11 Unexpected Actors Who Might Win Oscars Next Year

3. Jennifer Aniston - The Yellow Birds

The Role: The mother of Daniel Murphy (Tye Sheridan), a soldier who is deployed to Iraq along with his buddy John Bartle (Alden Ehrenreich), who has promised Murph's mother that he will bring her son back home safe. Why She Might Win: The source novel was highly acclaimed upon release in 2012, and Aniston's part is nothing if not a devastating one to play. Plus, the film has skilled director Alexandre Moors (Blue Caprice) behind it, and after Aniston admirably shot for Oscar glory with her solid performance in 2014's Cake, the Academy may appreciate that she's continuing to branch out into more challenging dramatic fare. Why It's Unexpected: Because most people still think of Aniston as Rachel from Friends and expect to see her in frothy romantic comedies of zero substance. Cake's mediocre box office suggests that nobody either really knew or cared about her going serious, and so she could face an uphill struggle to mount an Oscar campaign this time, even though she proves every now and then that she's capable of so much more than... We're the Millers.