Oscar Winner Predictions: Best Actor in a Leading Role

The competition: Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal), Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), Anthony Hopkins (The Father), Gary Oldman (Mank), Steven Yeun (Minari)

Previous winners: Joaquin Phoenix, Rami Malek, Gary Oldman, Casey Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio, Eddie Redmayne, Matthew McConaughey
My winner: Coming soon!
The facts: This category includes two previous winners and three first-time nominees. Hopkins was nominated last year for “The Two Popes” and previously for “Amistad,” “Nixon,” and “The Remains of the Day.” He won on his first nomination in 1991 for “The Silence of the Lambs.” Oldman won in 2017 for “Darkest Hour” and was also nominated in 2011 for “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” All five of these films are up for Best Picture, and this exact list contended at SAG, while Yeun was the only one not nominated for a Golden Globe. Five men have contended posthumously for this award, and only one – Peter Finch in 1976 – won. That’s likely to change this year since Chadwick Boseman, who died in August at the age of forty-three, was already awarded the Golden Globe, SAG, and Critics Choice Award. Only one actor in this category has won both the Globe and the SAG and then lost this prize, and that was Russell Crowe in 2001 for “A Beautiful Mind,” and he hardly had the same reputation as Boseman did.
Who should win: Boseman or Ahmed
Who will win: This is going to Boseman.