Continuing my personal 2025 Oscar nominations, today I will be writing about the race for Best Supporting Actor.

The actual nominees are Benicio Del Toro (One Battle After Another), Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein), Delroy Lindo (Sinners), Sean Penn (One Battle After Another), and Stellan Skarsgard (Sentimental Value). Of those, the two One Battle gentlemen would definitely make my list, along with some of the following performers.

Miles Caton (Sinners)
I was very happy to see Lindo make the cut, especially given his consistent excellence across a long career. On the other end of the spectrum, Miles Caton — a teenager in his first film role — was just as impressive. His character is the only one in the film to survive with his soul intact, and the toll of the descent into and emergence from Hell is written in his expressive eyes. He’s a damn good singer, too.

Michael Cera (The Phoenician Scheme)
Comedic roles are almost never recognized by the Academy, and shockingly, no performer in a Wes Anderson movie has ever been nominated. Bill Murray (Rushmore), Gene Hackman (The Royal Tenenbaums), and Ralph Fiennes (The Grand Budapest Hotel) were all considered likely nominees but failed to make the cut. This would have been a great year to break that streak by nominating Cera for his hilarious, deceptively sly, turn as Bjørn Lund, the Norwegian entomologist assisting Benicio Del Toro’s business tycoon. Cera can elicit a laugh with just a glance, but his accent work takes the performance to another level.

Aidan Delbis (Bugonia)
This was a big year for first-time or non-professional actors, and none had a more challenging assignment than Delbis, an autistic high school drama student who was cast in a tense three-hander opposite Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. This would have been a tough role for an industry veteran, let alone a 19-year-old newbie. But Delbis’ sincerity and authenticity make him the sweet, sad center of the escalating madness.

Ralph Fiennes (28 Years Later)
A year from now, I’ll be bemoaning the fact that Fiennes wasn’t nominated for Best Actor in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, the sequel to 2025’s 28 Years Later. The Oscars have become more open to performances in horror films (Sinners, Frankenstein and Weapons all scored nods this year) but a grisly zombie movie is still a step too far. Before moving into a lead role in The Bone Temple, Fiennes originated the role of Dr. Ian Kelson in the harrowing and deeply moving first film. He is a man of science who creates his own kind of spirituality in a world that’s long gone mad.

Josh O’Connor (Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery)
O’Connor has emerged in the past few years as an actor who makes everything he’s in a whole lot better. That’s exactly what he does in Rian Johnson’s latest Knives Out film, playing a small-town priest who stumbles into a hornet’s nest of suspicious parishioners. Teaming up with Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, he emerges as a savvy amateur detective. But the film becomes so much more meaningful when he’s called on to utilize his true talents as a man of faith. O’Connor is so good he makes you want to believe.