would very accurately sum up a potential Cumberbatch upset. (Obviously some allowance must be made that Cumberbatch has been a known quantity in America for a decade now, whereas Olivia Colman first appeared on most Americans’ radar with The Favourite - but I don’t think this constitutes anything but a potential advantage for Cumberbatch.)

I’d argue though that Smith and Cumberbatch may also represent fair comparisons to Chadwick Boseman and Anthony Hopkins from just last year - with Smith as the populist “legacy” pick, and Cumberbatch as the “legitimate prestige actor” alternative.

“The narrative” of course was in Glenn’s favour. An under-appreciated icon gone too long in rewarded. “The narrative” was so heavily in Chadwick’s favour they restructured the running order of the telecast - and I’d say we ALL got burned for that choice.

The narrative matters - until it doesn’t. I’m not confident the Academy will send TPotD home with no acting wins. I’m not confident Smith’s reputation is strong enough to overcome his competition from the presumptive Picture/Director winning film. His recent output has been consistent only in its unevenness - King Richard may be the closest he ever gets to Best Actor, and the Academy may indeed sigh and say “it’s time.”

Maybe the reason I have such a hard time committing to Smith as my guess is because the last time I guessed that the Academy would give a legacy award - besides Close and Boseman - was Sylvester Stallone in 2015’s Creed. (That award instead went to Mark Rylance for Bridge of Spies.) That was the ONLY award I predicted wrong that year, clearly it left me with some trauma.

I won’t be confident in Smith as the victor until I hear his name read. The Academy clearly loves TPotD a great deal, and Cumberbatch should not be underestimated.

Now, as to the more interesting of the categories - I generally agree with you, but I’d like to swap your fourth and fifth slots.

Kristen Stewart would be my vote in this category, I absolutely loved that film, but she reads to me as the Fatal Attraction / Dangerous Liaisons / Thelma and Louise / Girl with the Dragon Tattoo / Gone Girl Promising Young Woman nomination - a turn too incredible to be ignored, but also too transgressive to actually be awarded. The film’s tone and intensity make it a little difficult to imagine the generally conservative Academy embracing it on a wide enough scale to win. She could perhaps eek through if the two or three frontrunners eat up enough of one another’s votes, but I’m not holding my breath. You mention she’s the only nomination from her film, and while that’s true, I’d also like to point out that Spencer’s score, by Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood, is an absolute triumph and highlight of the film - it’s not nominated in part because Greenwood is already nominated (and will probably win) for TPotD.

I think Penelope Cruz is less likely to win than Stewart, and most of that comes down to language. I was disappointed that you neglected to mention that only two women have ever won for non-English language performances - Sophia Loren and Marion Cotillard. Both did so in categories with relatively little serious competition, (for example, Cotillard’s closest competition was a pre-transition Elliot Page in Juno - hardly a traditional Oscar role or film), which leads me to believe that, even acknowledging Almodovar’s legendary status, Cruz is absolutely not winning. She is the only one of the five who would truly shock me, I just don’t see her breaking through here, especially not for a second statue - but honestly, maybe not even had she lost for Vicky Christina Barcelona, and then lost again for Nine.

You drew the connection between Olivia Colman’s current nom and recent win and Frances McDormand’s two recent wins, and I’m very glad - I’ve been calling this phenomenon “The McDormand Rule, ” and it is simple: the Academy doesn’t care about giving multiple Oscars to a single person in a short time frame - especially not if one of them (probably the latter) is for a Best Picture nominated film.

McDormand is a great example, but so is Mahershala Ali, who recently won two Supporting Actor awards in three years. It doesn’t hurt that both Ali and McDormand won the second of their two close wins for Best Picture winning films, clearly offering them further momentum and possibly the push they needed to overcome their recent winner status.

The Lost Daughter isn’t even up for Picture though, so I’m less worried about Olivia Colman. After another well-deserved nom last year, I think Colman is a more likely upset than Stewart - but like Spencer, this film’s candidacy may suffer a little from its darker and more transgressive nature. The Academy has a long history of using Best Actress to acknowledge the kind of female character or persona they approve of - we’ve come a long way from the era of Greer Garson’s good housewives, but I’m still not sure Colman’s character, as rich and complex as she is, is going to be appreciated or understood enough by the wider Academy to come out on top.

This is in no small part of why I think Jessica Chastain is sitting so comfortably - The Eyes of Tammy Faye is not an entirely uplifting experience, but her Tammy Faye is so electric and bright and is such a joy to watch, I think the sheer fun may carry her over the finish line. She stands out in the category like a bagel on a plate full of onion rolls. This is I think the most important point I can make in this category, if you line all the nominated films and performances up, you have some really heavy and dark material to wade through - and then there’s Tammy. TEoTF goes dark places too, but Chastain’s character always perseveres and endures, she’s always bright and showy and colourful and FUN, and - thanks in no small part to how closely the film sticks to the documentary it’s based on - she’s specifically the Tammy Faye that Academy voters will remember. She’s not redefining an icon here, or plumbing Tammy’s depths for unexpected new dimensions, she’s venerating the icon as we remember her.

Kidman’s Lucy was lacking a lot of what made Chastain’s Tammy Faye great - it’s less energetic, less fun, and for my money, less visually convincing. I don’t see her win for The Hours as much of a disadvantage either, Anthony Hopkins was already a winner (for The Silence of the Lambs in 1992) when he won last year as well, and Nicole certainly has more Oscar caliber performances ahead of her than 84-year-old Anthony Hopkins does. I see it as entirely possible that Being the Ricardo’s goes home empty handed, it wouldn’t bother me at all, frankly.

I suppose my guesses are Smith and Chastain - I’m leaving room for a potential Cumberbatch upset, and I’d be open to a Stewart (or Colman) surprise, but a Kidman or Cruz win would be devastating to me.

[oscarramirez]

I'm hoping for a Stewart victory! She made Princess Diana come alive despite not resembling her in the least bit and her performance was uncanny and brilliant. Although Jessica Chastain did an amazing job portraying Tammy Faye she did so with the assistance of a remarkably talented make-up artist. There is no harm in this but I think actors who can't rely on great prosthetics have to dig a little deeper to bring their characters to life. Moreover, if this were a lifetime achievement award, I would root for Chastain since her collective body of work is undoubtedly worthy of an Oscar. However, as far the best performance in this respective category is concerned, I would make the case that Stewart and Kidman are the most deserving of winning. It seems Oscar voters cast votes for different reasons. While some voters are likely to vote for the person who has been nominated many times but has yet won, other voters may be prone to support an actor/actress who is in a film that is a Best Picture contestant. Personally, If I were an Oscar voter, I would do my best to focus on the individuals categories and what each of the candidates brought to the table.

[matilda]

This has been one of the most shocking awards seasons. I honestly think it's been a spoil of riches. I've watched nearly every film nominated and loved pretty much all of them. Best Actress is for sure still up in the air. All of these women and their films were awesome, and I really liked Gaga, Haim, Hudson and Negga's performances even without their nominations. I do think it's between Kidman & Chastain and honestly they both deserve it. Loved both films, and they were the two I was actually least expecting to like. I just hope whoever wins, the fans can just enjoy and be happy for them. There's been a lot of toxicity in particular over the rollercoaster of nominations for Best Actress this season. Everyone did a great job, hopefully we can all just have fun and enjoy the conclusion.

[lonellfletcher]

I don’t understand the buzz around Kidman in BTR. If she’s gonna get another Oscar it shouldn’t be for this, IMO.

[filmnoirpic]

Stewart and Cruz are out. No Lead Performance has ever won the Oscar without a SAG nominaiton. Chastain has the edge with her SAG, BFCA wins. She is also the only previous nominee who has never won.