2027 Oscars Best Actress Predictions: Winner, Runner-Up And Other Contenders

After people got to see Jessie Buckley's extraordinarily powerful performance as a grieving mother in Chloé Zhao's acclaimed literary adaptation "Hamnet," a handful of folks, including me, declared that she was the obvious frontrunner to win the Academy Award for Best Actress at the Oscars. That turned out to be completely true, and Buckley ended up sweeping pretty much every major precursor before taking home Oscar gold in the spring of 2026. Following in the footsteps of luminaries like Michelle Yeoh, Emma Stone, Olivia Colman, Frances McDormand, Meryl Streep, and Helen Mirren is no easy feat, but in the spring of 2027, one performer will rise to the top of the pack and take home the next Oscar for Best Actress.

So, who's in the running? We can't know for sure, but I'm here to make some semi-educated guesses about who could win, who could pull an upset, and who could end up snagging one of the five nomination spots in the first place. Aside from our projected winner and projected "runner-up" (the one who could pull the aforementioned upset), everyone is listed in alphabetical order. With that out of the way, let's look at who has the best shot at pulling out a victory at the 2027 Academy Awards for their excellent 2026 role.

Hear me out: What does the Academy love more than an ingénue? Brie Larson, Jennifer Lawrence, and Mikey Madison all won Oscars for high-profile roles relatively early in their careers, which means that breakout "Obsession" star Inde Navarrette could have a straightforward path to Oscar gold. If you're not familiar with Navarrette, I have to ask: Where have you been? Alongside Michael Johnston (who plays Baron "Bear" Bailey), Navarrette headlined Curry Barker's surprise 2025 horror hit "Obsession," an extraordinarily dark parable of sorts that begins when Bear uses a strange artifact to wish that Navarrette's Nikki loved him more than anything in the world. True to the film's title, Nikki is suddenly devoted to Bear, but her lack of agency invites truly unsettling questions, and Barker uses his relatively simple conceit to interrogate consent, love, and, well, obsession.

Again, Navarrette is a fresh-faced star who's now set to appear in Marvel Studios' X-Men movie reboot, and the Academy loves that sort of thing. (To bring it back to Lawrence for a moment, she was midway through her own franchise, the "Hunger Games" movies, when she won for "Silver Linings Playbook" in 2013.) In addition, Amy Madigan pulled out a somewhat surprising but wholly deserved win early in 2026 for her supporting turn as the witchy Aunt Gladys in "Weapons," confirming that, despite years of bias, the Academy is coming around on the horror genre. (I'm still pretty ticked off that Lupita Nyong'o, just a few short years after winning in the Best Supporting Actress statue for "12 Years a Slave," didn't even get nominated for her dual performance in Jordan Peele's "Us" due to the organization's clear anti-horror stance.) Add in Michael B. Jordan's victory earlier for another horror movie in "Sinners," and you've got the right environment for Navarrette to win.

Julianne Moore didn't win her first Academy Award until 2015 for her role as a woman grappling with Alzheimer's disease in "Still Alice," and while I personally preferred Rosamund Pike's unbelievable turn as Amy Elliott Dunne in "Gone Girl" that same year, I couldn't ever argue with Moore taking home an Oscar after four previous nominations (for "Boogie Nights," "The End of the Affair," "Far from Heaven," and "The Hours"). Moore has been an exciting and audacious performer for decades, and she hasn't earned an Oscar nomination, period, since winning for "Still Alice." I think her role in Jesse Eisenberg's second film as a director, "The Debut," could change that.

In this sharp, funny flick, Moore stars as Mona Friedman, an introverted New Jersey housewife who finds herself thrust into the spotlight when she books the lead role in a local theater production spearheaded by the notoriously tough director Jerry Blankenbuehler (Paul Giamatti, who also feels like a likely pick for an Oscar nomination, only in the Best Supporting Actor category). Alongside incredible co-stars like Bernadette Peters, Lilli Cooper, Halle Bailey, Bonnie Milligan, and Eisenberg himself, Moore shines as Mona and completely vanishes into this unexpectedly tricky role, leaning into the movie's wildest moments with complete ease. The bottom line is, never, ever, ever rule out a red-haired performer who takes on an audacious, attention-grabbing role, even if she's a relatively recently-crowned Oscar winner. Remember when Emma Stone won for "Poor Things" mere years after her first victory for "La La Land?"

I don't think Emily Blunt will win an Oscar for her lead role in Steven Spielberg's ambitious summer blockbuster "Disclosure Day," but I do think that she'll end up snagging a nomination for this attention-grabbing role. Blunt stars in the film as Margaret Fairchild, a Kansas City meteorologist whose broadcast is interrupted one day when she starts speaking in odd clicks and noises before passing out. When she regains consciousness, Margaret suddenly possesses psychic abilities and, eventually, links up with whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O'Connor), learning that the two have been connected for years ... and that the United States government has been working with shadowy organizations to hide the existence of aliens from the general populace.

Blunt only earned her first Oscar nomination in 2024 for her work in Christopher Nolan's historic 2023 epic "Oppenheimer" (there, she plays Kitty Oppenheimer, the troubled wife to Cillian Murphy's titular physicist), and even if your mileage varies when it comes to "Disclosure Day" as a whole, Blunt's performance is undeniably fantastic. Despite Margaret's increasingly bizarre circumstances and understandably emotional reactions to a series of wild reveals, Blunt imbues the character with a steely resolve that makes her feel entirely human. Basically, I think that between her performance and the fact that we're talking about a Spielberg original, Blunt will probably make it into the Best Actress category.

Because Sandra Hüller's astonishing 2023 run — where she appeared in a lead role in "Anatomy of a Fall" and a supporting one in "The Zone of Interest" — predated the Academy's recent rule changes (per Variety) that permit performers to earn separate nominations in different categories, she's only been nominated for one Academy Award for the former, even though she deserved it for both. (Hüller is incredible in "Anatomy of a Fall," but her turn as the wife of a high-ranking Third Reich official in "The Zone of Interest" is haunting, terrifying, and astounding, too.) Now, once again, Hüller finds herself in a situation where she could very well pick up multiple nods, and voters will also have to make some tough choices. I can't fully rule out that Hüller will break into the Supporting Actress category for her turn in the beloved blockbuster "Project Hail Mary," but when it comes to the Best Actress race, she actually has two viable pathways: "Fatherland" and "Rose."

If I'm being blunt, Hüller could easily earn a Best Actress nomination for "Rose," Markus Schleinzer's 17th century period drama that casts her as a soldier (the titular Rose) who lives as a man in a small Austrian Protestant village. I'm going with "Fatherland," though. It's directed by Paweł Pawlikowski and has Hüller portraying real-life figure Erika Mann, the daughter of the acclaimed novelist Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler). I don't think there's any question that, at some point in her career, Hüller will accept an Oscar in front of a cheering crowd, and "Fatherland" might get her in the running for 2027.

In a just and fair world, the way that Olivia Wilde's Angela says "jamón" in "The Invite" would have her swimming in a pool of Oscars, Scrooge McDuck-style. Wilde, who followed up her 2022 critical dud "Don't Worry Darling" with "The Invite" and handily proved she's still one of our most exciting working directors despite that misfire, stars in this claustrophobic, weird, and wildly funny movie that only features her, Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz, and Edward Norton as two couples at the world's most out-of-control dinner party. After Joe and Angela (Rogen and Wilde) decide to invite their neighbors Hawk and Pina (Norton and Cruz) over for dinner, things quickly spiral out of control — partly because Angela and Joe are so wildly unhappy in their marriage, and partly because of lingering resentment on their part that they can always hear Hawk and Pina during, uh, intimate moments. 

My jaw dropped multiple times during the run of "The Invite," and every single performer here is doing great work, but Wilde is on another level. Her frantic, twitchy, bug-eyed Angela has outsized reactions to nearly everything, as if she can't help herself, and despite sounding hyperbolic, I'm being accurate and correct when I say that some of Wilde's on-screen reactions are making new innovations in facial movement. If Wilde manages to earn a spot in both the Best Director and Best Actress Oscar categories (which, in my opinion, she should), that would be history-making for the Academy — and even though I think her winning Best Actress is sort of a long shot, I'd love to see her nominated.

We'll find out who's nominated for an Oscar on January 21, 2027, when said nominees are announced. The ceremony will then take place on March 14.