The 10 greatest actors never nominated for an Oscar

Kevin Bacon

In 2024, Kevin Bacon admitted that he hadn’t attended the Oscars for four long decades. His one and only appearance at the Academy Awards came in 1984 when he presented the ‘Best Sound Effects Editing’ award, and he has not darkened the Oscars’ door since.

Could Bacon’s ignoring the biggest night in Hollywood be why the Academy hasn’t seen fit to nominate him even once during a career that has included several films beloved by that very voting body? Or did Bacon recognise early on that the Academy wasn’t receptive to his work, and so he resolved not to go to the ceremony?

Whatever the case, Bacon has delivered award-worthy performances in a host of movies, be they big-budget extravaganzas or tiny indie pictures. Arguments could be made for his supporting turns in Mystic River, Apollo 13, Sleepers, and Frost/Nixon. Still, it feels like the closest he came to a nomination was his brave, uncomfortable performance as a convicted paedophile trying to adjust to a ‘normal’ life after a prison sentence in 2004’s The Woodsman.

Cameron Diaz

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, it looked like an Oscar nomination was a certainty in Cameron Diaz’s future. In 1999, the glamorous star played against type as the mousy, animal-obsessed Lotte in Spike Jonze’s surreal masterpiece Being John Malkovich, and over the next few years, she worked with auteurs like Oliver Stone (Any Given Sunday), Cameron Crowe (Vanilla Sky), and Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York).

While not all of these performances were worthy of an Oscar, with her turn as Irish pickpocket Jenny Everdeane in Scorsese’s historical crime epic being perhaps a bridge too far, there’s no doubt Diaz seemed on the right path to awards glory. Over the next decade, though, she plied her trade primarily in comedy and action roles, which the Academy tends to ignore completely, and then quietly ‘retired’ from acting in 2014.

Diaz’s recent return to acting with the dicey Netflix action-comedy Back in Action may signal that she still has time in her career to deliver a performance that will net her that elusive Academy Award nomination. However, only time will tell how committed she is to being part of the Hollywood rat race again.

Jim Carrey

Jim Carrey is one of the most famous cases of a beloved star never receiving the vindication of an Oscar nomination. In truth, he should already be an Oscar winner multiple times over thanks to his poignant turns in The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and his method antics while shooting Man in the Moon would have made him a shoo-in for a nomination if he was just about any other A-list thespian in the business.

Why has Carrey never managed to win the favour of the Academy? Well, he has a theory. “There’s a lot of monkey business that goes on around awards,” Carrey acknowledged to Vanity Fair in 2019. “If you don’t show up to a certain dinner, you screw your chances and all those things. I’ve never been real good at playing that game.”

Sadly, it’s unlikely at this point that Carrey will ever alter the fact that he has lived his whole career in the Academy’s blind spot. After all, he doesn’t act these days unless it’s to reprise his cartoonish role as Dr Robotnik in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before the Academy will recognise those kid-friendly, CGI-heavy, video game blockbusters.

Steve Buscemi

The fact that beloved character actor Steve Buscemi wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar for playing Mr Pink in Reservoir Dogs, the devious Carl Showalter in Fargo, or Seymour in Ghost World seems like an egregious oversight on the Academy’s part. All three of those parts are Buscemi at his weird, twitchy, yet somehow endearing best – even when he’s playing vicious criminals – and people still talk about the performances to this day.

As Buscemi’s career evolved over the 2000s, he achieved so much success in television that it arguably overshadowed his film work. He received richly deserved Emmy nominations for his work in The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire, for example, but the Academy wasn’t as likely to be charmed by his minor roles in Adam Sandler flicks, Coen brothers movies, animated films, and Michael Bay blockbusters.

It’s perfectly reasonable that a Buscemi resurgence could come along in the next few years, which would put him right back in the Academy’s good books, if that is the direction he wants his career to go. If not, and he’s perfectly happy making oddball TV shows and indie movies, he’ll likely stay one of our finest actors to have never been considered for an Oscar.

Delroy Lindo

In 2020, veteran star Delroy Lindo swung for the fences with his lead role in Spike Lee’s Vietnam War drama Da 5 Bloods, and created an indelible performance that instantly garnered Oscar buzz. The whole way through the film’s press tour, he was asked what it felt like to finally be in Oscar consideration after a long, storied career that began back in 1974. Then, when nominations were announced in 2021, Lindo was nowhere to be seen.

“I was profoundly disappointed, frankly,” Lindo told People a few years later while promoting Ryan Coogler’s excellent vampire blockbuster Sinners. He revealed that Lee called him as soon as the nominations were made public, and they commiserated together. However, he wouldn’t let disappointment keep him down, and he resolved, “No matter what, one must keep working. What am I going to do? Take my marbles and go home and get in the fetal position? No, I’m not going to do that.”

The sheer fact that it took so many decades for Lindo even to be talked about in connection with the Oscars is a sin. He would have made a fine nominee over the years for his turns in Malcolm X, Clockers, Ransom, or The Harder They Fall, but it simply wasn’t to be.

Rita Hayworth

When film historians theorise about why Rita Hayworth was never honoured by the Academy with a nomination, much of the suspicion boils down to the fact that she may have been too glamorous for the conservative voters. Hayworth was one of the most lusted-after sex symbols of the ’40s, and the press gleefully dubbed her ‘The Love Goddess’.

Did that sex symbol status get in the way of Academy voters truly appreciating the skill of her performances in movies like Only Angels Have Wings, Gilda, and The Lady From Shanghai? It’s certainly possible, and it could be argued that a similar problem befell Marilyn Monroe, who was also never nominated for an Oscar, even when she starred in Some Like it Hot, which was nominated for a host of Oscars and won her a Golden Globe.

Sadly, Hayworth, who died in 1987, hasn’t even been the recipient of an Honorary Oscar to make up for a lifetime of being ignored by the Academy. Her former manager and close friend, Budd Burton Moss, even lobbied the Academy to do this in 2016, with the goal of securing the Honorary award to mark the centenary of Hayworth’s birth in 2018. Sadly, this never came to pass.

John Goodman

The reason John Goodman has never been nominated for an Oscar is mystifying at best, and downright infuriating at worst. Perhaps he has suffered from falling into the middle ground between a bona fide TV star (Roseanne) and a movie character actor. In film terms, Goodman’s roles are often supporting parts designed to burn brightly for a short time and leave an impression, as opposed to leading roles calibrated to show off his acting range.

Over the past four decades, though, I’d argue Goodman has been Oscar-worthy in at least three Coen brothers’ flicks, as well as Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead, and Robert Zemeckis’ Flight. An argument could also be made that his terrifying turns in The Gambler and 10 Cloverfield Lane were infinitely worthy, even if the movies themselves didn’t quite work or weren’t the usual Academy fare.

Now that Goodman has concluded his TV obligations to The Conners and The Righteous Gemstones, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him refocus on his movie career. Could an Oscar nomination be on the cards in the next few years? I certainly hope so.

Maureen O’Hara

In 2014, redheaded Irish icon Maureen O’Hara was the recipient of that year’s Honorary Oscar, which many saw as the Academy’s mea culpa for previous generations of voters never deeming her worthy of a competitive nomination. In fact, she was only the second actor to receive an honorary award who was never nominated for a competitive one, after Myrna Loy accomplished the same bizarre feat in 1991.

At the time, O’Hara was 94 years old, and it was heartwarming that she finally got her moment in the sun, especially considering she passed away the following year. However, it should never have taken that long, given her long list of classic Old Hollywood pictures featuring performances that should have made her a cert for a nomination.

Mary Kate Danaher in The Quiet Man is likely the first one that would spring to most people’s minds, and the Academy did love that picture. It was nominated for seven awards and won two, although neither lead actor was included, meaning ‘The Duke’ John Wayne also came up empty-handed. Startlingly, though, this wasn’t the first time O’Hara was front and centre in an Oscar darling, and somehow wound up seemingly the only person with no nomination. Preposterously, she didn’t get any of How Green Was My Valley’s ten nominations.

Alan Rickman

When Alan Rickman tragically died in 2016, there was an outpouring of love for one of the best actors the British Isles ever produced. Naturally, he was known to most as Hans Gruber in Die Hard and Severus Snape in the Harry Potter franchise, but Rickman’s career was so much more than those two roles.

For one thing, Rickman was an incredible stage actor who was still treading the boards on Broadway only a few years before his death. It was his first love, after all, and he often said he never imagined leaving the stage to make movies. However, his film career was also chock-full of brilliance beyond the two parts with which he became inextricably linked.

Should Rickman have been nominated for 1991’s Truly, Madly, Deeply? Yes. Should he have been in contention with Michael Collins and Sense and Sensibility? Yes again. Should he have ridden the wave of the popular vote for his memorably heartbreaking turn in Love Actually? Oh, yes. I’d even argue that his genuinely hilarious, and incredibly sharply observed, performance in Galaxy Quest could have been nominated, but the Academy likely never even glanced in that sci-fi comedy’s direction.

Donald Sutherland

Does the Academy have a deep-seated vendetta against the Sutherland family? Probably not. Having said that, it’s the only thing that makes sense when you consider that not only has Kiefer Sutherland never gotten a sniff of an Oscar nomination, but his legendary father, Donald, also never received that honour in his lifetime. Now, Donald may have won an Honorary award in 2017, seven years before his death in 2024, but that’s not the same as being deemed worthy of a competitive nomination.

Donald’s most blood-boiling snub surrounded 1980’s Ordinary People, in which he played the grieving father of one son who died in a boating accident, and another son who is trying to move on after a suicide attempt. The film won four Oscars, including ‘Best Picture,’ ‘Best Director’ for Robert Redford, and ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for Timothy Hutton. However, Mary Tyler Moore and Judd Hirsch were also nominated for ‘Best Actress’ and ‘Best Supporting Actor’ respectively.

That meant Donald’s was the only significant acting performance in the film that wasn’t recognised. The choice baffled observers at the time, and for decades afterwards, because no one could quite come up with a reason why. It’s no wonder Oscars expert Dave Karger once told Today, “I think Donald Sutherland’s omission from ‘Best Actor’ for Ordinary People has to rank as one of the most surprising omissions in an acting category…I am at a loss as to how that could have happened.”