Best Actress expert slugfest: Demi Moore is Oscar-bound after delivering ‘the speech of a lifetime’ at Golden Globes
Five leading ladies made the cut for Best Actress at the 2025 Oscars: Cynthia Erivo (Wicked), Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez), Mikey Madison (Anora), Demi Moore (The Substance), and Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here). But who will claim victory when the envelope is opened on March 2?
After the nominations were announced, five top Oscar experts from major media outlets debated their winner predictions for Best Actress: Gold Derby’s Debra Birnbaum, Variety‘s Clayton Davis, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Scott Feinberg, Deadline’s Pete Hammond, and Indiewire’s Anne Thompson. Watch their full Oscars roundtable above.
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“When I think about people who own their narrative, we’ve got Demi Moore for Best Actress,” says Birnbaum. “She’s telling a story. And suddenly we have a frontrunner for Best Actress — something I don’t think anyone on this screen would’ve predicted when this movie came out.” However, Birnbaum continues, “She’s got some competition in the race.”
Hammond agrees that Moore is the frontrunner right now. “That was the perfect use of the Golden Globes,” he notes. “She established it and she took it away. All she had to do was win that Globe to do that, and then she fulfilled it. And so I would be surprised if she doesn’t carry this all the way.”As for potential spoilers, he says it could be Torres, “your other Golden Globe winner,” because “she gave such a powerful performance that I’m now beginning to believe many of these Academy members have actually seen.”
“I agree that Demi Moore delivered the speech of a lifetime,” Thompson says. “This is her first chance at an award of any kind. It’s a narrative that the actors cannot resist. The story she’s telling in The Substance is a story that actors understand. And that’s why she’s gonna win it handily, I really have no question about that.”
Davis theorizes that if Moore “sweeps” the rest of the awards season (Critics Choice, SAG, and BAFTA), then that would be “hard to beat” for any of her competitors. However, he adds, “Torres can win if this gets really messy this season, which it has potential to do.” What would “messy” entail? If Erivo wins SAG and/or BAFTA, and Madison wins CCA, then a divided race could lead to a “road for Torres to upset.”
Feinberg chides his fellow pundits for “spending too much time on Film Twitter,” which might be influencing their Torres enthusiasm. “To me, it’s a likelier scenario that if it’s not Demi Moore — and I do think it will be — then it would be Mikey Madison,” he says. “It’s the ingénue/Audrey Hepburn/new person on the scene who is the center of the movie. There’s the excitement of a discovery there.”
Which Oscar expert do you agree with the most? Sound off down in the comments section and join the discussion in our movie forums.
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