Five scenes that lost actors an Oscar
When analysing why an actor won an Oscar, it’s often easy to point to one particular scene that swung the vote in their favour. After all, every cinephile worth their salt can identify the ‘Oscar clip scene’: the moment in the film where the actor’s performance reaches some kind of emotional crescendo. That clip will then play at the ceremony while the nominees are announced, before the camera cuts back to them looking bashful.
Throughout Oscar history, examples of this kind of scene include Denzel Washington’s stirring “King Kong ain’t got shit on me!” meltdown in Training Day or Javier Bardem’s chilling coin toss sequence in No Country For Old Men. It would be shocking if these memorable scenes didn’t help each man secure their victory with the Academy’s voting body.
However, if there are scenes that won actors their Oscars, it stands to reason there must also be scenes that lost them, too. These are harder to define, but they do exist, and this list will detail five that immediately come to mind.
Sometimes, a scene can cost an actor an Oscar if it features a bout of uncharacteristic overacting, but on other occasions, a firestorm of controversy surrounding a scene can be what loses it for the star. Hell, there are even times when scenes from movies they weren’t even nominated for can torpedo an actor’s chances in a film that did receive nominations. Here are five scenes that lost actors an Oscar.
Five scenes that lost actors an Oscar:
The bathtub scene (Nicole Kidman, ‘Birth’)
Few films in the 2000s caused a maelstrom of controversy quite like Jonathan Glazer’s unsettling 2004 drama Birth. Nicole Kidman starred in the movie as a woman who becomes convinced that a preternaturally self-assured ten-year-old is actually the reincarnation of her husband, who died ten years earlier. Glazer, who would become an Oscar darling with The Zone of Interest nearly two decades later, made the film to grapple with the concept of eternal love, and Kidman’s stunning performance held it all together.
Unfortunately, the film wound up being best known for two scenes that caused the audience at the Venice Film Festival to boo and catcall, and these sequences later became all journalists cared about when writing about the movie. In one scene, Kidman shares a bath with the boy, played by Cameron Bright, with both appearing to be naked, and in another, she kisses him on the lips. Accusations were made that the film was perverted at worst, and salacious at best, and critical reaction was polarised.
Ultimately, Birth received no Academy Award nominations, and Glazer didn’t make another film for nine long years. However, in recent years, it has been reevaluated, and is now widely viewed as a provocative masterpiece, with Kidman’s performance in particular being singled out as one of her best in a career littered with brave, challenging roles. Did the controversy surrounding the film cost Kidman what would have been, at that time, her third Oscar nomination? Nowadays, it seems certain that it did.
“Rasputia, you cheated on me!” (Eddie Murphy, ‘Norbit’)
This one is a perfect example of how an Oscar win can often be based on a cumulation of factors, instead of the romantic idea that it’s always thanks to one amazing performance. You see, in December 2006, Eddie Murphy starred in Dreamgirls, and did what other noted funnymen such as Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, and Adam Sandler have also accomplished: he went serious. His performance as drug-addicted R&B singer Jimmie ‘Thunder’ Early captivated audiences and critics, and proved the Beverly Hills Cop icon had true dramatic chops.
Soon after Dreamgirls was released, Murphy was nominated for his first ever Academy Award, ‘Best Supporting Actor,’ and the other nominees in his category had nowhere near as much buzz. It seemed like a vindicating Oscar win was on the cards – and then Norbit was released. This dismal ‘comedy’ – if you can really call it that – featured Murphy once again wearing prosthetics and fat suits to portray multiple characters, just as he did in The Nutty Professor movies. It was crass, loud, problematic, and deeply unfunny, and suddenly Oscar voters had a decision to make.
Looking at the situation objectively, Murphy’s terrible turns in Norbit had nothing to do with his brilliant one in Dreamgirls. Rasputia Latimore (Murphy as Norbit’s domineering girlfriend) chasing the nerdy protagonist through the streets after he accuses her of cheating was hard to watch, but it didn’t make his excellence in Dreamgirls any less excellent. And yet, when Oscar time came, Murphy missed out on his heavily predicted win, and people immediately pointed to Norbit as the culprit.
The torture scene (Rooney Mara, ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’)
In 2011, Rooney Mara emerged fully formed as Lisbeth Salander, the heavily tattooed and pierced computer hacker in David Fincher’s remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Before the film, she was mostly known for her brief role in Fincher’s The Social Network and a lead role in the misbegotten A Nightmare on Elm Street remake, but Salander was a very different kettle of fish from either of those characters. Salander was a socially awkward goth dealing with trauma, and in the movie’s most bracing scene, she proved herself to have the willingness to hurt people, too, but only if they deserved it.
When Salander’s state-appointed guardian brutally sexually assaults her, believing she is a meek woman he can control, he gets a lot more than he bargained for. She secretly films the assault, then tasers him, ties him to his bed, and sexually assaults him right back. As he screams in agony, she puts the icing on the cake by tattooing the words “I’m a rapist pig” on his chest. Then, she blackmails him into giving her financial independence by threatening to release the video of his assault on her.
Naturally, the scene is a tough watch, but it’s also extremely cathartic, and Mara is incredible in it. Her whole performance as Salander is superb, in fact, and is arguably even better than Noomi Rapace’s incarnation of the character in the original Swedish films. However, when Mara was nominated for ‘Best Actress,’ it was a slight surprise, given the harrowing subject matter of the movie and Fincher’s take-no-prisoners attitude to depicting the darkest aspects of human behaviour. Ultimately, Mara lost to Meryl Streep’s more classically Oscar-baity turn as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, and it’s hard not to believe that horrifying torture scene may have cost her.
The sex scene (Donald Sutherland, ‘Don’t Look Now’)
Casting an eye over Donald Sutherland’s filmography pretty quickly reveals that the Canadian star should have been nominated for an Academy Award many times over. Yet, somehow, he ended his career with only one Honorary Oscar to his name. How did he not nab a single nomination for Klute, JFK, Ordinary People, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, for example? It beggars belief.
However, perhaps Sutherland’s biggest snub was for 1973’s Don’t Look Now, the iconic psychological thriller that haunted parents worldwide by exploring how the terrible grief of losing a child can affect a couple. Upon its release, the film received mostly positive reviews, with praise reserved for director Nicolas Roeg and Sutherland’s co-star Julie Christie. Sutherland’s subtle, nuanced performance was noted, but perhaps flew under the radar slightly, despite it being one of the most truthful turns he’d ever given.
Once again, though, this incredible film, which should have been showered with Academy Award nominations, wound up receiving absolutely nothing. Nowadays, it’s widely viewed as an influential horror masterpiece, but back then, the contentious sex scene between Sutherland and Christie overshadowed almost everything about the film. In fact, the scene was so realistic and passionate that rumours persisted for years that the two actors truly made love on camera; something they both always denied. It wouldn’t be a shocker to find out the Academy just decided to steer clear of that potential minefield when it came time for nominations.
The dinner scene (Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, ‘August: Osage County’)
Have you ever watched a film and thought, “Geez, there sure is a lot of ACTING going on here?” Some movies seem hellbent on proving to audiences that they’re essential pieces of art, and they have vital things to say about society and the human condition. To do that, they use the tried-and-tested medium of venerated thespians delving deep into their bag of tricks to showcase every single human emotion they can muster.
Sometimes, these scenes stir the soul and render audiences astounded by the acting prowess they’ve witnessed. Sometimes, though, they just become overwhelming and leave viewers exhausted, but not in a good way. The poster child for this brand of film is August: Osage County, a 2013 adaptation of Tracy Letts’ play about a dysfunctional family trying to co-exist after the patriarch’s sudden disappearance. In fact, it’s potentially the single most emotionally exhausting movie to be released in the 2010s.
Naturally, with so much acting crammed into one film, the Academy was bound to throw the movie a bone or two. It dutifully nominated Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, who end the movie’s showcase dinner scene with an outburst of familial rage that sees Roberts trying to strangle Streep, her vicious, pill-popping mother. The scene builds to this with 20 minutes – yes, 20 minutes – of a family airing all its dirty laundry, grievances, and buried secrets in increasingly histrionic fashion. By the end, the whole thing strikes of overacting, something Streep and Roberts couldn’t normally be accused of, and that’s likely why neither of them took home their Little Gold Men.
