Andrew Scott Vaults Into the Best Actor Oscar Race, The Hollywood Reporter Says

Scott plays Ian Charleson, the 'Chariots of Fire' star who kept performing Hamlet after an AIDS diagnosis, in 'Elsinore.'

Andrew Scott jumped into the top tier of the best actor Oscar race on the strength of one festival screening, The Hollywood Reporter's awards columnist wrote. Scott Feinberg, the outlet's executive editor of awards, published his revised handicapping just after midnight on September 5, 2026, following the world premiere of "Elsinore" at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado.

A day earlier he had a different name out front.

John Malkovich looked like the clear favorite after "Wild Horse Nine" screened for North America on Thursday afternoon, Feinberg wrote. Malkovich — 73, against Scott's 49 — still keeps a slight edge in his reading, partly because that film looks likely to draw nominations across several categories, best picture included.

"Elsinore," directed by Simon Stone, casts Scott as Ian Charleson, the Scottish actor from the best picture winner "Chariots of Fire." Charleson went on performing Hamlet at London's National Theatre after a terminal AIDS diagnosis, the outlet reported. Scott's name appears twice in the film's post-credits listing, as lead actor and as a producer.

Feinberg floats other possible nominations: Olivia Colman in supporting actress, playing Charleson's doctor; Stephen Beresford's original screenplay; Valerio Bonelli's editing; Stefan Gregory's score; and a long-shot best picture slot.

The paper isn't of one mind about the movie. Feinberg calls what Scott does "a performance for the ages," and in the same column notes that his own colleague, THR's critic, judged the film around it "solid but less spectacular."

Then the history, which is the part a campaign can run on. No out gay actor or actress has ever won an Oscar, Feinberg writes, while straight performers have won repeatedly for LGBT roles — among them Tom Hanks for "Philadelphia" and Sean Penn for "Milk." Scott, he argues, could be the first.

No one here has seen "Elsinore," so what follows is a judgment on the published record and nothing more. My read of it: the fragile thing isn't the performance, it's the vehicle. A film whose own paper of record calls it solid while calling its star extraordinary is a delivery system for one actor. A lead campaign that can't ride a best picture nomination has to win on affection alone.

Two comparisons sit inside Feinberg's own column and both cut in Scott's favor. "All of Us Strangers" premiered at the same festival three years ago, which tells you Telluride is where this actor gets handed to the race in the first place. "Uncle Vanya" on stage last year had him juggling 10 characters by himself, which is the trick "Elsinore" reportedly asks for at feature length: an actor performing the act of performing.

The strongest objection is simple. This is one columnist, hours after one screening, in early September, and a forecast is not a ballot; nobody has voted, and the film's release plans aren't laid out here. That's fair, and it's why the head on this story carries his name.

What changed my reading was the credits. I'd taken the never-happened-before line as the hook a publicist writes on the flight home. The producer credit is the more interesting fact: Scott's name is on "Elsinore" twice. If the campaign lands, he'll have run it on a film he helped make.

Source: hollywoodreporter.com, retrieved September 5, 2026.