Fresh off of a prolific run on HBO’s Succession, Kieran Culkin returned to the big screen in Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut, A Real Pain, but despite the accolades he’s gotten, his Oscar chances are uncertain. Culkin, who began his career with an appearance in Home Alone alongside his brother Macaulay, is known for playing quirky characters, including Benji in A Real Pain’s cast of characters alongside Jesse Eisenberg’s David. The excellent movie has been one of Kieran Culkin’s best movies to date, and one of his best pieces of work, period.

Culkin has been acting steadily since he was a child, but he’s really come into his own in the past few years, earning praise for his ability to ground his eccentric characters in vulnerability and authenticity. 2023 saw Culkin win an Emmy for his role as Roman Roy in Succession. Now, he’s been nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars. However, A Real Pain‘s sparse nominations for the Academy Awards may hold him back from clinching the тιтle, though Kieran Culkin is arguably the Best Supporting Actor frontrunner for the 2025 Oscars.

A Real Pain Did Not Perform As Well As Expected In The 2025 Oscar Nominations

A Real Pain Missed A Best Picture Nomination

A Real Pain follows Eisenberg and Culkin as a pair of cousins looking to connect with both their Jewish ancestry and themselves. The movie received universal critical acclaim and has been received quite well by audiences; even after its theatrical run, A Real Pain climbed Hulu’s charts once it hit streaming. Surprisingly, though, despite A Real Pain‘s stellar reviews, it was nominated only in the Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor categories for this year’s Oscars, meaning it missed out on a crucial nomination for the Academy Awards: Best Picture.

It was a head-scratching snub. A Real Pain received nominations from critics’ circles such as the Gotham Awards and Critics’ Choice Awards, and was named one of the top ten best movies of 2024 by both the National Board of Review and the American Film Insтιтute. At the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, the movie won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for Eisenberg’s screenplay. Yet, the Academy opted to leave the movie out of its Best Picture nominations.

How Much A Real Pain’s Best Picture Snub Really Impacts Kieran Culkin’s Best Supporting Actor Odds

Supporting Actor Wins Often Come from Best Picture Nominees and Winners

The Best Picture snub may seem unrelated to Culkin’s performance, but it’s worth noting that for almost the past decade and a half, Academy Awards ceremonies have exclusively rewarded supporting actors who starred in Best Picture winners or nominees. What’s more indicative of Culkin’s potential chance at winning is the more recent, worrying trend: the past three actors to take home the award (Robert Downey Jr., Ke Huy Quan, and Troy Kotsur) all starred in Best Picture winners.

Should Culkin win the Academy Award without being attached to a Best Picture nominee, he would be breaking a 13-year-long streak. In 2012, Christopher Plummer won the award for Beginners, which received a number of accolades but did not make it into the Best Picture category at the Academy Awards. A Real Pain stands to make 2020s history if Culkin takes home the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Kieran Culkin Should Still Be Viewed As The Frontrunner To Win Best Supporting Actor At The 2025 Oscars

Don’t Count Culkin Out Yet

That said, the Succession alum has been sweeping this year’s awards season, most recently winning the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture. Culkin also won Best Supporting Actor тιтles from major critics’ circles, including the “Big Four,” consisting of the National Board of Review, New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics ᴀssociation, and National Society of Film Critics, only the third supporting actor in history to do so. Culkin also received nominations for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role, which will be announced in February.

However, Culkin faces a worthy group of compeтιтors: Yura Borisov (Anora), Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown), Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), and Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice). As the Oscar race currently stands, Norton and Pearce appear to be his biggest compeтιтion. Norton stands a fair chance of winning the award given A Complete Unknown’s popularity with the Academy. The Bob Dylan biopic picked up eight nominations, including Best Picture. Norton is also a familiar face in the industry, having been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor thrice and Best Actor once. He has yet to win an Oscar, so the Academy may see this year as an opportunity to give the actor his flowers.

Pearce’s role as the nefarious Harrison Lee Van Buren in The Brutalist also makes him a strong contender in the compeтιтion. The Australian actor is also nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and earned other nominations from the Gotham Awards and Golden Globes. The Brutalist received 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and recently won three critical Golden Globes: Best Actor in a Motion Picture (Drama), Best Director, and Best Motion Picture (Drama).

Even so, regardless of A Real Pain getting a mere two nominations, Culkin is still the frontrunner for the category and will likely remain so until the night of the Academy Awards ceremony reveals the winner. That the Oscar is still Culkin’s to lose despite the Best Picture snub only goes to show how strong and compelling his performance was. While there are plenty of worthy contenders, it seems momentum is on Culkin’s side.