Oscar odds shakeup: Rose Byrne surges past Jessie Buckley in Best Actress race after rare critics’ trifecta

Rose Byrne isn’t just entering the new year in the Best Actress conversation — she’s running it. After an absolute tear through the major critics’ groups, Byrne has swiped the top spot in Gold Derby’s predicted Oscar nominees, completing a massive climb from long-shot status to the woman to beat at the 98th Academy Awards.

The momentum for Byrne and A24’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is fueled by a rare precursor trifecta. In the span of a few weeks, she swept Best Actress honors from the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Board of Review, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. That kind of consensus hasn’t happened since Helen Mirren ran the table for The Queen in 2006, and it has completely upended a race many thought Jessie Buckley had locked for her heartbreaking performance in Hamnet.

Buckley has now slipped into second place, with Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value), Emma Stone (Bugonia), and Chase Infiniti (One Battle After Another) rounding out the top five of projected nominees. In If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Byrne delivers a career-best turn as Linda, a therapist spiraling through a darkly comic breakdown. The Mary Bronstein-directed film features a wild supporting cast — Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Christian Slater, and A$AP Rocky — and currently sits at 92 percent “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes.

Byrne’s success hasn’t been limited to critics’ groups. She is also nominated at the 2026 Golden Globes for Best Film Comedy/Musical Actress, where she faces Stone, Cynthia Erivo, Amanda Seyfried, Infiniti, and Kate Hudson. She remains a strong contender there — aided by the fact that two of her biggest Oscar rivals, Buckley and Reinsve, compete in the Drama field instead.

Byrne will face her first televised test at the Critics Choice Awards on Jan. 4, where she goes up against Buckley, Reinsve, Seyfried, Stone, and Infiniti in what has quickly become one of the season’s most competitive fields. But don’t put too much stock in whether she wins or loses — in the past five years, only two Critics Choice champs for Best Actress have gone on to win the Oscar. Before that, she’ll be test-driving her acceptance speech at the Palm Springs International Film Festival on Jan. 3, where she’s set to receive the Breakthrough Performance Award.

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