The nominations for the 2025 BAFTAs have been announced, which means it's time for Cinema Paradiso users to make their annual predictions!
Each year, Cinema Paradiso invites members to use their film knowledge to predict the winners in the 26 competition categories at the British Academy Film Awards - including the brand new Children and Family Film Award.
So, why not cast your votes before David Tennant hosts the 78th edition of Britain's oldest and most prestigious awards event at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday 16 February?
The person who correctly predicts the most winners will receive SIX MONTHS of free rentals from CinemaParadiso.co.uk. Cast your vote by clicking here!
Before you vote, though, we thought you might like to know a bit about the contenders in the six major categories, as well as past voting trends.
BEST FILM
Having appointed juries to prevent a repeat of the issues behind the 2020 #BaftaSoWhite controversy, the British Academy Film Awards reverted to a simple nominations process for the 78th annual edition. The introduction of juries had been a contentious initiative, but commentators have been quick to notice the drop in the number of women in the directing and writing categories and the lack of diversity across the non-acting bands. Damned if you do and damned if you don't, it would seem.
But British directors have had a lean time of things this year, too, although there was redemption of sorts in the Outstanding British Film selection that sees Andrea Arnold's Bird, Steve McQueen's Blitz, Ellen Kuras's Lee, and Rose Glass's Love Lies Bleeding go some way to redressing the balance alongside Edward Berger's Conclave, Ridley Scott's Gladiator II, Mike Leigh's Hard Truths, Rich Peppiatt's Kneecap, Nora Fingscheidt's The Outrun, and Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham's Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
Announced on 3 January, the 2025 'longlists' enabled Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez to equal the record for 15 citations that had first been set by first set by Edward Berger's All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) before it was matched last year by Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, Greta Gerwig's Barbie, and Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon (all 2023). Ultimately, however, the controversial musical shed four nods to end up with 11 nominations behind Conclave with 12 (a drop of two from the longlist). Brady Corbet's The Brutalist also lost two nods to wind up with nine nominations, while James Mangold's A Complete Unknown (six) and Coralie Fargeat's The Substance (five) spiralled down from 11 citations. By contrast, John M. Chu's Wicked and Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two only lost three each to end up with seven nominations, while Gladiator II crashed from nine longlist tags to just three nominations.
As usual at this time of year, people question why the Oscars have 10 Best Picture nominees while BAFTA matches this number in the Outstanding British Film category while only having five berths for Best Film. Similarly, why do the Golden Globes divide films along Drama and Musical or Comedy lines when no one else does? We'd like to say we knew, but we don't.
Despite being directed by a German, Edward Berger's adaptation of Robert Harris's papal thriller, Conclave is the only title this year with a chance of repeating the double of Best Film and Outstanding British Film achieved by David Lean's The Sound Barrier (1952), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Laurence Olivier's Richard III (1955). Jack Clayton's Room At the Top (1958), Tony Richardson's Tom Jones (1963), Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), Fred Zinnemann's A Man For All Seasons (1966), Tom Hooper's The King's Speech (2010), and Sam Mendes's 1917 (2019).
Of the 42 nominated features this year, 35 debuted at major festivals, while the other seven were high-profile studio releases. Perhaps the most remarkable inclusion is Kneecap, which was made on a shoestring in the Irish language and which has now become the most nominated debut in BAFTA history, having been listed for Best Original Screenplay, Film Not in the English Language, Casting, and Editing, as well as Outstanding Debut and Outstanding British Film.
However, this anarchic rap biopic failed to make the Best Film cut after being longlisted, as fate shared by Ali Abbasi's The Apprentice, Dune: Part Two, The Substance, and Wicked. But let's take a look at the contenders up for the prize and assess their chances in alphabetical order.
Now in his early fifties, Sean Baker has spent the last two decades provoking audiences with such fine features as Take Out (2004), Starlet (2012), Tangerine (2015), The Florida Project (2017), and Red Rocket (2021). He's now hit the jackpot with Anora, which has earned him a hefty haul of BAFTA nominations and a new audience. The story opens in the Brighton Beach neighbourhood of Brooklyn, where sex worker Anora Mikheeva (Mikey Madison) becomes involved with student Ivan Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), who proposes marriage during a trip to Las Vegas so that he can get a green card and stay in the United States. However, his father, Nikolai (Aleksei Serebryakov), is a wealthy Russian oligarch and he contracts with Armenian henchman, Toros (Karren Karagulian), to have Russian stooge Igor (Yura Borisov) annul the marriage and fetch his son home.
You have to go back to Max Ophüls's La Ronde (1950) to find a Best Film winner with a prostitute in a key role. Léocadie was played by Simone Signoret, while Joe Buck was essayed by Jon Voight in John Schlesinger's gigolo saga, Midnight Cowboy (1969). Baker's Palme d'or-winning visual style was influenced by such New Hollywood crime classics as William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971) and Joseph Sargent's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), but this kind of picture has never before taken the top prize at the BAFTAs. Is this the year?
Following on from The Childhood of a Leader (2015) and Vox Lux (2018), The Brutalist is Brady Corbet's third directorial outing. Chronicling the career of an aspiring architect who has survived the Holocaust, the drama has been inspired by the life of modernist maestro, Marcel Breuer. However, not everyone has taken kindly to the liberties that Corbet has taken in following Hungarian Jew, László Tóth (Adrien Brody), from the Buchenwald concentration camp to the Pennsylvania furniture business run by his cousin, Attila (Alessandro Nivola).
Although William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) explored postwar America, it did so from a contemporary angle, as did such 'problem picutres' as Edward Dmytryk's Crossfire (1947). Subsequently, BAFTA has shown little interest in films dealing with everyday life in 1950s America, with Todd Haynes's Carol (2015) being among the few to be nominated for Best Film. Similarly, studies of thinkers and creatives have not fared particularly well, despite John Boulting's The Magic Box (1951), Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind (2001), Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game, and James Marsh's The Theory of Everything (both 2014) all being nominated and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (2023) taking the top prize. Perhaps this satisfyingly weighty film à clef will continue the trend?
Singer biopics have rarely troubled the BAFTA electorate where Best Film is concerned. Indeed, James Mangold's A Complete Unknown is only the second to be nominated after Baz Luhrmann's Elvis (2022). Timothée Chalamet stars as Bob Dylan alienating the folk cognoscenti by (among other things) playing electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. With Edward Nortion as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash (whose career Mangold had previously chronicled in Walk the Line, 2005), this is aiming to be the first showbiz biopic to win the BAFTA since Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett portrayed Howard Hughes and Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (2004).
Doctrine, diplomacy, and duplicity combine in Edward Berger's Conclave. When the pope dies, Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is put in charge of organising the ballot for his successor. There are four front runners: liberal American Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci); Canadian moderate Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow), Nigerian conservative Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), and Italian traditionalist, Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto). But tensions start to rise when Dean Lawrence allows Vincent Benitez (Carlos Diehz), a Mexican cardinal who has been working in Afghanistan, to join the college and unsettle the candidates.
A number of Best Film nominees have centred on clerics since Maurice Cloche's Monsieur Vincent (1947) recalled the life of St Vincent de Paul. Cloche also teamed with Ralph Smart's on Never Take No For an Answer (1951), since when Julien Duvivier's The Little World of Don Camillo (1952), Leo Joannon's Le Défroqué (1954), Roland Joffé's The Mission (1986), and Louis Malle's Au revoir les enfants (1988) have competed for the award. As have two slices of English history, Peter Glenville's Becket (1964) and the aforementioned A Man For All Seasons, in which the future of the church was cast into doubt. Who knows if white smoke will billow over the South Bank on 16 February, but this year's most nominated feature is certainly in with a shout.
Completing the 2024 line-up is Emilia Pérez, which breaks new ground as the first musical about a trans Mexican cartel boss to be nominated for Best Film. Other more traditional entries in the genre have been up for the award, including Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's On the Town (1949) and Singin' in the Rain (1952), Vincente Minnelli's An American in Paris (1951) and Gigi (1959), Charles Walters's Lili (1953), Stanley Donen's Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954), Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones (1955), Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Guys and Dolls (1955), Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise's West Side Story (1961), Carol Reed's Oliver! (1968), Richard Attenborough's Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), Alan Parker's Bugsy Malone (1976), Rob Marshall's Chicago (2002), Tom Hooper's Les Misérables (2012), and Bradley Cooper's A Star Is Born (2019). But four musicals have waltzed off with the golden mask: George Cukor's My Fair Lady (1964), Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972), Alan Parker's The Commitments (1991), and Damien Chazelle's La La Land (2016). None, however, brought the same behind-the-scenes baggage to the ceremony.
Emilia Peréz is also a rare foreign-language inclusion in the Best Film category. That said, Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948), La Ronde (1950), René Clément's Forbidden Games (1952) and Gervaise (1956), Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear (1953), Grigori Chukhrai's Ballad of a Soldier (1959), François Truffaut's Day For Night (1973), Louis Malle's Lacombe, Lucien (1974), Claude Berri's Jean de Florette (1987), Alfonso Cuarón's Roma (2018), and All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) have all won against the linguistic odds. So, who knows? This is where the skill and judgement of Cinema Paradiso members comes in!
DIRECTOR
Not a single Brit managed to land a nomination for Best Film, Best Director, or Best Documentary at the 78th BAFTAs. However, it's been a good year for France, with both Jacques Audiard (Emilia Peréz) and Coralie Fargeat (The Substance) in line to join François Truffaut (Day For Night, 1973), Louis Malle ( Atlantic City, 1980 & Au revoir les enfants), and Michel Hazanavicius ( The Artist, 2011) in the pantheon.
Formerly named after David Lean, the Best Director category was only introduced in 1968 and Bob Fosse (Cabaret), Alan Parker (The Commitments), and Damien Chazelle (La La Land) are alone in having won the award for a musical. In a feature career stretching back three decades, Audiard has twice won the BAFTA for Best Foreign Film with The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005) and A Prophet (2009), but this is his first nomination for Best Director. Cinema Paradiso users can follow Audiard's evolution by renting See How They Fall (1994), A Self Made Hero (1996), Read My Lips (2001), Rust and Bone (2012), Dheepan (2015), The Sisters Brothers (2018), and Paris, 13th District (2021).
Coralie Fargeat's debut, Revenge (2017), is also available to rent. Despite the longlist including Payal Kapadia ( All We Imagine As Light ), Alice Rohrwacher ( La Chimera ), Ellen Kuras (Lee), and Nora Fingscheidt (The Outrun), Fargeat is the only woman to receive a nomination. This repeats last year's situation, when Justine Triet ( Anatomy of a Fall, 2023) was the lone female, and shows how things have changed since 2021, when Chloé Zhao ( Nomadland ), Jasmila Žbanic ( Quo Vadis, Aida? ), Sarah Gavron (Rocks), and Shannon Murphy ( Babyteeth ) were all up for Best Director.
Zhao won the award, as did Kathryn Bigelow ( The Hurt Locker, 2009) and Jane Campion ( The Power of the Dog, 2021). But Fargeat would have to make BAFTA history, as no one has been named Best Director for a horror film. Joined this year on five nominations by Robert Eggers's Nosferatu, The Substance doubles as a satire. But genre fans will rank this as a good year, as Denis Villeneuve was also nominated for Dune: Part Two. Indeed, all three of his Best Director nods have come for science fiction titles, with Arrival (2016) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017) making him the category's most-nominated Canadian. The follow-up to Dune (2021) has landed seven nominations in all. Yet, while sci-fi has had its glory moments, courtesy of Alfonso Cuarón ( Gravity, 2013), and Guillermo del Toro ( The Shape of Water ), no one has yet to win Best Director with a sequel.
Villeneuve is in august company on three nominations, but Edward Berger would join an even more exclusive club, if Conclave follows All Quiet on the Western Front by giving him a second win and putting him on a par with John Schlesinger, Woody Allen, Alan Parker, Louis Malle, Roman Polanski, Peter Weir, Ang Lee, and Alfonso Cuarón. Wim Wenders ( Paris, Texas, 1984) is the only other German to have won the award. But, while literary adaptations have done well down the decades, political thrillers have been less feted, with only Ben Affleck winning Best Director for Argo (2012).
Brady Corbet joins the BAFTA race having already won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and the Best Director prize at the 82nd Golden Globes. The period setting and the sombre tone had led many to see The Brutalist as this year's Oppenheimer. But Holocaust-related stories have taken the category before, notably Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993) and Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002). Moreover, this chronicle of postwar America shares a timeframe (and the odd theme) with Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas (1990) and the 'transformational aspirationalism of David Fincher's The Social Network (2010). Maybe Corbet could become the first winner in the category for making a film à clef
Even if he doesn't win for Anora, Sean Baker has secured himself a place in BAFTA history. By being nominated for Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Casting, and Best Editing, he becomes the second-most nominated individual at a single ceremony. He was pipped to top spot, however, by Alfonso Cuarón, who received six nominations and won four awards for Roma. This was also a story about reality intruding upon the lives of children from a privileged background, although the Mexican kids were a lot younger than the wayward Russian oligarch's scion in Baker's comedy, which also overlaps with Mike Nichols's The Graduate (1967) and Atlantic City. There are also precedents for Best Director going to film about sex workers, as both John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother (1999) prevailed, with the latter also taking the award for Best Film Not in the English Language.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Despite lobbying, there was no room on the Best Supporting Actress longlist for Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (Nickel Boys), Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown), or Danielle Deadwyler (The Piano Lesson). Falling at the final hurdle were Adriana Paz (Emilia Pérez), Emily Watson ( Small Things Like These ), Michele Austin (Hard Truths), and Margaret Qualley (The Substance), with latter being particularly unlucky to be overlooked, as she does a lot of the heavy lifting that enables Demi Moore to make such an impact in Coralie Fargeat's body horror.
Nominated for the first time, the Emilia Pérez duo of Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez may well find their votes being split, as so often happens when co-stars are nominated in the same category. As is the case with Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo in Wicked, they are also up for a BAFTA alongside co-star Karla Sofía Gascón, who has been nominated for Best Actress. In the past, such double-ups have resulted in wins for Maggie Smith and Celia Johnson in Ronald Neame's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), with Pamela Franklin also being nominated for her supporting role; Ellen Burstyn and Diane Ladd in Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), with Lelia Goldoni also beng nominated; Maggie Smith and Liz Smith in Malcolm Mowbray's A Private Function (1984); Maggie Smith and Judi Dench in James Ivory's A Room With a View (1985), with Rosemary Leach losing out; Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet in Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995), with Elizabeth Spriggs also nominated; and Olivia Colman and Rachel Weisz for Yorgos Lanthimos's The Favourite (2018), with Emma Stone being the unfortunate one to be overlooked.
There are also several instances where one or neither of the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress nominees had triumphed, notably Jane Fonda and Susannah York for Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969); Lynn Carlin and Georgia Engel for Miloš Forman's Taking Off and Nanette Newman and Georgia Brown for Bryan Forbes's The Raging Moon (both 1971); Liza Minnelli and Marisa Berenson for Cabaret (1972); Joanne Woodward and Sylvia Sidney for Gilbert Cates's Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973); Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, and Mariel Hemingway for Manhattan; Katharine Hepburn and Jane Fonda for Mark Rydell's On Golden Pond and Diane Keaton and Maureen Stapleton for Warren Beatty's Reds (1981); Julie Walters and Maureen Lipman for Lewis Gilbert's Educating Rita and Jessica Lange and Teri Garr for Sydney Pollack's Tootsie; Meryl Streep and Cher for Mike Nichols's Silkwood (1983); Mia Farrow and Barbara Hershey for Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986); Anne Bancroft and Judi Dench for David Jones's 84 Charing Cross Road and Cher and Olympia Dukakis for Norman Jewison's Moonstruck (both 1987); Jamie Lee Curtis and Maria Aitken for Charles Crichton's A Fish Called Wanda, Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver for Mike Nichols's Working Girl, and Michelle Pfeiffer and Glenn Close for Stephen Frears's Dangerous Liaisons (all 1988); Emma Thompson and Helena Bonham Carter for James Ivory's Howards End and Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates for Jon Avnet's Fried Green Tomatoes (both 1991); Brenda Blethyn and Marianne Jean-Baptiste for Mike Leigh's Secrets & Lies and Kristin Scott Thomas and Juliette Binoche for Anthony Minghella's The English Patient (both 1996); Gwyneth Paltrow and Judi Dench for John Madden's Shakespeare in Love and Jane Horrocks and Brenda Blethyn for Mark Herman's Little Voice (both 1997); Annette Bening, Mena Suvari, and Thora Birch for American Beauty (1999).
More recently, the examples include Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench, and Lena Olin for Lasse Hallström's Chocolat (2000); Kate Hudson and Frances McDormand for Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous, and Michelle Yeo and Ziyi Zhang for Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (all 2000); Judi Dench and Kate Winslet in Richard Eyre's Iris (2001); Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, and Julianne Moore for Stephen Daldry's The Hours and Renée Zellwegger, Catherine Zeta Jones, and Queen Latifah for Chicago; Scarlett Johansson and Judy Parfitt for Peter Webber's Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003); Imelda Staunton and Heather Craney for Mike Leigh's Vera Drake and Kate Winslet and Julie Christie for Marc Forster's Finding Neverland (both 2004); Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand for Niki Caro's North Country (2005); Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt for David Frankel's The Devil Wears Prada (2006); Keira Knightley and Saoirse Ronan for Joe Wright's Atonement (2007); Meryl Streep and Amy Adams for John Patrick Shanley's Doubt (2008); Gabourey Sidibe and M'onique for Lee Daniels's Precious (2009); Natalie Portman and Barbara Hershey in Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan (2010); Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, and Jessica Chastain for Tate Taylor's The Help (2011); Cate Blanchett and Sally Hawkins for Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine and Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams for David O. Russell's American Hustle (both 2013); Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara for Carol; Margot Robbie and Allison Janney for Craig Gillespie's I, Tonya, Sally Hawkins and Octavia Spencer for The Shape of Water, and Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf for Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird (all 2017); Scarlett Johansson and Laura Dern for Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story, Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie for Jay Roach's Bombshell, and Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh for Greta Gerwig's Little Women (both 2018); Bukky Bakray and Kosar Ali for Rocks; and Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga for Rebecca Hall's Passing (2021).
Also first-time nominees in this category, Felicity Jones (who has a Best Actress nod for The Theory of Everything) and Isabella Rossellini will be hoping that history can repeat itself with a respective Best Supporting Actress and Best Actor match-up for The Brutalist (Adrien Brody) and Conclave (Ralph Fiennes). The previous dual wins came courtesy of Ben Kingsley and Rohini Hattangadi for Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982); Hugh Grant and Kristin Scott Thomas for Mike Newell's Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), although Charlotte Coleman missed out; Jamie Bell and Julie Walters for Stephen Daldry's Billy Elliot (2000); Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly for Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind 2001); and Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter for Tom Hooper's The King's Speech (2010).
There are many more examples, however, where either one or neither nominee has left the stage clutching a statuette. Cinema Paradiso users can delve into BAFTA history by taking their pick from the following overlaps between Gene Hackman and Shelley Winters for Ronald Neame's The Poseidon Adventure (1972); Albert Finney and Ingrid Bergmn for Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express (1974); Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976); Peter Ustinov, Angela Lansbury, and Maggie Smith for John Guillermin's Death on the Nile (1978); Woody Allen, Meryl Streep, and Mariel Hemingway for Manhattan (1979); Warren Beatty and Maureen Stapleton for Reds; Michael Caine and Maureen Lipman for Educating Rita and Dustin Hoffman and Teri Garr for Tootsie; Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney, and Eileen Atkins for Peter Yates's The Dresser (1984); Woody Allen, Michael Caine, and Barbara Hershey for Hannah and Her Sisters; Michael Douglas and Anne Archer for Adrian Lyne's Fatal Attraction (1987); John Cleese, Kevin Kline, and Maria Aitken for Charles Crichton's A Fish Called Wanda (1988); Stephen Rea and Miranda Richardson for Neil Jordan's The Crying Game (1992); Tom Hanks and Sally Field for Robert Zemeckis's Forrest Gump (1994); Geoffrey Rush and Lynne Redgrave for Scott Hicks's Shine, Timothy Spall and Marianne Jean-Baptiste for Secrets & Lies, and Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche for The English Patient (all 1996); Robert Carlyle and Lesley Sharp for Peter Cattaneo's The Full Monty; and Kevin Spacey, Thora Birch, and Mena Suvari for American Beauty.
Since the millennium, the double-ups have been Kevin Spacey and Judi Dench for Lasse Hallström's The Shipping News and Jim Broadbent and Kate Winslet for Iris (both 2001); Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep for Spike Jonze's Adaptation (2002); Jude Law and Renée Zellwegger for Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain and Sean Penn and Laura Linney for Clint Eastwood's Mystic River (both 2003); Leonardo DiCaprio and Cate Blanchett for The Aviator and Johnny Depp and Julie Christie for Finding Neverland; Philip Seymour Hoffman and Catherine Keener for Bennett Miller's Capote and Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams for Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain (both 2005); Richard Griffiths and Frances De La Tour for Nicholas Hytner's The History Boys (2006); George Clooney and Tilda Swinton for Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton and James McAvoy and Saoirse Ronan for Atonement (boh 2007); Dev Patel and Freida Pinto for Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire and Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei for Darren Aronowsky's The Wrestler (both 2008); George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, and Anna Kendrick for Ivan Reitman's Up in the Air (2009); Daniel Day Lewis and Sally Field for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012); Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyon'go for Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave (2013); Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo for Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler and Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley for Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game (both 2014); Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet for Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs (2015); Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams for Kenneth Lonnergan's Manchester By the Sea (2016); Gary Oldman and Kristin Scott Thomas for Joe Wright's Darkest Hour (2017); Christian Bale and Amy Adams for Adam McKay's Vice (2018); Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie for Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2018); Will Smith and Aunjanue Ellis for Reinaldo Marcus Green's King Richard (2021); Colin Farrell and Kerry Condon for Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt for Oppenheimer and Paul Giamatti and Da'Vine Joy Randolph for Alexander Payne's The Holdovers (both 2023).
Rossellini is hoping to follow in the footsteps of mother, Ingrid Bergman, who won for Murder on the Orient Express. This would make them the second mother-daughter winners of the Best Supporting BAFTA after Diane Ladd and Laura Dern. Jamie Lee Curtis also had famous acting parents in Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. She is perhaps the surprise inclusion for her work opposite Pamela Anderson in Gia Coppola's The Last Showgirl. A Best Supporting winner for John Landis's Trading Places (1983) and a Best Actress nominee for A Fish Called Wanda, Curtis has recently been spurned by the British Academy, in spite of winning the Oscar for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022). She remains the only BAFTA winner to be married to a hereditary peer, as actor-director husband Christopher Guest is the 5th Baron Haden-Guest. She doesn't use her title, however, so don't expect the presenters of the BAFTA to read out the name, The Right Honourable the Lady Haden-Guest.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
There has to be a reason why Denzel Washington has 10 Oscar nominations while having been serially ignored by the British Film Academy. Hopes were high that he would progress from the longlist for his bold display in Gladiator II. Bur he failed to cut the mustard, alongside Harris Dickinson (Babygirl), Mark Eydelshteyn (Anora), and Stanley Tucci (Conclave). In the past, Washington had laughed off the snub, 'Did I do something or say something bad?' But it's all getting a bit pointed and the powers that be need to step in with a BAFTA Fellowship before it becomes even more embarrassing for all concerned.
In the absence of any British contenders in the Best Supporting category, the focus falls on four Americans, a Russian, and an Aussie. All but one of the sextet are first-time nominees, with Edward Norton having previously been recognised for his work in Gregory Hoblit's Primal Fear (1997) and Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2015).
Norton has been selected for his portrayal of folk singer Pete Seeger in A Complete Unknown, which means he has been nominated alongside co-star Timothée Chalamet, as Bob Dylan. Guy Pearce, Jeremy Strong, and Clarence Maclin have similarly have a Best Actor counterpart, in the respective forms of Adrien Brody (The Brutalist), Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice), and Colman Domingo (Sing Sing). In bygone days, this proved a winning combination for Jack Nicholson and Brad Dourif in Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). Subsequently, John Cleese and Michael Palin paired up in A Fish Called Wanda, with Kevin Kline missing out, as did Daniel Day Lewis and Ray McAnally in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot (1989); Philippe Noiret and Salvatore Cascio in Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988); Robert Carlyle and Tom Wilkinson in The Full Monty, with Mark Addy missing out; Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush in The King's Speech and Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey, Jr. for Oppenheimer.
But there have been more examples of only one or neither co-star picking up a prize, going back to Marlon Brando and Robert Duvall for Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972). The others to the turn of the century are Jack Nicholson and Randy Quaid for Hal Ashby's The Last Detail (1973); Albert Finney and John Gielgud for Murder on the Orient Express; Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards, and Martin Balsam for Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men and Peter Finch, William Holden, and Robert Duvall for Sidney Lumet's Network (both 1976); Brad Davis and John Hurt for Alan Parker's Midnight Express and Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken for Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (both 1978); Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson for Reds; Ben Kingsley, Edward Fox, and Roshan Seth for Gandhi; Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins for John McKenzie's The Honorary Consul and Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis for Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy (both 1983); Daniel Auteuil, Gérard Depardieu, and Yves Montand for Jean de Florette; Stephen Rea and Jaye Davidson for The Crying Game; Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Ben Kingsley for Schindler's List; Hugh Grant, Simon Callow, and John Hannah for Four Weddings and a Funeral and John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson for Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Nigel Hawthorne and Ian Holm for Nicholas Hytner's The Madness of King George (both 1994); Geoffrey Rush and John Gielgud for Shine; Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush (who beat himself for Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth ), and Tom Wilkinson for Shakespeare in Love; Kevin Spacey and Wes Bentley for American Beauty and Jim Broadbent and Timothy Spall for Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy (1999).
Since the turn of the millennium, the partnerships have numbered Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, and Oliver Reed for Ridley Scott's Gladiator and Jamie Bell and Gary Lewis for Billy Elliot; Jim Broadbent and Hugh Bonneville for Iris; Nicolas Cage and Chris Cooper for Adaptation; Sean Penn and Tim Robbins for Mystic River; Leonardo DiCaprio and Alan Alda for The Aviator and Gael García Bernal and Rodrigo de la Serna for Walter Salles's The Motorcycle Diaries (2004); Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal for Brokeback Mountain and George Clooney and David Strathairn for Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck (2005); Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy for Kevin Macdonald's The Last King of Scotland, Peter O'Toole and Leslie Phillips for Roger Michell's Venus, and Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson for Martin Scorsese's The Departed (all 2006); George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson for Michael Clayton and Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Dano for Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (both 2007); Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield for The Social Network; Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill for Bennett Miller's Moneyball (2011); Ben Affleck and Alan Arkin for Argo, Daniel Day Lewis and Tommy Lee Jones for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, and Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman for Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master (both 2012); Chiwetel Ejiofor and Michael Fassbender for 12 Years a Slave and Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper for American Hustle; Michael Keaton and Edward Norton for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) ; Jake Gyllenhaal and Aaron Taylor-Johnson for Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals (2016); Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali for Peter Farrelly's Green Book and Christian Bale and Sam Rockwell for Adam Mackay's Vice (both 2018); Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt for Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood and Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins for Fernando Meirelles's The Two Popes (both 2019); Riz Ahmed and Paul Raci for Darius Marder's Sound of Metal (2020); Benedict Cumberbatch, Jesse Plemons, and Kodi Smit-McPhee for The Power of the Dog; Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Barry Keoghan for Martin McDonagh's The Banshees of Inisherin (2022); Paul Giamatti and Dominic Sessa for Alexander Payne's The Holdovers, and Barry Keoghan and Jacob Elordi for Emerald Fennell's Saltburn.
Known as 'Divine Eye', Clarence Maclin's nomination is unique in the annals of BAFTA, as he plays a fictionalised variation on himself in Sing Sing, as he was part of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts programme that is celebrated in Greg Kwedar's prison drama after having been jailed for armed robbery. For his contribution to the film's screenplay, Macklin has also received an Oscar nomination. But he is the only member of the BAFTA cabal to miss out on Best Supporting Actor at the 97th Academy Awards.
Friends from their stints on Succession (2018-23), Jeremy Strong and Kieran Culkin have made plenty of headlines Stateside during Awards Season. As Strong plays Roy Cohn opposite Sebastian Stan's Donald Trump, Ali Abbasi's The Apprentice has raised eyebrows around the inauguration of the 47th President of the United States. A confederate of Senator Joseph McCarthy, Cohn has been played on screen before, notably by James Woods in Frank Pierson's Citizen Cohn (1992) and Al Pacino in Mike Nichols's Angels in America (2003). Strong's chances may be slim at the BAFTAs, but Jack Nicholson as Eugene O'Neill in Reds, Daniel Kaluuya as Fred Hampton in Shaka King's Judas and the Black Messiah (2020), and Robert Downey, Jr as Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer have won for playing figures involved in US politics.
Culkin has raked in the nominations for his performance as Benji Kaplan in Jesse Eisenberg's odd couple comedy, A Real Pain, which numbers Emma Stone among its producers. He has already received the Golden Globe for his efforts, but he's a lone wolf in terms of nominated co-stars. Yura Borisov, by contrast, has Mikey Madison in the Best Actress category to boost the profile of his turn as a Russian bounty hunter in Anora. Since the acting awards were revised 1968, a handful of overlapping Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor nominations have come up trumps. Enjoying dual triumphs were Louise Fletcher and Brad Dourif in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; Maggie Smith and Denholm Elliott in A Private Function; and Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell in Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), with Woody Harrelson missing out for Best Supporting Actor.
One of the pairing got their hands on a golden mask in the cases of Sarah Miles and John Mills in David Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970); Julie Christie and Edward Fox in Alan Bridges's The Go-Between (1971); Jane Fonda and Jason Robards in Fred Zinnemann's Julia (1977); Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson in Reds; Peggy Ashcroft and Jame Fox in David Lean's A Passage to India (1984); Maggie Smith and both Simon Callow and Denholm Elliott in A Room With a View; Jamie Lee Curtis and Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda; Emma Thompson and Samuel West in Howards End; Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction; Gwyneth Paltrow and Geoffrey Rush and Tom Wilkinson in Shakespeare in Love; Annette Bening and Wes Bentley in American Beauty; Julia Roberts and Albert Finney in Steven Soderbergh's Erin Brokovich (2000); Judi Dench and Hugh Bonneville in Iris; Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, and Ed Harris in The Hours; Imelda Staunton and Phil Davis in Vera Drake; Helen Mirren and Michael Sheen in The Queen; Carey Mulligan and Alfred Molina in Lone Scherfig's An Education (2009); Meryl Streep and Jim Broadbent in Phyllida Law's The Iron Lady (2011); and Emilia Jones and Troy Kotsur in Sian Heder's CODA (2021).
For the final twinnings, they had to be content with each other's company on the big night: Jane Fonda and Gig Young in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?; Faye Dunaway and John Huston in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974); Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall in Network; Meryl Streep and Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter; Meryl Streep and Klaus Maria Brandauer in Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa (1985); Sarah Miles and Ian Bannen in John Boorman's Hope and Glory (1987); Helen Mirren and Ian Holm in The Madness of King George; Renée Zellwegger and Colin Firth in Sharon Maguire's Bridget Jones's Diary (2001); Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina in Julie Taymor's Frida (2002); Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt; Saoirse Ronan and Stanley Tucci in Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones (2009); Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo in Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right (2010); Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh in My Week With Marilyn; Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper in American Hustle; Meryl Streep and Hugh Grant in Stephen Frears's Florence Foster Jenkins (2016); Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant in Marielle Heller's Can You Ever Forgive Me? (2018); and Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in Greta Gerwig's Barbie (2023).
If he's chosen for his depiction of Harrison Lee Van Buren in The Brutalist, Guy Pearce would become the third Australian to clinch the award after Geoffrey Rush for Shakespeare in Love and The King's Speech and Heath Ledger, who won posthumously for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008). Pearce and Felicity Jones have each been recognised in the Best Supporting categories. Since they were introduced in 1968, dual success has been enjoyed by Edward Fox and Margaret Leighton for The Go Between, with Michael Gough missing out, and Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman for Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (both 1971), with Eileen Brennan proving unlucky; John Gielgud and Ingrid Bergman for Murder on the Orient Express; Jack Nicholson and Maureen Stapleton for Reds; Denholm Elliott and Jamie Lee Curtis for rading Places; Denholm Elliott and Liz Smith for A Private Function; Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter for The King's Speech; and Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon for The Banshees of Inisherin, with Brendan Gleason being the one to miss out.
Many more co-stars have had to be content with a single win between them or simply the satisfaction of being nominated. During the first three decades of the Best Supporting awards, these included John McEnery and Pat Heywood for Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet (1968); Laurence Olivier and Mary Wimbush for Oh! What a Lovely War; Gig Young and Susannah York for They Shoot Horses, Don't They?; John Mills and Evin Crowley for Ryan's Daughter; Michel Lonsdale and Delphine Seyrig for Fred Zinnemann's The Day of the Jackal (1973); Michael Hordern and Annette Crosbie for Bryan Forbes's The Slipper and the Rose (1976); Colin Blakely, Jenny Agutter, and Joan Plowright for Sidney Lumet's Equus (1977); Edward Fox, Roshan Seth, Rohini Hattangadi, and Candice Bergen for Gandhi; Simon Callow, Denholm Elliott, Maggie Smith, and Rosemary Leach for A Room With a View; Ian Bannen and Susan Wooldridge for Hope and Glory; Michael Palin and Maria Aitken for A Fish Called Wanda; Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston for Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989); Samuel West and Helena Bonham Carter for Howards End and Jaye Davidson and Miranda Richardson for The Crying Game; Simon Callow, John Hannah, Charlotte Coleman, and Kristin Scott Thomas for Four Weddings and a Funeral; Alan Rickman, Kate Winslet, and Elizabeth Spriggs for Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility (1995); Tom Wilkinson, Mark Addy, and Lesley Sharp for The Full Monty; Geoffrey Rush, Tom Wilkinson, and Judi Dench for Shakespeare in Love; and Jude Law and Cate Blanchett for Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr Ripley and Wes Bentley, Thora Birch, and Mena Suvari for American Beauty.
The 21st-century contingent to date contains Gary Lewis and Julie Walters for Billy Elliot; Hugh Bonneville and Kate Winslet for Iris; Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep for Adaptation and Ed Harris and Julianne Moore for The Hours; Tim Robbins and Laura Linney for Mystic River and Bill Nighy and Emma Thompson for Richard Curtis's Love Actually (both 2003); Alan Alda and Cate Blanchett for The Aviator, Clive Owen and Natalie Portman for Mike Nichols's Closer, Phil Davis and Heather Craney for Vera Drake, and Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, and Thandiwe Newton for Paul Haggis's Crash (all 2004); Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Williams for Brokeback Mountain; Alan Arkin, Toni Collette, and Abigail Breslin for Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris's Little Miss Sunshine (2006); Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton and Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, and Kelly Macdonald for Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country For Old Men (2007); Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams for Doubt and Brad Pitt and Tilda Swinton and Joel and Ethan Coen's Burn After Reading (both 2008); Christian Bale and Amy Adams for David O. Russell's The Fighter; Kenneth Branagh and Judi Dench for My Week With Marilyn; Javier Bardem and Judi Dench for Sam Mendes's Skyfall, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams for Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, and Tommy Lee Jones and Sally Field for Lincoln; Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence for American Hustle and Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong'o for 12 Years a Slave; Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette for Richard Linklater's Boyhood; Edward Norton and Emma Stone for Birdman; Mahershala Ali and Noemie Harris for Barry Jenkins's Moonlight and Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman for Garth Davis's Lion (both 2016); Sam Rockwell and Amy Adams for Vice; Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie for Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood; Alan Kim and Youn Yun-jung for Lee Isaac Chung's Minari, Daniel Kaluuya and Dominique Fishback for Judas and the Black Messiah, and Barry Keoghan and Niamh Algar for Nick Rowland's Calm With Horses (all 2020); Mike Faist and Ariana DeBose for Steven Spielberg's West Side Story and Ciarán Hands and Catríona Balfe for Kenneth Branagh's Belfast (both 2021); and Key Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis for Everything Everywhere All At Once.
For all the fact crunching, there's little logic when it comes to voting at major film awards. Sentiment plays its part, as does momentum. Ultimately, it's nigh on impossible to judge one performance against another in any scientific manner. Whatever the reasons may be for one actor or actress prevailing over their fellow nominees, the task facing Cinema Paradiso members is pretty tricky when it comes to predicting the eventual winners - and you've got to do it in 26 categories! Don't worry, though. We'll mark your cards for two more before we leave you to it.
BEST ACTRESS
Even before the emergence of some damning tweets threw a spanner in the works, Best Actress had been the BAFTA category causing the most commotion in the media. Grumbles were rife that Angelina Jolie (Maria), Tilda Swinton (The Room Next Door), Pamela Anderson (The Last Showgirl), Zendaya ( Challengers ), and Golden Globe winner Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here) had not even made it to the longlist. There was further disquiet when it was revealed that Amy Adams (Nightbitch), Kate Winslet (Lee), Marisa Abela ( Back to Black ), and Nicole Kidman (Babygirl) had not reached the final six.
But the discussion about Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez) becoming the first openly trans performer to be nominated in an acting category at the BAFTAs has since been hijacked by the disclosure of some prejudicial social media posts made between 2019-21. While this scandal may well prove fatal to Gascón's Oscar chances (as the final round of voting has yet to begin at the time of writing), the BAFTA ballot had closed before the storm broke. Consequently, there is every chance that the Spaniard can still make history on 16 February, whether distributor Netflix (which has distanced itself from the actress) likes it or not.
On a more positive note, 2019 EE Rising Star Cynthia Erivo becomes a first-time nominee for the wonderful Wizard of Oz prequel, Wicked. She plays Elphaba Thropp (the future Wicked Witch of the West) alongside Ariane Grande's Galinda Upland. Simone Signoret won the BAFTA for Best Foreign Actress for her portrayal of Elizabeth Proctor in Raymond Rouleau's Les Sorcières de Salem (1957), a French adaptation of Arthur Miller's The Crucible. But no other witchy turns have been nominated since.
The same can't be said for singing roles, however. Since Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones and Judy Garland in George Cukor's A Star Is Born were both feted in the mid-1950s, there has been recognition for Jean Simmons in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Guys and Dolls (1955); Julie Andrews in Robert Wise's The Sound of Music (1965); Barbra Streisand in William Wyler's Funny Girl (1968) and Gene Kelly's Hello, Dolly! (1969); Diana Ross in Sidney J. Furie's Lady Sings the Blues (1972); Bette Midler in Mark Rydell's The Rose (1979); Sissy Spacek in Michael Apted's Coal Miner's Daughter (1980); Michelle Pfeiffer in Steve Kloves's The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989); Jane Horrocks in Mark Herman's Little Voice (1998); Renée Zellwegger in Rob Marshall's Chicago (2002); Meryl Streep in Florence Foster Jenkins, Lady Gaga in Bradley Cooper's A Star Is Born (2018); Emilia Jones in CODA (2021), and Fantasia Barrino in Blitz Bazawule's The Color Purple (2023).
More to the point, there's every chance Erivo can emulate Leslie Caron in Charles Walters's Lili (1953), Liza Minnelli in Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972), Reese Witherspoon in James Mangold's Walk the Line (2004); Marion Cotillard in Olivier Dahan's La Vie en rose (2007), Emma Stone in La La Land, and Renée Zellwegger in Rupert Goold's Judy (2019) and win the BAFTA for Best Actress.
Demi Moore will also be hoping that lightning strikes twice (six decades on), as she plays model Elisabeth Sparkle in The Substance after Julie Christie had won the award while striking poses as Diana Scott in John Schlesinger's Darling (1965). Moore can also look to Emma Stone's in Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things (2023), as Bella Baxter also undergoes bodily transformation, albeit in a more Frankensteinian manner.
Mikey Madison (Anora) may well have noted that there are several precedents when it comes to BAFTA nominations for actresses playing prostitutes. Giulietta Masina in Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria (1957), Melina Mercouri in Jules Dassin's Never on Sunday (1960), Shirley MacLaine in Billy Wilder's Irma la Douce (1963), Catherine Deneuve in Luis Buñuel's Belle de Jour (1967), Jane Fonda in Alan J. Pakula's Klute (1971), Cathy Tyson in Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa and Julie Walters in Terry Jones's Personal Services (both 1986), Julia Roberts in Garry Marshall's Pretty Woman (1990), Elisabeth Shue in Mike Figgis's Leaving Las Vegas (1995), Kim Basinger in Curtis Hanson's L.A. Confidential (1997), Charlize Theron in Patty Jenkins's Monster (2003), Zhang Ziyi in Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), and Emma Stone in Poor Things all gave fine performances. But only Stone won and the chances of a sex worker scooping Best Actress two years in a row seem slight. Who knows, though?
Mike Leigh certainly knows how to bring the best out of Marianne Jean-Baptiste. Having guided her to a Best Supporting nomination for Secrets & Lies, he has now boosted her into the Best Actress ranks for her performance as Pansy Deacon in Hard Truths. As Pansy has to deal with mental health issues, she has much in common with the characters played by Vivien Leigh in Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Joanne Woodward in Nunnally Johnson's The Three Faces of Eve (1957), Emily Lloyd in David Leland's Wish You Were Here (1986), Emily Watson in Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves (1996), Emily Watson in Alan Parker's Angela's Ashes (1999), Judy Dench in Iris, Kate Winslet in Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Julie Christie in Sarah Polley's Away From Her (2006), Julianne Moore in Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's Still Alice (2014), Maggie Smith in Nicholas Hytner's The Lady in the Van (2015), and Olivia Colman in The Favourite.
However, Pansy is also a concerned mother and, as such, she forges a connection with such previous nominees as Phyllis Calvert in Alexander Mackendrick's Mandy and Mary Powers in Gian Carlo Menotti's The Medium (both 1951), Yvonne Mitchell and Cornell Borchers in Charles Crichton's The Divided Heart (1952), Sophia Loren in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women and Dora Bryan in Tony Richardson's A Taste of Honey (both 1962), Brenda Blethyn in Secrets & Lies, Penélope Cruz in Pedro Almodóvar's Volver (2006), Angelina Jolie in Clint Eastwood's Changeling (2008), Tilda Swinton in Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), Judi Dench in Stephen Frears's Philomena (2013), Frances McDormand in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and Danielle Deadwyler in Chinonye Chukwu's Till (2022).
With 68 wins from 133 career nominations (all of which came before she turned 30), Saoirse Ronan is the most decorated nominee in this year's Best Actress stakes. She has been recognised by BAFTA five times before, with her Supporting nod for Atonement being followed with Actress citations for The Lovely Bones, John Crowley's Brooklyn (2015) and Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird (2018) and Little Women (2020). As a co-producer of The Outrun, she is also in the running for Outstanding British Film, as well as Best Actress.
In Nora Fingscheidt's adaptation of Amy Liptrot's memoir, Ronan plays Rona, who returns to her family home in the Orkney Islands after a time away. She took a similar role in Brooklyn, but the only other prodigal to find herself in BAFTA contention was essayed by Charlize Theron in North Country. Rona has also had problems with alcohol, as did Lee Remick in Blake Edwards's Days of Wine and Roses (1962) and Elizabeth Taylor in Mike Nichols's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). The latter won, but Ronan would spring the biggest surprise of the night if she left the South Bank clutching a statuette.
BEST ACTOR
Little fuss was made of the fact that Dev Patel ( Monkey Man ), Jude Law (Firebrand), and Kingsley Ben Adir ( Bob Marley: One Love ) dropped off the Best Actor longlist. But there was gnashing of teeth at the omission of Daniel Craig, who had earned Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for his audacious turn in Luca Guadagnino's adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novel, Queer. However, there are only six spots available for this award and novelty is the watchword where acting is concerned at the 78th BAFTAs, where 14 of the 24 nominees are first-time recipients.
The only newbie in the Best Actor race is Sebastian Stan, who has become the first performer to be nominated for playing a sitting American president, thanks to his depiction of Donald J. Trump in The Apprentice. He's not the only POTUS on the block, however, as Frank Langella played Richard M. Nixon opposite Michael Sheen's David Frost in Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon (2008) and Daniel Day-Lewis portrayed Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln. And Christian Bale even did a nifty Dick Cheney in Vice.
Stan and Hugh Grant were respectively nominated for Best Actor in the Drama and Musical or Comedy categories at the Golden Globes. Grant plays Mr Reed in Scott Beck and Bryan Woods's Heretic and becomes only the third man to land a Best Actor nomination for a horror film after Alfie Bass in Jack Clayton's The Bespoke Overcoat (1954) and Anthony Hopkins in Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Since winning the category for Four Weddings and a Funeral, Grant has twice been nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Florence Foster Jenkins and Paul King's Paddington 2 (2017). Should his name be called out, he would join Dirk Bogarde, Colin Firth, Dustin Hoffman, Burt Lancaster, Marcello Mastroianni, Jack Nicholson, and Rod Steiger on two wins.
Adrien Brody may well double up at the Oscars in March, but he missed out to Daniel Day-Lewis in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002) when he was nominated for playing Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist. He returns to London hoping that voters will plump for László Tóth in The Brutalist, as the Hungarian migrant who hopes to become an architect in the United States is based on several real-life characters, including Marcel Breuer, Paul Rudolph, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, László Moholy-Nagy, Louis Kahn, and Erno Goldfinger.
Since the Best Actor category was introduced in the early 1950s, a number of what we'll call 'boffin' roles have been recognised, including Ralph Richardson in The Sound Barrier, Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator, Jesse Eisenberg in The Social Network, Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything, Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game, Michael Fassbender in Steve Jobs, and Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer. Could it be two brainboxes in a row?
Or will Timothée Chalamet continue the impressive return made by musical biopics in the Best Actor category? Having previously been nominated for Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name (2017), Chalamet has been tagged for impersonating Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown. The 2018 EE Rising Star joins a fine roll of honour that currently includes James Stewart in Anthony Mann's The Glenn Miller Story (1954), F. Murray Abraham in Miloš Forman's Amadeus (1985), Geoffrey Rush in Shine, Jim Broadbent in Topsy-Turvy, Adrien Brody in The Pianist, Jamie Foxx in Taylor Hackford's Ray (2004), Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line, Andy Serkis in Mat Whitecross's Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2009), Rami Malek in Bryan Singer's Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), Taron Egerton in Dexter Fletcher's Rocketman (2019), Austin Butler in Elvis, and Bradley Cooper in Maestro (2023). Fourteen Best Actor gongs have gone to biopics since the millennium, so Chalamet and Stan would appear to have the odds in their favour.
Having been nominated for playing Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin in George C. Wolfe's Rustin (2023), Colman Domingo makes it consecutive Best Actor nominations for his performance as John 'Divine G' Whitfield in Greg Kwedar's fact-based prison drama, Sing Sing. Should he win, Domingo would become only the sixth Black winner of the BAFTA for Best Actor after Sidney Poitier for Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones (1958), Jamie Foxx for Ray, Forest Whitaker for The Last King of Scotland, Chiwetel Ejiofor for 12 Years a Slave, and Will Smith for King Richard. And, yes, there really was a 46-year gap between the first and second instances.
Since Neville Brand in Don Siegel's Riot on Cell Block 11 (1954), several Best Actor nods have gone to those behind bars, although Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis didn't stay there for long in The Defiant Ones. Among the others to endure incarceration are Philippe Leroy in Jacques Becker's Le Trou (1960), Burt Lancaster in John Frankenheimer's Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Brad Davis in Midnight Express, Daniel Day-Lewis in Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father (1993), Roberto Benigni in Life Is Beautiful (1997), and Geoffrey Rush in Philip Kaufman's Quills (2000).
Alec Guinness in Peter Glenville's The Prisoner (1955) was both a captive and a cleric in a drama based on the experiences of Hungarian Cardinal József Mindszenty. He makes an ideal connection to our last nominee, Ralph Fiennes, who excels as Cardinal Thomas Lawrence in Conclave. The other men of God to have competed for Best Actor are Pierre Fresnay in Jean Delannoy's God Needs Men (1950), Claude Laydu in Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (1951), Robert Donat in Charles Frend's Lease of Life (1954), Pierre Fresnay in Le Défroqué, Jean-Pierre Belmondo in Jean-Pierre Melville's Léon Morin, Priest (1961), Paul Scofield in A Man For All Seasons, Sean Connery in Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Name of the Rose (1986), and Jonathan Pryce in The Two Popes.
Fiennes already has a Best Supporting BAFTA for his chilling portrayal of Amon Göth in Schindler's List. However, he has lost out in the Best Actor stakes as László Almásy in The English Patient, Maurice Bendrix in Neil Jordan's The End of the Affair (1999), Justin Quayle in Fernando Meirelles's The Constant Gardener (2005), and Monsieur Gustave H. in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). It's Fiennes time he should win. But do you agree? Cast your vote now - and don't forget the other 25 categories.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
That concludes our round-up of the major categories on the BAFTA ballot. In all, 42 features and eight shorts have been nominated across the categories. But you're on your own for the other 20!
To take part in this competition, all you have to do is tell us who you think will win each category at the 78th British Academy Film Awards.
Whoever correctly predicts the highest number of winners will receive SIX MONTHS of free rentals from CinemaParadiso.co.uk.
In the result of a tie, the top predictors will be entered in a draw to find ONE lucky winner.
The competition will close at 12:00 on Sunday 16 February 2025 and the winner will be announced on Monday 17 February 2025.
One entry per customer and everyone with a Cinema Paradiso account is welcome to take part. Good luck!
