It’s been a few weeks since the 90th Academy Awards, which means it’s time to start thinking about potential nominees for the 91st next year. Already we have a handful of strong contenders based on buzz from the Sundance Film Festival, but one of the most noteworthy categories already shaping up is Best Actress. There has been strong buzz for three specific actresses who could find their way to either their first or second nominations. Here are three actresses to watch out for as their films are released in 2018:
Toni Collette – Hereditary
Hereditary is following the same trajectory as other acclaimed horror films in recent years like The Babadook and The Witch, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival and quickly getting scooped up by a distributor. Toni Collette stars in the film as Annie, whose mother dies but seems to leave behind a presence that haunts Annie’s daughter. Early reviews are stellar for Collette in particular, with Variety raving that she is “staggering” in the film, while The Hollywood Reporter says she is “astonishingly good.” Collette was previously nominated in 1999 for The Sixth Sense, another horror sensation in which she plays a panicked mother. The Academy clearly embraced Get Out this year and Hereditary has the weight of A24 behind it, which carried Moonlight to a Best Picture win two years ago, so if the film has a strong box office like I imagine it will, this has all the makings of a second nomination for her.
Watch the trailer for Hereditary, which comes out June 8:
Elsie Fisher – Eighth Grade
It’s tempting when trying to predict next year’s Oscar nominees to shoot for the stars and predict a whole bunch of previous winners and nominees. But sometimes the Academy likes the thrill of discovery, like Gabourey Sidibe in Precious or Ellen Page in Juno or young Saoirse Ronan in Atonement. This is the narrative I see forming for Elise Fisher, the 14-year-old actress at the heart of Bo Burnham’s feature film debut as a director, Eighth Grade. The film follows Fisher’s Kayla in her last week of eighth grade. Like Hereditary, Eighth Grade was bought by A24 and has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Bo Burnham is well-liked in the indie scene and this being his big debut behind the camera could result in a similar response as Lady Bird this past year with Greta Gerwig. If this is the case, I think it will be hard to deny the girl at the center of the film.
Watch the trailer for Eighth Grade, which comes out July 13:
Melissa McCarthy – Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Academy members love when comedic actors turn in a more serious, thoughtful performance, as we’ve seen with the likes of Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, Mo’Nique in Precious and Steve Carell in Foxcatcher. Such is the case with Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me?, a biopic about the life of author Lee Israel. Israel famously wrote biographies for notable women but soon found her career on a downswing and turned to literary forgery to pay the bills. McCarthy “deglams” for the role, another trademark of potential Oscar glory, and she seems to be carrying the film as strongly as she does with her rowdy comedies. Can You Ever Forgive Me? comes from Marielle Heller, whose debut film The Diary of a Teenage Girl earned rave reviews in 2015. Fox Searchlight is distributing the film, and they just found major success at the Oscars with both The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, so for them to be premiering the trailer for this already when the film doesn’t come out until fall is a strong sign that it will be one of their prized horses this Oscar derby.
Watch the trailer for Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which comes out October 19: