Who has the most Oscar nominations without winning?
Everyone who works in the industry dreams of winning an Oscar, but only a finite number of trophies are handed out each year. Some folks are lucky enough to triumph on their first nomination, while others exist at the opposite end of that scale.
Adrien Brody recently made history by becoming the first person to win two ‘Best Actor’ prizes with their first two nominations, emulating the benchmark first set by Luise Rainer when she was shortlisted for ‘Best Actress’ twice in a row in 1937 and 1938, won both, and then was never nominated again.
Unfortunately, not everyone gets to be so lucky. Peter O’Toole and Glenn Close are tied for the most unsuccessful acting nominations without a win at eight apiece, and while that sounds like an awful lot of empty-handed Academy Awards ceremonies – and it is – it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the even unluckier select few to have experienced the misery of a failed Oscar nod more often.
The filmmaker with the biggest losing streak in Oscars history also happens to be one of their generation’s finest talents. No auteur who writes, directs, or produces has ever fared worse than poor Paul Thomas Anderson, who has 11 nominations so far, which boggles the mind when he’s been responsible for so many modern greats.
Songwriter Diane Warren may have been awarded an honorary Oscar in 2022 to at least put an end to her wilderness years, but she’s zero-for-16 when competing against a field of nominees. It’s hard not to feel sorry for composer Thomas Newman being nominated 15 times without success when he’s part of the single most decorated family in the Academy’s history, with his father Alfred, cousin Randy, and uncle Lionel claiming a combined total of 12 Oscars from the clan’s cumulative haul of 76 nominations.
None of them can hold a candle to Greg P Russell, though, the man the Oscars continue to forget. Since his first nomination in the ‘Best Sound’ category in 1990 for Ridley Scott’s neo-noir thriller Black Rain, he’s racked up another 16 nominations to become a 17-time loser and claim the throne as the most-nominated person in the ceremony’s history who’s never crossed that final hurdle and claimed the big one. Not even an honorary gong like Warren, just nothing.
Will Bradley Cooper beat the record?
Honestly, it can’t be ruled out. It’s been over a decade since Russell’s 17th and most recent fruitless Oscar nomination for ‘Best Sound Mixing’ in Skyfall, which has opened the door for his closest competitors to start sneaking up on him.
To put things into context, Warren has been nominated for nine Oscars since Russell’s last nod. She was only in the running for six trophies between 1987 and 2001, and it would be another 13 years before the seventh arrived. Since then, the only year she hasn’t been shortlisted since 2014 was 2016, so she seems the most likely to at least match the unwanted distinction.
Then again, in terms of volume and time period, it’s not out of the question that Cooper catches up. Russell’s 17 nominations were separated by 33 years, and Warren’s 16 came in a 37-year span. That puts their average at around one every two years, which is where Cooper has them beat.
Since his first nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ in David O Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, the actor has gone on the worst kind of hot streak by accruing 12 unsuccessful Oscar nods in the space of 11 years: five for acting, two for writing, and five for producing a ‘Best Picture’ nominee.
If he maintains that pace, then it’s only a matter of time before he usurps Russell if Warren doesn’t get there first. Even at that, she’s got the honorary Oscar to console herself.
