Oscars 2024: Cillian Murphy among favourites to land Best Actor prize ahead of nominations

Cillian Murphy, Carey Mulligan and Emily Blunt are among the stars tipped to land Oscar nominations on Tuesday.

Irish actor Murphy has been widely acclaimed for his performance as J Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist described as the father of the atomic bomb, in Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic Oppenheimer.

He is already nominated for a Bafta and an SAG award for the performance, has won a Golden Globe and is considered to be a frontrunner to take home the best actor Academy Award.

Murphy is likely to face competition from Paul Giamatti, who has also won plaudits for his performance as a cranky prep school teacher forced to remain on campus over the holidays with a troubled student in drama The Holdovers.

Other likely contenders include Bradley Cooper for his Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, which he also directed, and Jeffrey Wright for his turn as a frustrated novelist who pens a book that propels himself into the centre of the hypocrisy he disdains, in American Fiction.

The Oscar nominations will be announced at 1.30pm today (January 23). They will be revealed by Atlanta star Zazie Beetz and The Boys actor Jack Quaid.

The Oscars will be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel on March 10.

BEST ACTOR ODDS

Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) 4/11

Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers) 2/1

Bradley Cooper (Maestro) 4/1

Leonardo DiCaprio (Killers of the Flower Moon) 18/1

Jeffrey Wright (American Fiction) 20/1