Paul Giamatti Has Never Won an Oscar. That Could Change With ‘The Debut’

Let's get this out of the way: Paul Giamatti should already have an Oscar. He should have won for "Sideways," a performance the Academy didn't even nominate. I've said it many times on this site, and that's no offense to Jamie Foxx. He arguably could have won for "The Holdovers," too.

I haven't even mentioned other Giamatti gems, such as his work in "American Splendor," "Cinderella Man," "Win Win," "Man on the Moon," "Private Parts" and, of course, his masterful blue-skinned performance in "Big Fat Liar." The man is overdue. He has been acting in movies for well over 35 years.

A few weeks ago I remembered how Roger Ebert once said that no movie with Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad. You can almost apply the same rule to Paul Giamatti, a character actor who makes everything around him feel more real.

So here we are: Giamatti is 59, with two nominations (supporting for "Cinderella Man" and lead for "The Holdovers") and zero wins. For the first time in his career, he's the actual frontrunner this deep into a season, and it's not even for a performance that ranks in his all-time top three.

The role is in Jesse Eisenberg's "The Debut." Giamatti plays Jerry, a tyrannical community-theater director forced to deal with Julianne Moore's painfully awkward New Jersey housewife, who takes her small part way too seriously. Make no mistake, this is Moore's movie. She has the showstopping role, will probably win the Oscar for it, but what Giamatti does opposite her shouldn't be ignored. Jerry is a washed-up actor who runs his modest little theater troupe with hilarious arrogance, and the comic timing he brings is fantastic.

Can Giamatti win this time? I think so. He's currently ranked #1 at Gold Derby and the LA Times, and #2 at IndieWire and Variety. Andrew Garfield ("Artificial") tops both of those lists.

It helps that Garfield plays Sam Altman, as relevant a tech figure in 2026 as any, and Neon is pushing him in supporting. Is that category fraud? Nope. The film is largely told through Yura Borisov's Ilya Sutskever. Either way, a two-time nominee playing the most talked-about tech CEO on the planet, in a movie about AI? That's a narrative.

However, here's the thing about Garfield's Altman: it's not subtle. It's a Norman Bates-inspired performance, with one review labeling his Altman a "demon twink." It's a heightened, almost exaggerated version of the OpenAI CEO. Does over-the-top hurt him with the Academy? Historically, no. Voters love big and showy. That said, it won't be universally praised, and some will no doubt be caught off guard by Garfield's avant-garde approach.

The rest of the field is far less settled. Sam Rockwell already won here for "Three Billboards," and the Academy clearly enjoys him in a Martin McDonagh movie. Edward Norton is a four-time nominee with zero wins, which means this category could favor a "he's overdue" narrative. And never underestimate voters' fondness for a beloved veteran; John Leguizamo in Nolan's "The Odyssey" fits that bill nicely.