Who Should Win Best Actor?

Five actors are nominated for Best Actor at the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday. Timothee Chalamet won the Golden Globe and Critics Choice for "Marty Supreme," then lost the BAFTA (to Robert Aramayo for "I Swear," who isn't even an Oscar nominee) and the Actor Award (to Michael B. Jordan for "Sinners"). The road map that usually predicts the Oscar winner is a mess this year. Jordan now leads Gold Derby expert predictions at 57%, with Chalamet at 29%. Also in the field: Leonardo DiCaprio in "One Battle After Another," Ethan Hawke in "Blue Moon," and Wagner Moura in "The Secret Agent." This is the most competitive Best Actor race in years.

1. Jordan Took the Momentum (Actor Awards, Variety, Gold Derby)

The Actor Award winner almost always wins the Oscar. And Sinners has 16 nominations.

Jordan's Actor Award win reshuffled the entire race. He was not the frontrunner going in — Chalamet was. But Jordan's surprise win for his dual role as twin brothers Smoke and Stack in "Sinners" gave him the most important precursor of the season. This is his first Academy Award nomination. Variety and Parade both predict he'll win.

The film behind him is a juggernaut. "Sinners" has 16 Oscar nominations — the most in history — and $369 million worldwide. It's Ryan Coogler's horror film set in 1932 Mississippi during Jim Crow. If the Academy wants to crown the film that defined the year, Jordan is the lead.

And the competition stumbled. Chalamet's "Marty Supreme" went 0-for-11 at the BAFTAs — a historic shutout tying records set in 1969 and 2004. You don't go winless at BAFTA and walk into the Oscars with confidence.

2. Chalamet Was Winning Until He Wasn't (Golden Globes, Critics Choice)

He won the first two precursors. Then he lost the next two. The question is whether early momentum matters more than late momentum.

Chalamet's Golden Globe and Critics Choice wins were decisive. He won Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical at the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Award for "Marty Supreme," a Josh Safdie-directed film with 9 Oscar nominations including Best Picture. He also received the Palm Springs Spotlight Actor of the Year award. Through January, this looked like his race.

Then BAFTA happened. Chalamet didn't just lose — he lost to someone outside the Oscar field entirely. Robert Aramayo won BAFTA Best Actor for "I Swear," becoming the first performer in BAFTA history to win both the Best Actor and Rising Star awards in one night. And "Marty Supreme" went 0-for-11. Then Jordan took the Actor Award.

The math now favors Jordan, but Chalamet's path isn't dead. The Academy skews older than the Actor Awards electorate and has different sensibilities. If voters weigh the full season rather than the final precursor, Chalamet's Globe-plus-Critics-Choice combo still counts. But he needs to overcome being the frontrunner who lost momentum — which is historically the harder position.

3. The Real Dark Horses Deserve the Conversation (Wagner Moura, Ethan Hawke)

A first-ever Brazilian nominee who won Cannes and the Golden Globe. A nearly unrecognizable Ethan Hawke in a one-night Linklater film. These are the performances the race is ignoring.

Wagner Moura made history before the ceremony started. He is the first Brazilian nominated for Best Actor. He won Best Actor at Cannes and the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama for "The Secret Agent," a political thriller set during Brazil's 1977 military dictatorship where he plays a professor forced into hiding after being marked for assassination. The film earned 4 Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best International Feature.

Ethan Hawke gave the most transformative performance in the category. He is nearly unrecognizable as lyricist Lorenz Hart in Richard Linklater's "Blue Moon," shaving his head and using stagecraft to depict Hart's diminutive stature. The film is set almost entirely on one night at Sardi's Restaurant. This is Hawke's first lead Oscar nomination despite four previous nominations across his career.

Both are long shots, but both raise the same question. In a year where Jordan and Chalamet are splitting the mainstream vote, a dark horse win isn't impossible — it's happened before. And if you're asking who SHOULD win rather than who WILL win, both Moura and Hawke made films that took larger artistic risks than either frontrunner.

Where This Lands

This is the most genuinely unpredictable Best Actor race in years. The precursor path that usually points to a winner is fractured — Chalamet won the first half, Jordan took the second, and BAFTA went to a complete outsider. On the other hand, Jordan has the most recent and arguably most important precursor, the most-nominated film in Oscar history behind him, and the chance to make his first nomination a win. The safe bet is Jordan. But in a split race with no clear sweep, the Academy has room to follow its own instincts — and that could mean Chalamet, Moura, or even Hawke hears their name on Sunday. And finally, we can't forget dear Leo. Tapestry's money is on him — these talking heads bedamned.