Robert Pattinson Is My Oscar Frontrunner

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Beggars Banquet

For the past few weeks, I’ve been asking friends and colleagues — including on last week’s episode of the podcast — to tell me why Robert Pattinson isn’t considered the runaway frontrunner to win best supporting actor for The Odyssey. 

Right now only 21 percent of our Ankler Pundits even have him predicted for a nomination, with far more consensus around his co-star John Leguizamo, who’s on 93 percent of our pundits’ ballots.

Still, no one has given me a good reason not to feel so bullish about Pattinson, one of several actors in this year’s Oscar race who’s had a banner 2026. He’s in the hunt for best actor for his starring role in Primetime, and he led the springtime hit The Drama alongside Zendaya (and will reunite with her in the upcoming Dune: Part Three). But none of his roles has had the impact and instant meme-ability of The Odyssey, where he plays the kind of over-the-top, sneering villain that audiences and Oscar voters have historically loved.

To me, Pattinson has nothing but upside — and let me explain why.

A popular star who has grown out of his Twilight idol era, Pattinson, now 40, is old enough to be taken seriously by the Oscar voters who tend to shun younger men but young enough to feel exciting and new.

His successful run this year in both risky indies and artful blockbusters is exactly the balance of projects any actor would aspire to, and his performances — from a downtrodden groom-to-be in The Drama to a blow-dried TV host in Primetime to the villains of The Odyssey and Dune —  showcase his enviable range. Unlike many of his fellow busy actors in this year’s race, it’s not hard to pick which performance to reward him for — Antinous in The Odyssey, with his beggars and his spears, is the breakout character of what’s still the best picture frontrunner, and his meme power clearly hasn’t diminished. 

Nearly all of that is also true for Pattinson’s co-star Anne Hathaway, who is in a much different position among pundits — 96 percent of the Ankler Pundits predict her for a nomination, with the majority putting her first in their rankings. Hathaway also has internal competition from The Odyssey cast — with Samantha Morton looking likely to score her third career Oscar nomination for her brief but unforgettable turn as Circe. But as Odysseus’ long-suffering wife, Penelope, Hathaway has a much bigger role in the film, so big I had argued she ought to run as a lead. 

Like Pattinson, Hathaway has also been absolutely everywhere this year. The Odyssey is the highest-grossing of Hathaway’s 2026 films and the biggest Oscar contender, but the nearly $700 million global gross of The Devil Wears Prada 2, the great notices she got for The End of Oak Street, the female-driven success of Verity and even the big swing power of Mother Mary are all credits to Hathaway’s enduring audience appeal. At 43, she is also now a firmly established star, and somehow already having an Oscar (for 2012’s Les Misérables) hasn’t slowed down the awards buzz around her at all. As with Julianne Moore, still the runaway frontrunner best actress, Hathaway feels like the kind of star who really ought to have two Oscars. 

So why aren’t more people predicting that Pattinson and Hathaway could have matching Oscars for The Odyssey, with Matt Damon potentially adding in his own in lead actor? There’s plenty of good competition in both supporting actor and actress, which I’ll get into in a moment. And I wonder if Hathaway’s assumed dominance is preventing more people from predicting Pattinson, since Oscar voters have been known to spread the wealth among acting winners. 

But I also suspect many of us are underestimating The Odyssey, now in its final week of dormancy before it comes roaring back into the awards season hubbub. Next week, multiple major events are planned for the film ahead of the Governors Awards, with starry panels and even a premiere for a documentary about the making of the film — once the kind of thing relegated to a DVD extra, now an entire spectacle of its own. Both The Odyssey and springtime hit Project Hail Mary will aim for the same resurgence Sinners had last year, holding events and interviews to remind voters they exist. (The plan worked for Sinners, which earned a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations.)

I’ll be interested to see how many more pundits are predicting big things for The Odyssey once all these events unfold. But I also can’t blame anyone for looking elsewhere in the supporting categories, since there are a lot of powerful performances to choose from. 

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Sup. Actor: Character Building

Let’s start with The Odyssey itself, which, like virtually every other Christopher Nolan movie, has a whole lot of guys to choose from. Oppenheimer made it easy for the campaign to consolidate around Robert Downey Jr. as the antagonistic Lewis Strauss, but The Odyssey is not quite so simple. There are a lot of great roles, and a lot of beloved actors. 

Despite my feelings about Pattinson, Leguizamo is at the top of the heap for good reason. Not only is his shepherd character, Eumaeus, one of the film’s rare moral centers, waiting patiently for Odysseus’ return and fending off obnoxious suitors in the process, but Leguizamo comes with a fantastic, built-in Oscar narrative. A working actor since the mid-1980s with credits both prestigious (Moulin Rouge!, TV’s Bloodline) and lucrative (the Ice Age movies), Leguizamo is the veteran whose moment has finally arrived, much like recent supporting winners Jamie Lee Curtis, Amy Madigan and J.K. Simmons. 

The path is less clear for The Odyssey’s other supporting player, Tom Holland, though I’d caution against underestimating him after what could only be described as, um, a pretty good year. (Universal is not planning to officially submit the film’s other co-stars, but I still think voters should consider Himesh Patel, another moral center of the film as Odysseus’ right-hand man, Eurylochus. And I will also keep banging the drum for Elliot Page, star of the film’s most unforgettable scene, whose second Oscar nomination would make for a pretty incredible narrative.)

One film scoring two supporting actor nominations has become incredibly common — six times in nine years, including this year with One Battle After Another — so it seems reasonable to bet on two Odyssey men in the final five (unless another movie can also turn the trick; more on that in a second). Three nominations aren’t impossible, but they aren’t easy; no film has done it in supporting actor since The Godfather Part II. So if three non-Odyssey slots remain, who might get them? 

Well, there are plenty of character actors to choose from. A lot of smart money, mine included, is on Paul Giamatti, who has multiple barn-burner scenes opposite Julianne Moore in The Debut and also makes time for some of the quiet ruefulness that made his turn in The Holdovers so special a few years ago. (He lost to the star of a Christopher Nolan movie that year; we’ll see how much history feels like repeating itself.) There’s a similar level of confidence around Sam Rockwell, already an Oscar winner for a Martin McDonagh movie and doing equally great work in McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, playing second banana to John Malkovich but with plenty of stellar moments that are his alone. (Rockwell is joined in the cast by Steve Buscemi, a longtime favorite who remains without an Oscar nomination — and while Buscemi has a smaller part, don’t forget that the last two McDonagh movies, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Banshees of Inisherin, landed double supporting actor nominations.)

Beyond those guys and Leguizamo, though, the predictions start to spread widely. Andrew Garfield earned a Gotham Award nomination last week for his turn as Sam Altman in Artificial, but that film doesn’t open until Christmas Day, and it’s unclear how much staying power it has since its New York Film Festival premiere. Guitarricadelafuente feels like the likeliest acting nominee from the ensemble cast of La Bola Negra, and everyone who meets him in real life is inevitably dazzled, but as a first-time actor he may face a name-recognition challenge against some starrier competition. 

That competition includes Edward Norton for The Invite, which has been playing at packed FYC screenings for weeks, as well as Colman Domingo, who played a menacing Joe Jackson in Michael, a billion-dollar hit that it would be unwise to write off. Among the underdogs, I’m still holding a candle for Gotham Awards nominee Skyler Gisondo, who stole scenes from Pattinson in Primetime, and Adam Driver, giving truly one of his best-ever performances in James Gray’s family drama Paper Tiger. 

Having written all of that, I guess I do understand why Pattinson isn’t the fully anointed frontrunner — there’s so much competition! Until we start seeing Golden Globes and Critics Choice nominations next month, we really won’t know who actually has the edge here, which ought to make for some fascinating campaigning between now and then. 

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Sup. Actress: Anne and…

Anne Hathaway will likely earn an Oscar nomination for just one of the many good films she released in a single year, but she won’t make history. That honor, many pundits think, will belong to Penélope Cruz, who could become the first actor to take advantage of a new Oscar rule that allows one performer to be nominated for multiple films in the same category. 

With her substantial supporting turn in The Invite and a briefer but no less powerful role in La Bola Negra, Cruz has two strong movies to campaign for, and doesn’t have to choose one or the other. Among our pundits, 89 percent predict a nomination for The Invite and a smaller 29 percent for La Bola Negra — but several predict Cruz will be nominated for both. 

“We have no way of knowing how relatively easy or difficult pulling something like this is, given we’re in the launch year,” David Canfield of The Hollywood Reporter tells me. “But my feeling is she’s in two top best pic contenders — the slighter role of which is in La Bola Negra, the stronger movie of the pair. In a year that feels so scattered, it seems plausible she’d gin up a decent amount of No. 1 votes from both massive fans of her Invite performance and massive fans of La Bola Negra as a whole. There may just be enough in each camp!”

Can a really good year also boost Sandra Hüller here? With a solid chance at a best actress nomination for Rose as well, Hüller is eligible in supporting roles for multiple films — Cannes hit Fatherland, the blockbuster Project Hail Mary and even Digger. Still, most of our pundits think Project Hail Mary is the likelier play. (Singing Harry Styles karaoke makes you pretty dang memorable!) There’s similar potential for Olivia Colman, currently starring in romantasy hit Wicker and doing great supporting work in Elsinore, which has a practically guaranteed best actor nomination for Andrew Scott. And while Kate O’Flynn is only in one movie this year — Mike Leigh’s beautiful Tender Loving Care — her afterglow from the success of Widow’s Bay, and that Emmy win, could propel her in this race, too.

That brings me to two final wild cards, one much more traditional than the other. The Chilean actress Mariana di Girolamo is a brand-new face for most voters but an undeniable presence in Wild Horse Nine, bringing major emotional heft to a movie that’s been playing through the roof for festival audiences (it just picked up an audience award win at Montclair). And then there’s the spoiler from You Can See Everything, whom you can see on our Ankler Pundits supporting actress page, but whom I will refrain from naming here. Can an actor be nominated for their performance in a documentary? I went deep on it in this newsletter if you want to join me in that debate — and I talked about it on the podcast with Christopher Rosen and Tyler Coates this week.

I still think this category is Hathaway’s to lose, and if she returns from maternity leave in time to give a banger Golden Globes acceptance speech in January, it will be a smooth path from there. Still, it’s boring to assume that both actress categories are locked up this early in the season — and though I can’t imagine anyone but Julianne Moore winning in lead, I’m all for your theories about the supporting actress chaos that could come. Send them my way: katey@theankler.com.