The results of the Screen Actors Guild Awards prove that Adrien Brody won’t have an easy time beating Timothée Chalamet at the 2025 Academy Awards. The nominees for Best Actor at the Academy Awards are Brody, Chalamet, Ralph Fiennes, Colman Domingo, and Sebastian Stan. While all these actors gave amazing performances, as awards season has progressed, it has become clear that the Best Actor Oscar will either go to Brody or Chalamet. Brody has been winning at most of the major award ceremonies, but Chalamet is definitely not out of the race yet.
In 2024, Brody starred in The Brutalist and played László Tóth, a renowned European architect and Holocaust survivor who immigrates to America and starts working with a wealthy businessman. Meanwhile, Chalamet portrayed Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, a biopic that follows Dylan through several years early in his career. Reviews for The Brutalist have been much better than A Complete Unknown’s, but Chalamet’s portrayal of Dylan has been consistently praised. Chalamet actually won Best Actor at the SAG Awards, which means that Brody needs to break a three-year streak to win his second Oscar at the Academy Awards.
Why Timothée Chalamet Beat Adrien Brody At The SAG Awards
Timothée Chalamet Surprisingly Won The SAG Best Actor Award
I was honestly surprised that Chalamet won Best Actor at the SAG Awards, considering Brody has already beaten him at major ceremonies like the Golden Globes, the British Academy Film Awards, and the Critics Choice Awards. After the results of these aforementioned award ceremonies, it seemed like Brody had all the momentum heading into the Oscars. However, Chalamet winning the SAG award made it much harder to predict who will win Best Actor at the Academy Awards.
|
Movie |
Director |
RT Critics Score |
# of Oscar Nominations |
|---|---|---|---|
|
The Brutalist (2024) |
Brady Corbet |
94% |
10 |
|
A Complete Unknown (2024) |
James Mangold |
81% |
6 |
In hindsight, maybe Chalamet winning Best Actor over Brody shouldn’t have surprised me as much, since A Complete Unknown received a lot more love at the SAG Awards. A Complete Unknown received four nominations at the SAG Awards, whereas The Brutalist received only one. In fact, The Brutalist wasn’t even nominated for the Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture award, which is the biggest award at the ceremony.
It’s also worth noting that voting for the SAG Awards took place slightly later than some other ceremonies, and was still being held after The Brutalist faced criticism for using artificial intelligence. Not long after voting for the SAG Awards began, it was revealed that The Brutalist used the AI tool Respeecher to make the Hungarian that Brody and other actors speak in the movie sound as realistic as possible. Therefore, there’s a chance that SAG voters decided not to vote for Brody after learning about this, which led to Chalamet winning Best Actor instead.
The Oscar For Best Actor Has Been Won By The SAG Winner Three Years Straight
Adrien Brody Now Needs To Break A SAG Winner Streak
Usually, the previous award ceremonies can be studied to determine the results of the Academy Awards. Up until the SAG Awards, it seemed obvious that Brody was going to win the Best Actor Oscar. However, the last three SAG Best Actor winners have also won at the Academy Awards. In the last three years, Cillian Murphy, Brendan Fraser, and Will Smith all won Best Actor at both the SAG Awards and the Academy Awards. Therefore, this streak will have to be broken for Brody to win his second Best Actor Oscar at the Academy Awards.
Of course, it is not always the case that the SAG Best Actor winner takes home the Oscar. Just four years ago, Chadwick Boseman posthumously won Best Actor at the SAG Awards, whereas Anthony Hopkins won at the Academy Awards. Therefore, it would not be a complete shocker if Brody broke this streak. However, historically, it is very common for the winner of the SAG award to also win Best Actor at the Academy Awards. This means that Chalamet definitely has a better chance at beating Brody now than he did before the SAG Awards.
Adrien Brody Has Already Won The Oscar Without Winning The SAG Award
Adrien Brody Previously Won The Best Actor Oscar For His Role In The Pianist
However, speaking of times when an actor lost the SAG award but ended up winning the Best Actor Oscar, we have to revisit the 2003 awards season. After starring in Roman Polanski’s critically acclaimed war drama The Pianist, which has many similarities to The Brutalist, Brody became the youngest person ever to win Best Actor at the Academy Awards. However, before the Oscars were held, Brody failed to win Best Actor at the SAG Awards, with the award instead going to Daniel Day-Lewis for his performance in Gangs of New York.
Chalamet would actually dethrone Brody as the youngest Best Actor winner if he wins this year.
Therefore, since Brody has already managed to win an Oscar without winning at the SAG Awards, it would not be surprising if history repeated itself. However, making Brody the youngest Best Actor winner ever was possibly one of the reasons why Oscar voters voted for him over Day-Lewis and the other nominees in 2003. Interestingly enough, Chalamet would actually dethrone Brody as the youngest Best Actor winner if he wins this year. This could actually be another reason why Oscar voters ultimately end up giving the award to Chalamet.
History Is On Adrien Brody’s Side For Best Actor At The Oscars 2025
Adrien Brody Is Still The Best Actor Favorite Heading Into The Academy Awards
Even though it seems like Chalamet now has a better chance of winning Best Actor at the Academy Awards, the odds are definitely still in Brody’s favor. After all, as Variety notes, no actor has ever won Best Actor at the Academy Awards after just winning at the SAG Awards. Furthermore, only two actors have ever won the Oscar for Best Actor without winning at any other major televised award ceremony. These two actors are Denzel Washington for Training Day and, funnily enough, Adrien Brody for The Pianist.
Therefore, even though losing at the SAG Awards was a bump in the road for Brody, it still seems like he will win Best Actor at the Academy Awards. Both Brody and Chalamet gave outstanding performances in their respective films, so either of them would be a great Best Actor winner. It would be exciting to see Chalamet become the youngest Best Actor winner ever, but I would also be happy to see Brody win his second Oscar. Overall, while Adrien Brody will likely still win, it will just be great to experience the most unpredictable Academy Awards in years.
Source: Variety
