Oscars 2024: Who are the Best Actor nominees?

It’s Oscar time again. And no, not the handsome former boxer, but the 96th annual Academy Awards. Every year, the entertainment industry’s best and brightest go head to head for its most prestigious prize: a golden statue of a naked man holding a sword. The most prestigious categories include acting, screenplay, directing and the best movie of the year. Let’s take a look at the nominees for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

This award has been given out since the first Academy Awards back in 1927, when it was awarded to Emil Jannings, who won for two movies: The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. Last year, Brendan Fraser won the award for his stellar work in The Whale. This year, the nominee field is just as varied as it could be, with several high-profile actors vying for the honor.

Bradley Cooper in Maestro

Maestro is the story of legendary composer Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia Montealegre. It dives into the rise of what many consider music’s best composer, and explores the personal and intimate relationships he had with men and women.

Cooper plays the composer in all stages of his life, from an 80-year-old man to his beginnings as a young man searching for purpose, and meeting his future wife. There are notable prosthetics and an explosive scene where Bradley conducts an orchestra inside England’s Ely Cathedral. Cooper also directed the film.

This is his fourth best acting nomination. He was previously nominated for Silver Linings Playbook, American Sniper and A Star is Born.

Colman Domingo in Rustin

Rustin tells the story of Bayard Rustin, an important but often overlooked figure in the civil rights movement. The movie centers on a specific period in the openly gay activist’s life: The planning of the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King gave his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Movie critic Chaz Ebert said that she could not stop thinking about Domingo’s performance after she watched it. Ebert said Domingo “nailed” Rustin’s “vaguely mid-Atlantic accent, his ferocious drive and aching vulnerability,” calling the actor’s take the best performance of 2023.

“Domingo’s performance captured the essence of Bayard’s soul with such arresting beauty and nuance that it left me floored,” she said. This is his first nomination.

Paul Giamatti in The Holdovers

The Holdovers tells the story of a crotchety teacher (Giamatti) at a prep school in New England who is forced to babysit students who didn’t have anywhere to go during Christmas Break. He becomes good friends with one of the students (Dominic Sessa) and the school’s head cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and the trio form an unlikely bond.

This movie reunites Giamatti with director Alexander Payne, who directed Giamatti in the Oscar winning 2004 movie Sideways. It’s Giamatti’s second nomination; he was first nominated in 2005 for Cinderella Man as best supporting actor.

Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer

Cillian Murphy plays the lead character, J. Robert Oppenheimer, in this 1940s period piece about the development of the atomic bomb and the repercussions of doing such work. Murphy’s character struggles deal with the ethical concerns of creating the world’s most powerful weapon all while carrying on an extramarital affair.

This is Murphy’s first Oscar nomination.

Jeffrey Wright in American Fiction

Based on a novel called Erasure by Percival Everett, American Fiction tells the story of Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Wright) a supremely intelligent upper class Black novelist whose books are critical darlings, but commercial failures. His latest novel is rejected for not being “Black enough,” so he writes a satirical novel about Black stereotypes, and it becomes a monster hit.

Wright has received high praise for his nuanced and also over-the-top take on the main character. This is his first Academy Award nomination.