The 2025 Academy Awards are live tonight at 7 p.m. ET.
All the guild awards and various precursors are in the books, leaving the Oscars as the last show of awards season. We're breaking down the Best Actor race as part of our 2025 Oscars odds collection, which also includes Best Picture predictions and Best Actress predictions.
Let's take a look and see if Timothee Chalamet can pull off the mild upset over front-runner Adrien Brody. Be sure to download our 2025 Oscars ballot before the broadcast begins.
2025 Oscars Best Actor odds
| Actor (Film) |  |
 |
|---|---|---|
| Adrien Brody (The Brutalist) | -250 | -225 |
| Timothee Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) | +150 | +162 |
| Ralph Fiennes (Conclave) | +1800 | +1400 |
| Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice) | +3500 | +3300 |
| Colman Domingo (Sing Sing) | +5000 | +3300 |
My pick: Timothee Chalamet (+162 at bet365)
Chalamet has been extremely visible, actively campaigning throughout awards season, capping off his big Screen Actors Guild win by declaring, "I’m really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don’t talk like that but I want to be one of the greats." This shows in his performance as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, as he learned to play the guitar and sang all the songs himself. That kind of work doesn't go unnoticed.
Dark horse pick: Ralph Fiennes (+1600 at DraftKings)
If any of the other three performers stands a chance — and I don't want to repeat myself with Chalamet as my dark horse as well — it's got to be Ralph Fiennes. The veteran stage and screen actor has never won an Academy Award and has only been nominated twice, once for Best Supporting Actor (Schindler's List in 1993) and once for Best Actor (The English Patient in 1996). The "career" Oscar isn't anything new, and Conclave has seen a momentum push in the last few weeks.
