‘No-one is more important than the audience’: Vote for the 2025 AACTA Awards
From Nicole Kidman to Jacob Elordi, here is how you can vote for your favourite stars for the 2025 AACTA Awards.
Which is Australia’s favourite Hemsworth brother? This highly contentious question may finally be settled at the 2025 Australian Academy of Cinema Television Arts (AACTA) Awards.
And you get to choose. For the fifth year running, AACTA has opened voting to the public for its annual awards.
From a shortlist of roughly 30 contenders from film, television and digital creation, voters will select the final nominees for the six Audience Choice AACTA awards.
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This means brothers Chris and Liam Hemsworth could potentially end up head-to-head to be named Australia’s Favourite Actor while the race for favourite actress could include Tinseltown titans such as Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, Cate Blanchett and Naomi Watts.
Among those in the running for Favourite Australian Digital Creators are Kiwi chef Andy Hearnden and fitness influencer Tammy Hembrow as well as actors Celeste Barber and Chloe Hayden.
FBoy Island host Abbie Chatfield is short-listed for both the Favourite Media Personality and Digital Creator accolades in recognition of her work on TV and online.
A bit like the Gold Logie race, the shortlist of stars squaring alongside Chatfield to be named Favourite Media Personality is a mixed bag of homegrown heavy hitters such as Andy Lee, Carrie Bickmore, Sam Pang and Tony Armstrong.
For two-time Gold Logie nominee Armstrong, being in contention for an AACTA is somewhat surreal.
“When you look at some of the names on this list, well, I better start the smear campaigns now,” Armstrong joked.
“These are some of the people I have watched on telly forever and they do such amazing jobs. I am still pretty new to the telly so it’s pretty bloody nice [to be in the mix with them].”
The Eat the Invaders host appreciated getting recognition directly from viewers, because “No-one is more important than the audience.
“I think it’s the reason some people cut through and some people don’t … I think the reason I had cut-through in news [as a sports presenter on ABC News Breakfast] is because I couldn’t do things by the book. I didn’t know how to. And that’s what the audience liked. Had I done it for my peers I would have been homogenised.”
A veteran of radio and TV, Dave Hughes was flattered to be considered for an AACTA nomination.
“But it’s a long list, and with my track record in these types of awards I don’t fancy my chances,” he said.
“Awards are ridiculous no matter how they are judged. Mind you, I say that from a position of not having won an award in decades so I’m probably biased against them.”
Even if he does secure a nomination, Hughes isn’t sure he would make it to the Gold Coast ceremony on February 9 (even with the lure of rubbing shoulders with some of Australia’s finest entertainers).
“I last went to the AACTAs a few years ago, there were a number of Hollywood types in attendance,” he said.
“So that was cool. But none of them invited me to be in their next project so I’m not sure I will be attending this year.”
Likewise, Tommy Little’s attendance hinges on an official nomination, the radio host joking: “I would feel way too despo to just turn up anyway.”
While Little says he doesn’t “really understand the term ‘personality’” he appreciated being in a field chosen by viewers.
“Audiences are the only reason we have a career so it seems fair that they should be the ones to judge our awards as well,” he explained.
And Robert Irwin echoed the feeling, saying he was “honoured” to be nominated for Favourite Australian Media Personality. “It is wonderful to be recognised, alongside my extraordinary I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here co-host Julia Morris. I am grateful and proud to be nominated as a passionate conservationist. Thank you for the support for my message and mission.”
One person who will be front and centre at the ceremony is acclaimed author Trent Dalton whose semi-autobiographical novel Boy Swallows Universe, published by HarperCollins, has scored a record-breaking 22 AACTA nominations.
The Netflix drama could now boost that tally with multiple nods in the audience voted categories as well.
Vote for the AACTAs here:
“I will be there with bells on. Eli Bells on,” Dalton said, jokingly referring to the lead character in his story who was played by newcomer Felix Cameron.
“Win or lose, I will be doing my best all night to not crash-tackle every last member of the BSU team with hugs of gratitude and joy.
“Maybe if there’s a quiet moment back in my hotel room then I’ll have a beer and raise a toast to my late dad – aka Simon Baker’s Robert Bell – then maybe I’ll duck down to Loco Tattoo in Surfers Paradise and get three words inked across my heart: ‘It gets good.’
Oscar-winning director George Miller says securing an AACTA nod in both the peer-voted and audience-voted categories for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga offers reassurance his work continues to be appreciated.
Miller’s film, the fourth in the Mad Max franchise, is on the shortlist for Favourite Film. And it is already in the running for Best Film, with Miller up for the Best Director gong and Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth both nominated for their performances.
Vote for the AACTAs here:
For Dr Miller, (who is on the annual event’s star-studded management team alongside other A-list exports Kidman, Blanchett and Russell Crowe), part of what stands the AACTAs apart from other industry awards is the fact they involve participation from the viewing public.
“The work does not exist in a vacuum. It comes to life only in the hearts and minds of the audience,” he explained.
“However they may be comprised, the audience is fundamental to the process. Including them adds authenticity. They are true cinephiles.”
Voting for the Audience Choice AACTAs is open from January 10 to 22. The full nominees will be announced on January 22.
Below are some of the AACTA Audience Choice Awards key contenders – see the full shortlist and cast your vote:
Favourite TV Show
Boy Swallows Universe
Colin From Accounts
Emily from Paris
Fisk
House of the Dragon
The Penguin
Favourite Film
Deadpool & Wolverine
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
How to Make Gravy
It Ends With Us
Runt
Wicked
Favourite Media Personality
Tony Armstrong
Carrie Bickmore
Abbie Chatfield
Robert Irwin
Melissa Leong
Rove McManus
Favourite Actress
Elizabeth Debicki
Asher Keddie
Nicole Kidman
Deborah Mailman
Margot Robbie
Sarah Snook
Favourite Actor
Patrick Brammell
Felix Cameron
Jacob Elordi
Chris Hemsworth
Liam Hemsworth
Hugo Weaving
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