Anne Hathaway’s Oscar Odyssey: Leading Actress or Supporting Actress?

“The King of Ithaca is back.” But where will the Academy have the Queen when Oscar season arrives?

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey opened to a box office hit and an avalanche of critical praise, catapulting it to the forefront of the Oscar race just months before the fall festivals begin. But the question that’s already dominating the awards conversation isn’t whether the film will contend (we already know it will). Universal is the campaign location for Oscar-winning actress Anne Hathaway, who plays Penelope, wife of Odysseus (Matt Damon) and mother of Telemachus (Tom Holland), who fights off suitors in her husband’s absence.

Lead or support? This is the first real strategic look of the season among awards enthusiasts, and the Academy’s own record books argue both ways, including one cautionary precedent from Nolan’s final epic that Hathaway’s team should pay very special attention to.

Universal is expected to launch an aggressive awards campaign, hoping to give Nolan his second Best Picture and Best Director wins in just three years since “Oppenheimer.” Variety’s Oscar analysis shows a path to a maximum of 17 nominations with current projections. The 16 films tied the record set last season by Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and surpassed the long-standing record of 14 shared by All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997) and La La Land (2016).

However, don’t expect to find the answer right away. Nolan has long avoided conversations about awards strategy until shortly after a film’s release. This means that departmental discussions with studios and talent will likely begin in earnest, at least formally, later this fall.

For Hathaway, “The Odyssey” caps off a busy year that has already included blockbuster “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and the well-received (but financially disappointing) “Mother Mary.” Upcoming releases include the late-summer thriller “The End of Oak Street” and Colleen Hoover’s “Verity.”

Spreading out votes across multiple films doesn’t seem to be Hathaway’s biggest concern. The more pressing question is which category offers the most obvious path to a nomination, and perhaps a second Oscar win for Best Supporting Actress after “Les Misérables” (2012). There’s also the question of whether her placement will help or hurt another powerful co-star, Samantha Morton. Her character, Circe, receives the most praise in the film.

The good news for Hathaway is that whatever he ultimately chooses, there won’t be any category fraud arguments. Every year, there are several candidates who could go either way depending on how voters feel. Think of examples like Maria Bello in A History of Violence (2005) or Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada (2006).

There are compelling arguments for both categories, based on viewer reactions and voters themselves. And interestingly enough, Oscar’s history book reads like a coin toss.

Let’s start with the basics. Throughout Nolan’s filmography, his films have garnered only four acting nominations. This is good news for those involved in election campaigns. Three out of four converted. Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor for The Dark Knight (2008). Oppenheimer (2023) won Best Actor for Cillian Murphy and Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr. As a result, performers in Nolan’s films rarely receive acting nominations, but when they do, they often win.

The bad news is that fourth name, and it belongs to one of Hathaway’s “best friends.”

The last time Nolan built a vast ensemble around a great character who made risky choices and emotionally taxed his wife was Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer. She campaigned, was nominated, and ultimately lost to Da’Vine Joy Randolph for The Holdovers, but that night Oppenheimer won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and other acting categories.

That’s the scenario Universal and Hathaway’s team will have to contend with. Like Blunt’s Kitty Oppenheimer, Penelope serves as an emotional anchor while her husband’s story unfolds elsewhere. It’s a role that the Academy often appoints, but it doesn’t always lead to a win.

Of the 90 Best Supporting Actress winners in Oscar history, 56 (62%) were from films nominated for Best Picture. Yet only 14 (or 16%) of the films actually won awards. Riding this year’s big ticket might get you on the ballot, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll land on the podium.

But if a studio wants to establish itself as second tier in the acting category, Best Supporting Actress is the most effective choice. Best Supporting Actress is the race that best recognizes two or more performers in the same movie. Such incidents occurred 37 times, compared to 23 for supporting actors, 12 for leading actors, and only 5 for leading actresses. If Universal were to run a campaign supporting Hathaway along with Morton, he would have the most double-doubles in Academy history.

The question is, how rare is it for one of these women to walk away with a trophy? In these 37 cases, one of the two candidates won 13 times (or 35%). This means that nearly two out of three times, a movie ends up with two nominations for Best Supporting Actress, and both women go home empty-handed. As recently as last season, Elle Fanning and Inga Evesdotter Lilleas were featured in Sentimental Value magazine, and the category went to Amy Madigan in Weapons.

Sorting these 37 movies by their Best Picture performance actually reveals a clear pattern. I grouped all the cases into three buckets and tracked how often one of the two nominated actresses actually won.

That means this double is only a viable play if Universal truly believes “The Odyssey” will win the top prize. Aside from that, it generated far more consolation candidates than the statuette.

So what about the lead actress? Well, no Nolan film has ever produced a leading actress candidate. The campaign to cast Hathaway in the lead role will convince Academy voters to recognize the first female lead of his career. And for a studio that has openly said it wants to preserve history along with its trophies, that’s the kind of hook voters repeat to each other. That would open up the possibility that “The Odyssey” could join the list of 15 other films nominated in all four acting categories, from “My Man Godfrey” (1936) to “American Hustle” (2013).

This move has risks.

When a campaign touts what some perceive as supporting roles, performances can be dropped from the lineup, as was the case with Richard Gere in Chicago (2002) and Chase Infinity in One Battle After Another (2025). Both won Best Picture, and both missed out on four other acting nominees in key categories.

Obviously, the possibility of Morton returning could complicate things further. Nolan publicly shared that his girlfriend Circe received applause from the crew on set, something he hadn’t seen since Ledger in The Dark Knight. This is valuable support for the upcoming season. She also has her own story, where supporting actresses can be rewarded. Morton has been nominated twice, for his supporting role in Sweet and Lowdown (1999) and for his lead role in In America (2003), but has not participated in the voting since. On paper, a late-starting veteran with an unforgettable scene in a prestigious film could be just the thing that would appeal to Academy members.

If I were forced to make a prediction today, I’d lean toward favoring it as a safer route to the nomination, but whether it results in a win depends almost entirely on whether Morton’s story turns out to be genuine.

Universal has until the fall festival season to make a decision, but history provides compelling arguments for either strategy, and there is no final answer. That’s exactly why Hathaway’s categorization is one of this season’s earliest and most fascinating Oscar questions.