So, Who Is The Best Actress Frontrunner For The 2025 Oscars?

By the time Oscar night arrives, most of the major categories are locked in and the winners are as predictable as the setting of the sun. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is not one for showy surprises most of the time. When things don’t go the way the majority of us were expecting them to, it can often be exciting but then we all remember when Crash beat Brokeback Mountain and have to calm ourselves before spiralling into another rant. With the above-the-line categories, the ones with the big names talents that pull in the most attention, the predicted victors are safe. At the very least, they’re never more than a two horse race.

With this year’s Best Actress race, it’s been widely accepted that there are two frontrunners for the award: Demi Moore for The Substance and Mikey Madison for Anora. The other nominees are Fernanda Torres for I’m Still Here, Cynthia Erivo for Wicked, and noted racist Karla Sofia Gascon for Emilia Perez. So, who is at the front of the pack?

When Demi Moore won the Golden Globe for Best Leading Actress in a Comedy/Musical, she took the reins of that moment and turned it into the central message of her awards season campaign. She spoke enthusiastically and eloquently about not feeling appreciated during her long and successful career, of being dismissed as a ‘popcorn actress’, and of the perils of ageism against women in the industry. It cemented why people were rooting for her and helpfully tied into the wider messages of The Substance, a body horror satire about how much the world hates women who dare to age. Rooting for her was always easy but in that moment it became crucial.

Moore has been in the business for decades. At one point, she was one of the most bankable actresses in Hollywood and one of the highest-paid women. But she never exactly commanded critical attention, even with her best work. The press obsessed over her body and relationship with Bruce Willis. She was dismissed as a diva who hadn’t earned her landmark paydays. When she returned to the spotlight after a break at the grand age of 40, she was simultaneously lambasted as a cradle-snatching hag and leered at by the tabloids for wearing a bikini in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.

With The Substance, where she plays a former actress whose self-loathing drives her to create a younger doppelganger of herself, it felt like she was channelling all those years of rage and mockery and tearing up the screen with it. Nobody expected Coralie Fargeat’s film to become an Oscar player. It’s a hyper-disgusting, subtext-is-for-cowards carnival of viscera and camp. Body parts are flung around like confetti. In one scene, a character pulls a chicken drumstick out of her navel. The ending’s blood budget would put Hostel to shame. Horror doesn’t gel with the Academy, let alone body horror-comedies. And yet here we are. That happened in large part because of Moore’s performance. On top of being completely game for the prosthetics and mayhem, it’s Moore who provides the grounding tragedy of her character’s pain. Moore has always been a better actress than she’s been given credit for, and in The Substance, you see that in action through the filter of genre excess.

Moore would be a fitting winner, and frankly a really fun one. Genre-driven performances are getting more kudos from the Academy, as evidenced by Best Actress wins for Michelle Yeoh and Emma Stone. But their respective films were more thoroughly embraced by mainstream audiences. A lot of people really hate The Substance, and it’s often hard for voters to overcome their disdain for a film to champion its performances. It can be done but can it happen with a movie this proudly abrasive? Therein lies the conundrum, especially when there are competitors with equally strong narratives and more warmly embraced films.

Which leads us to Mikey Madison, the lead of Sean Baker’s Anora. Aged only 25, Madison has been working since she was a child, most notably starring as one of Pamela Adlon’s children in the FX dramedy Better Things. She played one of the Manson girls in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and starred in the fifth Scream movie. It was from these two films that Baker was inspired to cast Madison as the titular Anora, a brash but loveable stripper who marries a rich Russian guy and gets involved in all manner of jackassery. Madison is wonderful in Anora, both profane and heart-aching as a woman who is consistently underestimated by everyone around her. It’s the kind of performance that is justifiably described as ‘star-making.’

Madison has won so many awards for Anora. In terms of critics association titles, she is far and away the leader among the Best Actress shortlist. She recently won the BAFTA and the Independent Spirit Award, which are considered major predicators for the Oscar race. Madison also has a lot of good narrative threads in her favour. She’s a bright young ingenue and this category tends to lean towards awarding up-and-comers over more established figures, unlike Best Actor (probably because the industry sees women as washed up by the time they’re 35.) For the role, she studied Russian, learned how to pole dance, and did some of her own stunts. Plus Anora is a Best Picture frontrunner. It’s a widely beloved film that’s also very easy to love. If Anora starts to sweep, Madison is going along for the ride.

I’d say this is a two-person race, with the choice between the hot new star and the established talent getting her due. But every awards expert I know is finding it hard to count out a third person: Fernanda Torres. The queen of Brazilian cinema was not considered a safe nomination right up until announcement morning. Her Golden Globe win for Best Actress in a Drama was a surprise, but it also made sense that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which is heavily made up of Brazilian voters, would put their weight behind her. The notoriously American-focused Academy going for her? And her film, I’m Still Here, breaking through into Best Picture? That seemed to suggest an enthusiasm for her that could prove potent under the right circumstances.

Unlike many international actresses who break through at the Oscars, Torres does not have a slew of English-language titles to her name. But she is part of industry royalty, being the daughter of Fernanda Montenegro, the first Brazilian to be nominated for Best Actress for Central Station. The pair became the first mother-daughter duo to be nominated for the Best Actress category since Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli.

Torres has been in campaigning mode for months now, introducing herself to American audiences and being proudly pro-Brazilian at every party, ceremony, and junket. I haven’t seen I’m Still Here yet due to UK release delays, so I can’t get into the specifics of her performance. Certainly, the critical response has been universally rapturous for her. Nobody would be mad at her winning unless they were anti-Brazil or had a lot of money bet on another nominee. But is she really a frontrunner in the way that Madison and Moore are? I struggle to say yes but I also can’t entirely dismiss her. We talk a lot about vote splitting and the possibility that such a divide could lead to a win for a third candidate. It’s not impossible to imagine here but I think it’d require a more equal divide between Moore and Madison that just isn’t there right now. Torres would also need more silverware on her shelf to secure such a status.

If I were a betting woman, I would put my pennies down for Mikey Madison. I’m personally rooting for Moore but Madison’s win would be highly deserved. The only thing that would ruin my life would be that racist winning for her bad performance in a bad film, but if that was to actually happen, it’d be because the four horsemen of the apocalypse want to end things before 2025 gets even worse.