There’s been a major shakeup in Gold Derby’s Oscar odds for Best Actress: The Substance star Demi Moore has jumped into our top five for the first time.
Coralie Fargeat‘s body-horror flick was a late-comer to the Oscars contest, only picking up serious steam in the past couple of months. Aside from Moore’s Best Actress bid, The Substance recently climbed into Gold Derby’s top 10 for Best Picture and top five for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay; the film is also predicted to win the race for Best Makeup & Hairstyling.
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Moore is a one-time Emmy nominee for If These Walls Could Talk (1997), but she has yet to be recognized at the Academy Awards. The actress did pick up her third career Golden Globe nod for The Substance (she was previously nominated for If These Walls Could Talk, and Ghost), as well as nominations from the Critics Choice Awards, Satellite Awards, and Independent Spirit Awards. Might her role as aging movie star Elisabeth Sparkle, who goes to extreme lengths to try to look young again, be the key to Moore finally being recognized by the biggest awards show of them all?
The Best Actress Oscar race is currently led by Mikey Madison (Anora) at 17/5 odds, followed by Karla Sofía Gascon (Emilia Pérez) at 9/2 odds, Cynthia Erivo (Wicked) at 6/1 odds, Angelina Jolie (Maria) at 6/1 odds, and Moore at 19/2 odds. Rounding out our top 10 are Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths), Nicole Kidman (Babygirl), Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here), Saoirse Ronan (The Outrun), and June Squibb (Thelma).
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What has caused The Substance‘s massive surge in our Oscar odds? Gold Derby’s Features Editor Ray Richmond recently theorized, “The darkly comic satire about beauty standards, aging, and how they all tie in to the entertainment industry is designed to sicken as well as enlighten. [It] penetrated the cultural conversation in a way few movies outside the Hollywood mainstream have in 2024.”
Of Gold Derby’s 35 Oscar experts from major media outlets, the following 14 have Moore in their personal Best Actress rankings: Brian Truitt (USA Today), Christopher Rosen (Gold Derby), Cole Jaeger (The Oscar Expert), Eric Deggans (NPR), Gregory Ellwood (The Playlist), Jazz Tangcay (Variety), Joyce Eng (Gold Derby), Kevin Polowy (CBR), Mark Johnson (The Contending), Perri Nemiroff (Collider), Peter Travers (ABC), Scott Feinberg (The Hollywood Reporter), Scott Mantz (KTLA-TV), and Shawn Edwards (WDAF-TV Fox). Additionally, five of our staff editors believe Moore will score a nomination at the 97th Academy Awards, as well as 14 of our top 24 users (those who did the best predicting last year’s Oscar nominations). You can make your Oscar predictions right now.
The Academy Award nominations will be announced on Jan. 17, 2025, and the ceremony is scheduled for Sunday, March 2 on ABC.
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