FINAL Oscar Winner Predictions: Best Actress

The Best Actress category for this year’s Academy Awards, airing Sunday, is indeed a competitive one. The race has actually made some history by nominating its youngest actress ever, 9 year-old Quevenzhane Wallis for Beasts of the Southern Wild, as well as its oldest, 85 year-old Emmanuelle Riva for Amour.

Neither seems very likely to take home the gold and neither does Naomi Watts for her work in The Impossible. For quite a while now, this race seems to be a strong competition between Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty and Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook. 

Let’s take a look at some of the major Oscar precursors and who they honored. While the British awards (the BAFTA’s) honored Riva and the New York Film Critics honored Rachel Weisz for The Deep Blue Sea (she’s not nominated here), the rest of the story shows an even split among Chastain and Lawrence. The Critics Choice Awards and the National Board of Review went with Chastain. The SAG awards and L.A. Film Critics honored Lawrence. The biggest Academy precursor, the Golden Globes, has two separate categories: one for Drama and one for Musical/Comedy. The winners? Chastain and Lawrence, respectively.

While Wallis and Watts’s chances are next to none, the potential for a spoiler could be Riva. However, I’ll stick with my assertion that this is pretty much a two-woman competition. Both have a great shot at winning. They’re both relatively new to the scene, but both Chastain and Lawrence are recent past nominees. Lawrence was nominated for Actress in 2010 for Winter’s Bone. Chastain picked up a Supporting Actress nomination in 2011 for The Help. 

It’s a close call for a prediction, but at the end of the day, I’ll go with momentum. Zero Dark Thirty has lost momentum. Director Kathryn Bigelow was surprisingly snubbed. Meanwhile, Silver Linings Playbook is the first picture in 31 years where four performances were nominated in the four acting categories. The film has become a huge financial success, crossing the $100 million dollar mark just today. Audiences love it. Critics love it. And it doesn’t hurt Lawrence’s chances that she’s been on an amazing roll lately. In 2012, besides her lauded role here, she also starred in one of the year’s mega blockbusters, The Hunger Games.

Add all that up and I’m predicting Jennifer Lawrence will win Best Actress on Sunday night.