The Oscars are, to put it mildly, flawed indicators of true quality, but within the industry they’re the most influential indicators that exist, and so as much as we may hate it, they mean something. And it means something too, when you don’t get that recognition. Last week, before the Oscar nominations were announced, we took a look at 15 filmmakers who had, more or less surprisingly, never been nominated for a Best Director Oscar. This week, with Nominations Thursday now in the rearview mirror, it’s the turn of the actors and actresses who have never had their names called. As before, we have kept the list to actors still working, so that with a bit of luck, their no-show status might be rectified soon, and we’ve focused on those who are nomination-less in the four acting categories specifically — so a couple may have nods in other areas.
When drawing up the initial list prior to the announcement, it’s interesting to note that a couple of people cropped up that subsequently had to be dropped — namely Tom Hardy and Jennifer Jason Leigh, who are both enjoying their first nominations, both in the supporting categories, for “The Revenant” and “The Hateful Eight” respectively. Delighted as we are for Hardy, his surprise inclusion may have come at the cost of one name that we’d thought/hoped might get a nod but didn’t (as kind of happened with Todd Haynes last week): Idris Elba, who now duly appears below in this role-call of the unfairly overlooked. A kind of hall of fame to those who’ve never quite made into the Hall of Fame, join us on our whistle-stop tour and let us know which you consider the most outrageous miscarriage of Oscar justice in the comments below.
Donald Sutherland
What Should He Have Been Nominated For? It seems inconceivable that Sutherland, still going strong at 80, has never been nominated. With a clutch of classic ensemble films under his belt — “The Dirty Dozen,” “The Split,” “M*A*S*H,” “Kelly’s Heroes” — and latterly a host of eye-catching supporting roles that are usually catnip to the Academy — “Backdraft,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “A Time To Kill,” etc. — it’s hard to see how he avoided it. The ones he can really feel aggrieved about, though, are “Klute,” which won co-star Jane Fonda an Oscar; “Ordinary People,” which won 4 including Best Picture; and “Six Degrees of Separation” and “A Dry White Season,” both of which tick all the Oscar boxes, both of which he’s great in. However, for our money, the most egregious oversight was in not recognizing his turn in Nicholas Roeg‘s utterly indelible “Don’t Look Now,” which is a masterpiece.
Will It Happen? There is such a sense that he’s unfairly missed out that we’d imagine the Academy are actively looking for any excuse to recognize him that is not “The Hunger Games.” And if that doesn’t work out, he’s a pretty good candidate for an honorary Oscar.
Scarlett Johansson
What Should She Have Been Nominated For? Of all the transformations we’ve witnessed Johansson go through — child star to ingenue to sex symbol to muse — the most gratifying has been her recent emergence as a capital-A actor. It was Sofia Coppola‘s “Lost in Translation” that had us first see her anew, but while a nomination there would not have been out of the question (the film got four others), we’d really love to have seen her get more recognition for two more recent roles. “Under the Skin” from Jonathan Glazer was too weird for the Academy, but Johansson was extraordinary in it, uncannily embodying her alien character; while, if we lived in a more interesting world, her voice-only role in Spike Jonze‘s “Her” would’ve got a nod. That an actress so often defined by her physicality could turn in a performance of such warmth and vividness without actually appearing onscreen was quite revelatory.
Will It Happen? We believe it will, but not in the near future as her slate for the next couple of years is equal parts Marvel, voice roles, ensemble Coens comedy and “Ghost In The Shell.”
Steve Buscemi
What Should He Have Been Nominated For? For this generation of established indie filmmakers, from the Coens to Tarantino to Jim Jarmusch to Robert Rodriguez to Tim Burton, and beyond to, er, Adam Sandler and Michael Bay, Buscemi is the ultimate character actor, so he’s totemic to a whole generation of 1990s moviegoers, too. But while it’s a crime that not one of his distinctive 100+ film roles has ever netted him a nod, it’s oddly understandable: Buscemi is brilliant at playing snivelers, sneaks and weirdos. Those are roles that, no matter how well embodied, are seldom embraced by the Academy; his against-type casting on TV’s “Boardwalk Empire,” by contrast, picked up a host of awards. By rights, his turn as Mr. Pink in Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” should have seen him nominated, while it’s impossible to imagine anyone else as the “kinda funny-looking” kidnapper/woodchipper victim of “Fargo.” But the quintessential Buscemi role to us is in Terry Zwigoff‘s “Ghost World” — a part that plays on his inherent creepiness but subverts it into something human and mundanely tragic.
Will It Happen? If the Academy drops its Buscemi blinkers, he’ll give them ample opportunity: This is a guy who routinely appears in three or four films per year.