AwardsWatch has published its June 2027 Oscar predictions for Best Actress, and Renate Reinsve and Sandra Hüller sit at the top of the list. The update puts two of this year’s most visible festival-season performers in the early lead as the awards race starts to harden.
Ben Miller is not watching a settled field yet. This is a June snapshot, months before nominations are decided, but it is the kind of list that starts shaping the conversation for readers looking to see which performances are gaining traction now. Reinsve is currently starring in Fjord, the Palme d’Or winner, while Hüller is fronting Fatherland, the Best Director winner, and both are the writer’s top two choices in the new predictions.
Those positions matter because the Best Actress race often begins with prestige and momentum, not just box office or release dates. Reinsve also appears in The Backrooms, which had the biggest opening weekend box for an original horror film of all time, while Léa Seydoux is tied to Gentle Monster, now picked up by Netflix, and Inde Navarrette is entering the race with the blockbuster horror Obsession. The list suggests the field is still wide open enough for genre and festival titles to coexist.
But Cannes glory has a stubborn habit of fading before Oscar voting begins. The Cannes Best Actress prize has never been a strong bellwether for Academy success, and in the last 20 years only two winners have even turned that win into an Oscar nomination. Penélope Cruz did it with Volver in 2006, while Karla Sofia Gascón did it for Emilia Pérez in 2024, though both reached the Oscars as part of ensemble recognition rather than a straightforward lead-actress path. Rooney Mara won Cannes for Carol in 2015 but ended up in supporting actress at the Academy Awards, while Cate Blanchett was the one pushed as lead.
That is why Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, who won this year’s Cannes Best Actress prize for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden, become the most interesting test case in the update. The writer calls them definite co-leads, but NEON is expected to separate them into lead and supporting categories to improve the odds. The move would echo a familiar awards tactic, one last seen in 1991 when Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis were nominated in lead for Thelma & Louise.
For now, the June rankings show where the pressure points are: Reinsve and Hüller at the top, Cannes winners still trying to break a weak historical pattern, and distributors already deciding how to game category placement before the season really begins. The next real answer comes at year-end, when campaigning, screening, and nominations will show whether this early order holds or collapses under the weight of a much older Oscar habit.
