Why do some films end up in the wrong category at the Academy Awards?

Kieran Culkin won the SAG Award for Best Supporting Actor for A Real Pain. Just like the Golden Globe, the BAFTA, and the Critics' Choice Awards. The Succession actor, fresh from the praise and awards for his role as Roman Roy, is the favorite in his category for the night of the Oscars, which will take place on March 2 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. It's easy to imagine him already standing on stage with the award in hand, thanking the Academy voters. However, some of his colleagues might not be so happy, especially the other nominees for Best Supporting Actor. This is not just a matter of simple jealousy but of real injustices. More than in previous years, when a fraudulent mechanism was already quite evident, the idea of category fraud has become more apparent with Culkin’s rise to success for a film in which he appears for 58 minutes and six seconds compared to the (only?) protagonist Jesse Eisenberg’s 62 minutes and 29 seconds. Eisenberg is also the director and screenwriter of A Real Pain, a film that, in its entirety, lasts just under an hour and a half. So why, then, nominate Kieran Culkin as Best Supporting Actor? And, more importantly, is it a fair move?

The Academy doesn’t seem to mind, nor do the productions that invite members to vote by influencing their choices with For Your Consideration campaigns. They are the ones who dictate the course of nominations and, in particular, guide various actors into specific categories to increase their film’s chances of success. This practice of fraud has had evident cases over the years, and 2025 continues down the same path. While it's obvious that any team would do whatever it takes to see their work triumph in as many areas as possible, it's still surprising that the Academy has never taken action on the matter. In 2018, Green Book was released in theaters. The following year, Mahershala Ali won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, becoming the performer with the longest screen time in history to win in that category—appearing on screen for one hour, six minutes, and thirty-eight seconds. Ali was placed in the “wrong” category to avoid competing with his co-star Viggo Mortensen, who lost to Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody but still ended up on the winners' list with Green Book’s Oscar for Best Picture.

Often, productions choose to split their actors between categories to increase their chances of winning, sometimes succeeding and other times making major blunders. This was the case with Al Pacino in 1972 when he began his rise to fame with Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. While the young actor was at the beginning of his decades-long career, Marlon Brando was triumphantly returning to the scene as Vito Corleone. For the Oscars, Brando was nominated as Best Lead Actor, winning the award, while Al Pacino had to compete against two other cast members, James Caan and Robert Duvall, in the supporting category. Pacino had to wait twenty years before finally winning an Oscar in 1993 for Scent of a Woman. The example of The Godfather shows how an actor deemed unbeatable was favored, even when their role didn’t align with the proper category. It also highlights how placing three actors in the same supporting category led to a vote split, ultimately benefiting Joel Grey from the spectacular Cabaret.

This is also a key part of an Oscar campaign: identifying the strongest contender and choosing who to sacrifice in their favor. In 1991, when Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis were both nominated for Best Actress for Thelma & Louise, the winner ended up being Jodie Foster for her portrayal of Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs. Her Oscar win was unquestionably deserved, but both Sarandon and Davis were clear co-leads. This became a lesson for studios, who realized they could have nominated at least one of them for Best Supporting Actress—an award that instead went to Mercedes Ruehl for The Fisher King, a memorable film in its own right but one that doesn’t hold the same cultural weight as Ridley Scott’s road movie. Since then, productions have refined their strategies, treating award categories as suggestions rather than strict rules. Beyond Green Book, another example is The Favourite, where Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz were nominated as supporting actresses, paving the way for Olivia Colman to win the coveted Oscar. Although Colman’s win was well-deserved, it’s worth noting that the character with the most significant transformation in the film is actually Abigail Masham, played by Emma Stone. The same argument applies to Alicia Vikander in The Danish Girl and Kate Mara in Carol.

Although some of these roles can be considered "non" leading in terms of perception (even though one should consider screen time and see which actor stands out the most despite the limited time), there are more evident examples that show a truly broken system that does not favor fair play. Just think of Viola Davis, who won her first Oscar in 2017 as Best Supporting Actress for the film Fences by Denzel Washington. How is it possible that the same role earned her a Tony Award as Best Leading Actress in 2010? Not to mention Judas and the Black Messiah, where LaKeith Stanfield was presented as the lead and Daniel Kaluuya as "supporting," yet both ended up in the Best Supporting Actor category because it was difficult to determine who was actually supporting whom. In this case, there was no vote splitting, as Kaluuya managed to win the statuette, helped by a Golden Globe victory that surely influenced the Academy members’ decision. 

However, don’t think that the Oscars are the only awards where productions and studios manipulate the system. A series like The Bear, which premiered in 2022, strategically positions itself when it comes to major television awards, to the point that its second season set a record at the Emmys, also winning prestigious awards. The culinary drama continues to be categorized as a "comedy," yet since the first season, viewers have questioned what is actually funny about the tragedies of an anxious young chef who cannot maintain a healthy relationship with his family, let alone with a girlfriend. But since drama categories are notoriously stronger and more competitive, the production took a shortcut, securing as many as 23 nominations in the 2024 comedy section. Additionally, the previous rule that comedy series must have episodes no longer than 30 minutes—a rule valid until 2021—has been removed, making it even easier for studios to manipulate the system. The ones who suffer, however, are the shows that are genuinely comedies—just as, at the Oscars, the true supporting actors suffer when co-leads are misclassified. 

Many character actors risk being completely excluded from the competition, let alone winning it. Those with significantly less screen time than true co-leads should be recognized precisely because, despite their limited presence, they manage to leave a lasting impression on audiences. The competition seems utterly unfair for Isabella Rossellini, who appears for less than eight minutes in Conclave, against the award favorite Zoe Saldaña, who in Emilia Pérez has 57 minutes and 50 seconds of screen time—43.69% of the film—even surpassing her co-star Karla Sofía Gascón, who is nominated as Best Actress with 52 minutes and 21 seconds. And if Gascón does not win, it won’t be due to performance but rather because of other controversies surrounding her, including problematic tweets. But this is not the only case in the 2025 awards season. While Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth were both nominated for Best Leading Actress at the Tony Awards for the Broadway musical Wicked (with Menzel winning), for the film adaptation, Cynthia Erivo is nominated as Best Actress, while Ariana Grande as Supporting Actress. With a runtime of two hours and forty minutes, we can confidently say there was enough pink to conclude that Glinda’s role has not been downsized compared to the stage version. While examples like The Silence of the Lambs, where Anthony Hopkins’ 16-minute performance earned him a Best Actor Oscar, exist, such cases should be exceptions rather than the rule—highlighting the extraordinary nature of the achievement rather than setting a precedent for misclassification. 

While we must applaud the performances of outstanding actors like Saldaña and Culkin, our thoughts go to Guy Pearce, who delivered one of his best performances in The Brutalist. And also to Jurij Borisov, whose portrayal of Igor in Anora gave a whole new dimension to Sean Baker’s film. Not to mention Felicity Jones and Monica Barbaro for The Brutalist and A Complete Unknown, who may not even be remembered as nominees—while there is still some hope for Isabella Rossellini. Let Beatrice Straight in Network (5 minutes), Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love (8 minutes), Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine (14 minutes), and Anne Hathaway in Les Misérables (15 minutes out of 2 hours and 38 minutes!) serve as reminders to future Oscars about what it truly means to be a worthy supporting actor.