For our tenth Rundown article, we look at the companion to Monday’s female-driven race. After the jump, you’ll find our winner and runner-up predictions for Best Supporting Actor as well as general commentary about the race. /Next week, we’ll start off on Monday with a category with the leads.

Best Supporting Actor

Winner Predictions

• Christian Bale – The Big Short
• Tom Hardy – The Revenant
• Mark Ruffalo – Spotlight
• Mark Rylance – Bridge of Spies (PP O) (TB O)
• Sylvester Stallone – Creed (WL R) [New](TL R) [New]

Runner-Up Predictions

• Tom Hardy – The Revenant (TB O) (TL R) [New]
• Mark Ruffalo – Spotlight (WL R) [New]
• Sylvester Stallone – Creed (PP O)

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Wesley Lovell: One of the year’s biggest nail-biters, Best Supporting Actor has so many possibilities for twists and turns, it would be folly to declare the race over at this point. Sylvester Stallone clearly has the wind at his back. In spite of a horrid filmography, he is still heavily revered for his Best Picture winner Rocky, a film he lost two Oscars for back in 1976. Everything about his role sounds like an Oscar winner in the making, but there are three other cases that could result in his loss (sorry, Christian Bale). If Spotlight is going to win Best Picture, a prize other than Best Original Screenplay would be entirely possible. Since Best Director and Best Film Editing aren’t likely and Best Supporting Actress just doesn’t sound like a possibility, this category might be it. On top of that, Mark Ruffalo is now on his third nomination and has a showy, conviction-heavy performance in the film, which might just be enough to put him over the top for those who don’t want to give Stallone a career Oscar for a relatively mediocre career. Mark Rylance was thought to be the dominant force in this race, but has failed to pick up any major prizes for his performance. He has one more shot at BAFTA, where he has home field advantage, but it seems like his may be forgotten in the face of the others. That leaves Tom Hardy. He hasn’t campaigned, so he’s the weakest of the other three, but that doesn’t mean he’s out of the race. Leonardo DiCaprio has done enough gladhanding over the last couple of months to more than make up for his co-star’s lack thereof. If The Revenant is destined to become a Best Picture winner and voters decide to sweep everything up along the way, Hardy could be a benefactor.
Peter J. Patrick: This is a tough one to call. Sentiment is on the side of Stallone, but I’m going with critics’ favorite Mark Rylance on this one.
Tripp Burton: The Oscars of late haven’t been overly welcoming to giving awards to comeback nominations, especially when the person wasn’t an extremely well-regarded thespian to being with, so I can’t jump on the bandwagon for Sylvester Stallone winning here (especially without SAG or BAFTA nominations). The tough part, though, is if not Stallone then who? Mark Rylance seems too subtle, Christian Bale just won, Tom Hardy has no precursors, and Mark Ruffalo just doesn’t have any buzz around him. I’m guessing early favorite Mark Rylance wins here, especially after his probable BAFTA win this weekend, but who knows. This is certainly a fun race to be watching!
Thomas La Tourrette: As much as it pains me to predict it, it does look like Sylvester Stallone may win his first Oscar for Creed. The Academy does like to honor comeback stories and give lifetime awards in this category (think Jack Palance, Alan Arkin, Don Ameche and Christopher Plummer among others), and it looks like that could happen again. Acting in his seventh Rocky film, Stallone was decent in the part and was given a decent story arc. He gets to be the reluctant trainer and father figure, while battling cancer along the way. He grew in the part over the course of the movie, but, in my mind, it is not an Oscar worthy role. All of the other nominees did better work, but none of them seems to have built up the kind of momentum to best Stallone. Stallone did not have a SAG nomination, and a win by one of the others might have shown a shift in the race. But the win by the non-Oscar nominated Idris Elba showed a lack of support for the rest of the field. For a long time I thought that British stage veteran Mark Rylance would win for his quiet work in Bridge of Spies, but that just does not seem so possible anymore. At this point the person that might stand the chance to upset Stallone is Tom Hardy as The Revenant is winning all sorts of awards. As the lead, Leonardo DiCaprio, is practically guaranteed an Oscar, so perhaps the love of that film will carry over to a win for Hardy as well. It is reasonably unlikely, but would be a better choice.

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