Memo to Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins and Willem Dafoe: We love you, but you’re kind of getting in the way.

All three men are considered strong contenders for a supporting-actor nomination at the Oscars in February, and they certainly do memorable work: Pitt is superb opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” Hopkins is surprisingly funny up against Jonathan Pryce in the theological showdown “The Two Popes,” and not a single bit of scenery is safe from Dafoe when he tussles with Robert Pattinson in “The Lighthouse.”

It’s just that all three of those performances are co-leads, not supporting efforts. And when big roles like theirs hog Oscar’s attention, actual supporting performances will often go unrecognized.

Welcome to the award-season cottage industry known as category fraud, where a co-lead drops down to the supporting-actor category — like last season’s winner, Mahershala Ali from “Green Book” — so as not to compete in the same race as a co-star. For Oscar strategists, this approach is all about spreading the wealth, but it has the effect of crowding out the actors who do great work precisely because they aren’t tasked with commanding most of their movie’s screen time.