FINAL 2025 Oscar Nomination Predictions: SUPPORTING ACTOR

Kieran Culkin is in 64.88% of A Real Pain.

To put that in context, his co-star and the film’s writer and director Jesse Eisenberg, is in 69.77% of the film yet he is the ‘lead.’ Even then, whenever Culkin is offscreen, the majority of conversation with Eisenberg is about Culkin, so he’s never really gone. While much of the conversation around category fraud and screen time has focused on Zoe Saldaña and Ariana Grande-Butera (see Supporting Actress for more), Culkin’s onscreen percentage is a full 25 points higher, making his the most egregious of the season.

Who doesn’t want to see another Roy brothers showdown between Culkin and Jeremy Strong? The Succession duo went head-to-head for the final season of the HBO show where Culkin triumphed over the eldest boy (Strong won for season one) and it looks like we’re about to have another duel. Granted, this time Culkin is so far out ahead in this race that Strong isn’t even a factor, much less actual competition for him despite playing one of film and television greatest 20th century villains in Roy Cohn in Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice.

Yura Borisov became the real breakout star of Anora this season, being able to bypass his three male co-stars in Sean Baker’s screwball comedy-romance to become arguably the second strongest Supporting Actor contender of the year, with the same quad of precursors – plus Gotham – that Culkin has. Guy Pearce missed SAG but his run for The Brutalist with other precursors is strong and he’s actually second behind Culkin (albeit a distant second) in terms of critics’ wins.

Triple Oscar nominee Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown) has everything save a Gotham nod. He hasn’t been nominated in 10 years (his last was in this category for Birdman) but as the season has played out he looks to be the only likely returning nominee for this category because…

If you had told me at the beginning of the year that two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington, one of the most-nominated actors in Academy history, would not only not be the frontrunner to win for his villainous turn in Gladiator II, I probably would have laughed. I probably did (apologies to anyone I straight up goofed on for doing so). But here we are. Not only is Washington miles away from winning, he’s not even getting in. Now, is there a sliver of a chance he could? Of course. In a category that is an absolute drought for previous nominees (much less previous winners), Washington’s failed to connect with voters outside of the Golden Globes and Critics Choice, namely SAG. BAFTA wasn’t really in earshot as he’s never been nominated there, but since SAG’s inception in 1994, he’s never gotten an Oscar nomination without a SAG nod first. The film itself hasn’t proven itself much of a contender either, probably scraping a few tech nods as Ridley Scott’s Napoleon did last year.

I’m going pretty BAFTA strong here with not only all five of my predicted nominees hitting the British precursor but now that they have six spots, it’s giving us the spare and my sixth spot is also a BAFTA nominee, Sing Sing‘s Clarence Maclin. The back and forth strength and weakness of Sing Sing outside of lead actor Colman Domingo makes predicting his chances exponentially more difficult (missing PGA was tough). That said, I think Maclin is close and barring a big surprise on nomination morning like Stanley Tucci getting in, which would really be a power move for Conclave, he could break into the top five unless Jonathan Bailey’s SAG nomination wasn’t a fluke and he skims the surface. But I say, why invite stress in?

Here are my final 2025 Oscar predictions in Supporting Actor.

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Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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