Oscars 2024: Who should win best actress?

Stone missed out on a supporting actress Oscar in 2019 for her role in a Yorgos Lanthimos movie (The Favorite), so it only seems right that she should have a chance at redemption in another Lanthimos joint – and for the big prize, no less.

Of course, Stone already won the Best Actress Oscar in 2017 for La La Land. But her strikingly oddball performance in Poor Things couldn’t be more different, and a second win would serve to illustrate Stone’s astounding range.

In Poor Things, Stone plays Bella Baxter, a fully grown woman imbued with the mind of a child as a result of a ghoulish Victorian experiment by Willem Dafoe’s mad scientist.

It’s a voyage of self discovery, and a deeply strange one at that. Stone sells it every step of the way.

Sandra Hüller stars in two of the hottest films of the current awards season, but it’s her performance as German novelist Sandra Voyter in Anatomy of a Fall that could take her to personal glory.

When her husband suffers a fatal fall at their snowy French Alpine chalet, Voyter rapidly moves from experiencing the natural sympathy afforded to a grieving widow to outright hostility as the key suspect in a murder case. Uncomfortable details about her marriage soon begin to come to light.

In the ensuing courtroom maelstrom, Hüller is the calm (perhaps too calm) centre, treating a series of increasingly incendiary accusations and prosecution tricks with remarkable poise.

On the charge of playing a key role in one of the best films of the year? Guilty as charged, Your Honour.

Some have suggested Maestro is custom engineered to secure its writer, director, and star Oscar glory, and Bradley Cooper certainly cuts a dominant figure at the film’s heart. However, Carey Mulligan’s stunning performance turns the movie into a double act.

Mulligan plays Felicia Montealegre, the wife of American composer Leonard Bernstein, who has to suffer through her husband’s obsessions, substance abuse, and frequent infidelities across 25 tumultuous years of marriage.

The British actress has been nominated for this award twice in the past, with the last of those coming in 2020 for her role in Emerald Fennell’s (Saltburn) Promising Young Woman.

Is third time the charm for our very own Carey Mulligan? The odds seem stacked against her, but you never know in Hollywood.

Lily Gladstone was, by many people’s estimation, the stand out performance in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. That’s all the more remarkable when you consider she starred alongside Marty stalwarts (stalMarts?) Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Hers is a performance of beguiling resolve, confidence, and no-nonsense charm. Gladstone plays Mollie Kyle, a wealthy Osage woman in the early 20th century who finds herself targeted by an unscrupulous land owner (De Niro) and his ambitious but lunk-headed nephew (DiCaprio).

Gladstone is widely held to be a front runner for the prize this year, right up alongside Emma Stone. With a Golden Globe Award already under her belt, you’d be foolish to bet against her.

It would be a first if so, with no indigenous American performer having ever won an acting Oscar before.

It seems strange to call one of Hollywood’s most distinguished living actors an outside bet for Oscar success, but that’s largely down to the ‘under the radar’ nature of the film that secured her the nomination.

Bening here plays the titular role of Diana Nyad, an American swimmer who determines to swim the Straits of Florida at the tender age of 60.

It’s a solid film with a typically excellent performance from Bening (no to mention a strong supporting effort from Jodie Foster), but it’s not in the same league as a Killers of the Flower Moon or a Pretty Things.

However, the one note of caution we should issue here is that the Academy likes to reward actors who have served their time. With Bening only having been nominated four times for an Oscar in a 40 year career, and never having won, this could be her moment to be ordained.