Where Were Their Oscar Nominations? Nine Memorable Movie Performances That Were Totally Snubbed

Let’s start with the simple truth that no award of any kind, merit or eminence, will ever be 100 percent accurate, nor can it be expected to be – Tolstoy, for example, did not win the Nobel Prize for Literature. What would you have to do, write a sequel War and peace? But it’s easier to get upset about acting replacements at the Oscars than literary reprimands in Stockholm. There are many cultural reasons for this, but the main one is that the Oscars are more important. Why else would there be a fuss this year about not being included Barbie Margot Robbie in the running for Best Actress?

Anyone who keeps up with the Oscars, year after year, will occasionally shake their fist at the sky (or at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) for stellar performances that failed to garner even a Best Actor or Actress nomination. Over time, some of these neglected plays begin to look like classics that deserve to be appreciated and watched by future generations. Among them could be Anthony Perkins Psycho, Barbra Streisand entered Yentl, Ralph Fiennes d Hotel Grand Budapest …. and a few more of them.

With just a few days to go, here are our Oscar predictions! Find out what is likely a lock and what category is a toss

Hereditary.

A24/Courtesy of the Everett Collection

Toni Collette, Hereditary (2018)

hereditary, the story of a demonic cult that infiltrates a family through generations, is saturated with both horror and disturbing imagery (mostly involving heads being violently severed from bodies). Its greatest source of terror, however, is Toni Collette’s performance as Annie, the uptight, desperately unhappy artist, wife and mother. Although Annie resents her two children, whom she never really wanted, she is nearly destroyed by hysterical grief when one of them dies (see above note on heads, bodies). Then she is overcome with hysterical elation—just as terrifying—when she finds a way to summon the child’s spirit. Collette is both heartbreaking and repulsive. Her performance is essentially Shirley MacLaine’s hospital scene Conditions of tenderness played full throttle for two hours straight, except no one ever gave a pain pill. There were brief, ghostly Oscar whispers when the film was released in the summer of 2018, but that quickly died down. Horror is not a favorite genre among Academy voters.

Birth.

New Line/courtesy Everett Collection

Nicole Kidman, Birth (2004)

Kidman, crowned with an Oscar for playing Virginia Woolf with a parrot’s beak instead of a nose in Hours (2002), she’s often kept her slate filled with smaller, offbeat films that aren’t necessarily crowd pleasers. birth, a wintery little masterpiece, it showcases what might be her richest performance. She plays Anna, a Manhattan widow who tries to make sense of a boy’s preposterous claim that he is the reincarnation of her late husband. In one remarkable, one-shot close-up lasting more than 3 minutes, Kidman quietly captures Anna’s burning inner struggle as she listens to a thunderous concert piece by Wagner. Kidman has rarely been so strikingly beautiful – there are strong echoes of Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s baby — and she does an incredibly tricky job of conveying Anna’s slowly rekindled love for her husband, while avoiding any suggestion (which would doom the film) that she’s falling in love with the child. Birth is a chaste romantic fantasy that descends into something like a tragedy.

Evita.

Hulton Archive/Getty

Madonna, Evita (1996)

To put it mildly, Madonna has struggled to find success as a film actress – she can be so insecure in a role that you almost lose patience with her. But Evita she used her undeniable strengths as a music video performer — the role of Argentina’s Eva Perón is sung to the hilt, without dialogue, and the role is sexy and edgy, with a metallic edge (plus, it’s not as emotionally deep). If you can strike a pose while singing, and Madonna certainly can, you can achieve triumph, and Madonna certainly will. Admittedly, the thought of Meryl Streep starring at one point (directed by Oliver Stone) may make you wonder what might have been: you can just imagine Streep’s Evita — delusional, messianic, pathetic — with her arms raised above the adoring crowd. But that Evita there is not. Madonna’s performance was ranked next to Liza Minnelli’s Cabaret.

American Psycho.

Lions Gate/Courtesy of the Everett Collection

Christian Bale American Psycho (2000)

You wouldn’t necessarily want Bale to do that to win Best Actor, but he deserved to at least be allowed into the running for his performance as Patrick Bateman, a depraved hit man—his murders are almost bacchanalian in their gore—who spends his days on Wall Street as a mergers and acquisitions specialist (or, as he it says, “murders and executions”). Bale, speaking in a bland, hollow voice that has the faintest hint of frat-boy banter, delivers a piece of polished, satirical swagger that goes far beyond the obvious allegorical joke (capitalism = murder) in… what, exactly? An unsettling yet impressive realm of unyielding devotion – sort of Clockwork orange, another, earlier movie about a sociopath, if it starred Will Ferrell. (Leonardo DiCaprio was considered for the role, by the way, but passed.)

Tom Cruise in the movie ‘Top Gun: Maverick’.

Scott Garfield / Paramount Pictures / Courtesy of Everett

Tom Cruise, Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

There are movie stars who know how to act and those who don’t. Cruise, however, is something in between, a movie star who can act if he acts: every smile and gesture has the heroic conviction of a performer who wants his presence to register with seismic force. Cruise does this extremely well – better than anyone, really. Isn’t that a good reason for an Oscar nomination? Maverick, which is actually an improvement over the 1986 original top gun, was a massive hit, and the whole venture – with its military gear, fiery spirit and decent romance – seemed to stem entirely from Cruise’s confidence, willpower and self-view in the world (and Hollywood). Surely this should count as something with the Academy.

Lupita Nyong’o, Our (2019)

Here’s another example of Oscar’s disinterest in exceptional performances that happen to be in horror films. N’yongo, who won supporting actress in 2013 12 years of slavery, here she showed a revealing emotional range — she plays two characters who happen to be (on what turns out to be a very strange level) the same person: there’s Adelaide, a woman with a perfectly comfortable life with her family, and there’s her murderous doppelganger, Red, who belongs to a terrifying legion of “twins” who suddenly invade society. N’yongo plays Adelaide and Red very clearly – Red speaks in a voice broken by pain – but also establishes an unusual empathy between them. The play swings back and forth with the devilish swing of Poe’s pendulum.

My best friend’s wedding.

TriStar/Courtesy of Everett Collection

Julia Roberts, My best friend’s wedding (1996)

This early performance is one of Roberta’s finest – and probably also counts as her first mature performance: it introduced the thorny-looking note that was key to many of her later vehicles, including August: Osage County (2013) and the Amazon series Homecoming (2018). Perhaps that touch of malevolent complexity counted against her this time, along with the fact that Wedding is a subversion of rom-com fantasy — it’s actually the opposite of Pretty Woman, for which Roberts, as the most brilliant sex worker in the world, was nominated for best actress. Here she’s Julianne, a food critic who decides she wants to marry an old friend (Dermot Mulroney) — even though it means she’ll have to disrupt his upcoming marriage (to Cameron Diaz, also lovely). If you’re not rooting for Roberts here — who would want to see Cameron Diaz hurt? — you spend the movie waiting for the moment when she will finally sort out this whole mess and bring the story to a harmonious end. This can only be achieved by performing real magic.

lady gaga, House of Gucci (2021)

Director Ridley Scott’s film about how the Gucci family lost control of their fashion empire is a dreary affair, inert to the point of supination and poorly acted by Al Pacino and Jared Leto. It wouldn’t even be worth thinking about if it weren’t for Lady Gaga’s unforgettable, magnificent performance as the infamous Patrizia Reggiani, who is convicted of murdering her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver). In retrospect, Gaga may not have done her Oscar campaign any favors by talking about how hard she worked for the role, how she pushed herself to such a dark place that she ended up hiring a psychiatric nurse to be on set. What you see on screen suggests nothing of the sort: the performance, which comes decked out in a heavy Italian accent and a big, dark wig, is enlivened with what appears to be an impulsive, unrehearsed theatrical verve. Like a hot sauna stone splashed with water, Patricia sizzles with rage. Gaga isn’t subtle, but she isn’t over the top either—maybe she isn’t possible for her to go over the top. Not when she’s the one who determines the height.

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Batman returns. Warner Bros/Dc Comics/Kobal/Shutterstock

Michelle Pfeiffer, Batman returns (1992)

Better title for director Tim Burton second Batman the movie might just have been cat Woman. That would be at least one way to pay tribute to Pfeiffer’s beautifully crafted performance, which brought an intense neuroticism and dark sexuality to the role — perhaps the fullest expression of the Rococo perversity of Burton’s sensibility ever. And the glamor of a true Hollywood star is still attached, giving her Catwoman a romantic sheen. It’s one of the few truly great superhero performances — and a lot more enjoyable than Joaquin Phoenix’s harrowing (but Oscar-winning) turn in 2019. Joker.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education