Oscars 2021: Ranking The Nominated Performances From Worst To Best

Starring in the likely Best Picture winner, Frances McDormand is in almost every frame of Nomadland as Fern, a woman who loses everything and decides to live on the road in her van. In a film that features very few professional actors and a screenplay that doesn't have too much dialogue scripted and instead relies of free flowing improvised conversation, there are several layers to McDormand's performance here.

McDormand is one of the best actors working today and she already has two Oscar statuettes to her name, if she were to collect her third here I don't think anyone would say it was undeserved. A great deal of dramatic weight is placed on McDormand's shoulders as she spends time on her own doing mundane tasks or sleeping in her van. When she is improvising with the non-professional actors, it is on McDormand to keep the conversation flowing in an interesting way not them (some of them didn't even realise she was an actress).

Although it seems unlikely she will go all the way this year, McDormand's talents are still a large reason that Nomadland will do as well as it will elsewhere and that cannot be understated.