These 12 Performances Could Be Best Actor Frontrunners of 2025

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Ignacio Weil

Entertainment - September 7th 2025, 15:00 GMT+2

Cropped imagen 2025 09 04 181613781 — Dwayne Johnson – The Smashing Machine

Admit it: seeing him on a Best Actor shortlist feels like a hard left off a jungle trail, the guy from four-quadrant adventures suddenly elbowing into prestige territory with a bruised, unglamorous portrait of Mark Kerr. The surprise works because the acting isn’t a stunt – it’s a recalibration, stripping away the wink to find a quieter, more doubtful center that plays in the silences as much as the takedowns. Venice didn’t just clap; it roared, and the ovation mattered because it reframed a career many had filed under “big, loud, safe.”He’s even acknowledged being pigeonholed as an action brand, which gives this pivot the satisfying arc of an athlete changing positions and still outplaying the field. The A24 release plan and Safdie’s close-quarters intensity help, but the real engine is how convincingly he shrugs off the swagger to carry the private costs of winning and losing. That contrast is why this performance reads as unexpected in the best way: it converses with the blockbuster past while quietly building a different legacy. By opening weekend, expect the conversation to shift from “can he?” to “he did.” | © A24

Cropped imagen 2025 09 04 181936475 — Daniel Day-Lewis – Anemone

Precision can be showy, but here it’s stealthy: a performance built from glances, pauses, and breaths that stack into something strangely tidal, the kind of slow swell that slips past your defenses. The comeback hook is easy to market, yet the work dodges nostalgia, choosing curiosity over victory lap and letting the character’s interior life sprawl without spectacle. The craft scaffolding – sharp editing, nervy score, clean negative space – acts like a pressure chamber that makes every small choice feel seismic. What lands isn’t bigness but inevitability, a sense that each scene has been sanded until it catches the light at just the right angle. The roll-out strategy signals quiet confidence, a limited bow designed to let buzz ferment before widening its circle. It’s the rare awards play that invites leaning in rather than leaning back, trusting audiences to meet it halfway. By the end, the performance feels less like a return than a continuation, the next precise footfall in a career of careful steps. | © Plan B Entertainment

Cropped imagen 2025 09 04 182201980 — Jeremy Allen White – Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere

The trick isn’t sounding like a rock icon; it’s sounding like a human being circling a breakthrough, and the performance nails that late-night hum where art begins. Instead of pantomime, there’s process – small experiments, small failures, and the startling quiet of an idea taking shape, which plays like catnip for music lovers and character-drama fans alike. The film’s design leans intimate, but the acting expands inside the room, building a credible, lived-in rhythm without quotation marks. Early reactions crowned it with the kind of warm, respectful applause that signals staying power rather than hype-blast heat. As awards season anatomy goes, the fall date positions this squarely in the conversation while the craft elements (editing, sound) whisper their own supporting case. What’s memorable is the refusal to grandstand, the confidence to underplay and trust the camera to catch it. That restraint becomes the hook, a quiet magnetism that accumulates scene by scene. It’s not cosplay; it’s character, and it lingers. | © 20th Century Studios

Cropped imagen 2025 09 04 182311600 — Leonardo DiCaprio – One Battle After Another

When the canvas gets bigger, details matter more, and this turn sweats the details – agitated posture, clipped speech, flashes of softness that leak through the armor before snapping shut again. The film’s scale could swallow a lesser performance, yet the center holds with the kind of restless intensity that keeps the plot’s gears grinding against human nerves. There’s a push-pull energy at work: pulp momentum tugging at political dread while the acting keeps the thread taut and personal. Big-screen presentation helps – this is the sort of role that benefits from a towering face and a booming hush. The campaign has that confident studio glow, but the performance refuses to coast on it, always choosing the specific over the splashy. By the last reel, the character’s fractures look like fault lines across a map you thought you knew, and that surprise is where awards attention often sparks. It’s star wattage, calibrated, and the dimmer switch is the point. | © Ghoulardi Film Company

Cropped imagen 2025 09 04 182402312 — Michael B. Jordan – Sinners

Charisma is the easy sell; discipline is the secret, and this one doubles down by splitting the role in two without turning the duality into a parlor trick. Set against a 1930s Delta nightmare, the acting leans into moral weather – humidity, guilt, a low thunder of choices catching up – and the tension comes from how little the character trusts the ground beneath his feet. Genre elements push and pull at the drama, and the performance rides that vibration like a needle staying in the groove even when the record skips. Release timing could have turned it into a memory test, yet the chatter kept circling back, buoyed by craft nods and the sense that something unusually ambitious had snuck into the multiplex. What reads first is physical presence; what stays is an ache you can’t quite name. It’s muscular, yes, but it’s the quiet recoil that sells the haunting. By the time the credits land, you feel like you’ve watched someone outpace his legend and run straight into himself. | © Proximity Media

Cropped imagen 2025 09 04 182435174 — George Clooney – Jay Kelly

There’s a gentle audacity in watching a screen icon sand his image down to velvet nap, playing fame not as fantasy but as a room that got too comfortable and too small at the same time. The performance glides on timing – the half-smile that arrives late, the pause that overstays – until the charm curdles into self-recognition and the jokes start landing like little truths. Festival response suggested a slow-bloom favorite, less thunderclap than echo, and that’s the wavelength the acting chooses: conversational, precise, quietly earned. It’s the kind of role that accumulates power through modesty, letting the audience discover it rather than demanding to be discovered. The filmmaker’s restraint gives the actor space to underplay, which proves smarter – and funnier – than a big swing would have been. As awards season picks its lanes, this reads as the stealth entry that keeps showing up on ballots from voters who watched it twice. The resonance sneaks up on you, and then it stays. | © Pascal Pictures

Cropped imagen 2025 09 04 182615969 — Jesse Plemons – Bugonia

A conspiracy crank in beekeeper overalls shouldn’t feel this heartbreaking, but the performance keeps slipping past the gag into something prickly and human, the sort of Lanthimos-world turn that rewards every twitch of doubt in the eyes. Instead of mugging through the absurdity, he plays it dead serious – belief as ballast – which makes the spirals funnier and scarier at once. The Venice splash locked in the “event” framing, yet the work itself is purposefully small-scale: a voice that never quite trusts its own certainty, a body that moves like it’s bracing for an answer it doesn’t want. Keeping the emotion on a tight simmer turns the satire into a character study, and that restraint pays off whenever the film’s tone jolts from deadpan to distress. As the story gnaws at modern paranoia, the acting stays elastic – one scene tender, the next prickly with defensive humor – so the audience can meet it where they live online. Awards talk loves “precision in chaos,” and this is the tasteful, unnerving version of exactly that. By the credits, you don’t just remember the plot; you remember a guy trying to make sense of a world that won’t. | © Element Pictures

Cropped imagen 2025 09 04 183529113 — Colin Farrell – Ballad of a Small Player

There’s a gambler’s smile here that never reaches the eyes, and that’s the hook: the performance treats luck like a religion and penance like a pastime, wearing guilt the way other characters wear tuxedos. Macau’s neon is tempting, but he plays against the glow, finding the sour aftertaste of every small win and the private panic of every near miss. The role leans into deception without chasing “cool,” letting pauses carry meaning and forcing the audience to read tells that may not exist. World-premiering at Telluride and sliding toward a Netflix bow, the rollout fits a character who is always one step ahead of a debt collector and one step behind salvation. Even when the plot tilts into dream logic, the acting plants two feet on the floor, so the surreal never erases the shame. It’s a quiet star turn, more cigarette burn than fireworks display, and that’s what keeps it in awards conversations after the weekend scroll moves on. The empathy is sneaky: you start judging him, and somehow you end up rooting for him to break even with himself. | © Stigma Films

Cropped imagen 2025 09 04 183219420 — Timothée Chalamet – Marty Supreme

Not every sports movie is about winning; this one is about obsession dressed up as play, and the performance reads like a mixtape of bravado, nerves, and the oddball joy of taking the bit too far. Instead of leaning on charisma alone, he threads in a slightly ridiculous swagger that keeps tipping into sincerity, making the character’s competitive streak feel both comic and oddly touching. The Safdie grit is real – close-ups that catch the sheen of exhaustion, rhythms that sprint then stutter – and the acting rises to it without flinching. Little grace notes help: a half-smile after a botched point, a breath that sounds more like a confession than a flex. With a Christmas release date and a production pedigree that screams “craft,” the campaign math is straightforward, but the interest is in how playful the performance stays while the stakes climb. It’s sweaty, specific, and a little deranged in the best possible way, like focus turned into theater. Whether the race needs “youthful chaos” or “precision under pressure,” this has receipts for both. | © A24

Cropped imagen 2025 09 04 183050061 — Brendan Fraser – Rental Family

The magic trick is warmth without schmaltz: he plays a struggling actor for hire who discovers that pretending to be a father, a friend, or a son is sometimes the one honest thing he can do, and that paradox gives the film its pulse. Every awkward smile lands like a question – am I helping or hiding? – and the performance keeps chasing humane answers rather than tidy ones. TIFF premiere positioning and a fall theatrical slot set the table, but it’s the soft-spoken choices that do the cooking: a pause before a lie, a wince after a truth. The tone walks a tightrope between melancholy and mischief, and the acting is the balance pole, never letting sentimentality topple the walk. You feel the city around him without the movie shouting about it; the work stays interior, the kind of quiet that audiences recognize as lived-in rather than underplayed. It’s a modest movie with immodest staying power because the performance is built on noticing people, not saving them. When the credits roll, the idea of “family” feels less like a noun and more like a verb. | © Sight Unseen Productions

Cropped imagen 2025 09 04 183005214 — Lee Byung-hun – No Other Choice

Righteous rage goes down easier when it’s funny, and the trick here is how he lets exhaustion curdle into dark comedy before sliding – almost imperceptibly – into horror at what desperation can justify. The performance is a ledger of tiny compromises: a shrug becomes policy, a white lie turns into logistics, and suddenly the abyss looks organized. Venice gave the film its megaphone, but the acting doesn’t need volume; it’s calibrated like a pressure gauge, clicking upward scene by scene until the needle threatens to snap. By grounding the satire in bruised pride and working-class humiliation, he makes the social critique feel personal instead of preachy. The tonal pivots are murderously hard – deadpan, then dread – and he sticks every landing with the crisp control of someone who knows how to weaponize stillness. The aftertaste is bleak but bracing, the rare star turn that invites an argument rather than a standing ovation. If the international race wants a face for “late-capitalism panic,” it has one. | © Moho Film

Cropped imagen 2025 09 04 182821378 — Wagner Moura – The Secret Agent

History rarely sits still, and neither does this performance, a hunted man in 1977 Brazil who wears paranoia like a second shirt yet keeps reaching for tenderness between sirens. Instead of martyr glow, he opts for survival grime – quick glances, faster exits, a voice that hardens only when it must – which makes the political terror feel painfully domestic. Cannes anointed him early, but the work isn’t coasting on trophies; it’s tactile, street-level acting that turns ideology into weather you can feel. The narrative sprawls, and he threads it with a humane tempo, never letting the thriller beats drown out the personal stakes. This is charisma at a low flame, refusing to grandstand, saving the big notes for when they bruise. If awards season is a memory test, this one cheats by engraving itself in the nerves. The film asks what it costs to stay human under a regime; the performance answers: everything, and then something stubbornly hopeful. | © CinemaScópio

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As awards season draws closer, the spotlight is already shining on some of 2025’s most talked-about performances. From dramatic festival debuts to powerhouse portrayals in major studio releases, this year has delivered an extraordinary range of talent. Audiences and critics alike are buzzing about who will dominate the Best Actor conversation – whether it’s Daniel Day-Lewis making his long-awaited return, Dwayne Johnson surprising the industry with a gritty biopic turn, or Jeremy Allen White capturing the spirit of Bruce Springsteen.

In this article, we’ll break down the twelve performances generating the most heat right now. Each of these actors is not only winning critical praise but also driving online searches, media coverage, and audience anticipation – making them serious contenders for Best Actor when award ballots land.