Inside the Best Supporting Actor Oscar Race: Why Stellan Skarsgård Is the Clear Favorite

Quite often, the winners of the Actor Awards are favored to win the Oscars, but that’s not really the case this year, especially since the actor who I think is going to win this one wasn’t even nominated by SAG-AFTRA. Maybe because the bulk of actors can’t be bothered with foreign films, I don’t know. Either way, it’s sometimes interesting how the two line up or don’t.

Key Insights

This year’s Best Supporting Actor race highlights how Oscar momentum can diverge from SAG recognition.

Vote-splitting between Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro could further solidify Stellan Skarsgård’s path to victory.

Delroy Lindo’s nomination celebrates a legendary career, but the category ultimately belongs to Skarsgård.

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Anyway, let’s get to it. The nominees for Best Actor in a Supporting Role are Delroy Lindo, Sinners, Jacob Elordi, Frankenstein, Stellan Skarsgård, Sentimental Value, and Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro, One Battle After Another.

I am a big fan of everyone’s work here, and it’s genuinely thrilling to see Delroy Lindo finally being honored after decades of greatness. He’s terrific in Sinners, a very good movie that I really enjoyed, but which I do not revere like so many others appear to. I mean, 16 nominations? Sixteen? Okay, sure, I guess. And the thing is, Lindo was something of a surprise. Miles Caton was the one I thought was going to be nominated, and while he’s also terrific in the movie, it was great to see Lindo’s name called on Nomination Day.

This is one of those times when I think his nomination is his win. In other years, he might actually have a shot, but not this year. In fact, if not for one particular other nominee, I think Lindo might even be the frontrunner, especially against these other guys. For instance, while Jacob Elordi is tremendous as Frankenstein’s monster in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein adaptation, he’s still pretty new to all this, and while this is a category in which newcomers sometimes win, I think this is not the year it happens.

I still don’t really understand why Sean Penn has been recognized so often this awards season for his work in One Battle After Another. Don’t get me wrong, he’s good in the movie, but then, he’s always good, so what’s so different about this performance? I don’t necessarily think it’s one of the best of the year, and right up to the announcement of the nominations, I held out hope that someone else would get his spot. Alas.

Benicio del Toro, on the other hand, is remarkable in the movie, and his nomination is not only expected, it’s welcome. Still, if it were between him and Lindo, I think Lindo would take it. The fact that del Toro and Penn will probably split whatever One Battle After Another vote there might be in this category solidifies it for me.

Ultimately, all this is academic because I cannot conceive of a reality in which Stellan Skarsgård doesn’t win. Aside from the fact that he has decades of beloved work and has been campaigning his butt off, he’s just transcendent in Sentimental Value as an aging filmmaker who is slowly coming to terms with his own legacy, both personally and professionally.

Skarsgård’s character is a selfish man who has left an enormous amount of pain in his wake, and the lament he feels as he tries to tell his mother’s story, while asking his estranged actress daughter to be his proxy, is palpable. It permeates every frame of the film. He only has a few scenes with Best Actress nominee Renate Reinsve, and more about her later this week, but those moments are some of the most powerful, rivaled only by the ones he has with another nominee, Elle Fanning, playing a rising American star who may or may not end up taking on the role herself. Seeing the way he deals with her, trying to foster a paternal relationship that he knows won’t actually work, is like watching a masterclass.

There are times when an actor wins an Oscar for their career work. Skarsgård qualifies, but in this particular case, he actually deserves it for this picture. It’s one of the two or three best performances of any kind this year (Reinsve’s is another, but, again, I’ll get to that), and it will be a pleasure to see him mount the stage and accept that trophy.

WHO SHOULD WIN: Stellan Skarsgård

WHO WILL WIN: Stellan Skarsgård

Key Takeaways

Stellan Skarsgård’s powerful performance in Sentimental Value makes him the clear frontrunner for Best Supporting Actor.

Despite strong work from Delroy Lindo, Jacob Elordi, Sean Penn, and Benicio del Toro, this year’s race appears firmly in Skarsgård’s hands.

With a career’s worth of respected performances and a transcendent role this year, Skarsgård is poised for a long-overdue Oscar win.