The 2006 Oscar Jack Nicholson was “robbed” of winning: “I may have been”
Upsets are, and always have been, a core part of the Academy Awards. Such is the nature of Hollywood’s unstoppable output that some deserving films are bound to be omitted year after year. You would think, however, that the industry had started to take notice of Jack Nicholson by 2006.
One of cinema’s most iconic names, it isn’t much of a stretch to claim that Jack Nicholson is a bona fide legend of Hollywood, having lent his talents to a litany of utterly beloved masterpieces over the course of his illustrious career. Many of those works, in fact, have earned Nicholson various award nominations. In fact, he has attracted 12 Academy Award nominations over the decades, with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest marking the first of his three Oscar wins.
By the standards of most actors, 12 Oscar nominations is the stuff of childhood fantasy. Many incredible actors, after all, go through their entire filmographies without so much as a sniff at the Academy Awards. In the case of Nicholson, though, 12 seems like a surprisingly low amount, given the sheer volume of pictures the actor has appeared in over the years, from his inaugural role in 1958’s The Cry Baby Killer right through to his final major role in 2010’s How Do You Know.
Not all of those films – certainly not the two just mentioned – have been masterpieces, of course. Even still, the breadth of that filmography suggests the Academy are guilty of overlooking Nicholson on occasion.
“I certainly have felt robbed many times at the Oscars,” he admitted to Collider in 2007. “It kind of goes with the territory.”
Perhaps the most unjust of those snubs came in 2006, when the actor failed to pick up even a nomination for his masterclass performance in Martin Scorsese’s double-crossing crime drama The Departed.
Admittedly, the film itself did rather well at the 2007 Academy Awards, attracting five nominations and walking away with four little gold statues, including the coveted award for ‘Best Picture’. Nicholson, however, was curiously absent from the ‘Best Actor’ category, despite giving a performance that was far more deserving of a spot than some of the nominated performers in that particular year.
For his part, Nicholson downplayed the snub somewhat. “I wasn’t sure I gave the best performance in the picture, no less in the world,” he shared. “How can you separate them?”
He went on to add, “Though robbed I may have been. How come I don’t get an old-age sentimental Oscar like several people did?”
In a much more general sense, though, Nicholson doesn’t seem to pay much heed to awards. “I think there are too many awards shows, like everybody else,” he said. “It covers five months now and I think it dilutes it,” the actor added, pining for the days when we would watch the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton accepting awards, and decrying the downfall of that spirit within the Hollywood realm.
Regardless of his nostalgic view of the Academy Awards, it is hard to argue against the fact that Nicholson deserved at least a nomination for his role in The Departed – the ultimate stand-out from his 21st-century film offerings.
Then again, it is worth remembering that the winner of the ‘Best Actor’ award that year was Daniel Day-Lewis for There Will Be Blood, which was perhaps the most cut-and-dry Oscar win of all time.
