Three Kings for Best Picture.
John Wayne in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
Boris Karloff in general, but specifically in The Body Snatchers. Karloff was ignored because he did horror, but he was a fine actor. The Body Snatchers is a chilling portrayal of softspoken evil.
Yeah, Eddie Murphy is a much more talented actor than the material he selects demonstrates. I remember watching The Nutty Professor and seeing a moment of absolutely brilliant acting…which was then interrupted by a fart joke. He’s his own worst enemy. I think Bowfinger is the last movie he *or *Steve Martin made that was actually funny.
I’ve always been kind of pissed off that Noah Taylor didn’t get a Best Supporting Actor nod for playing the teenaged Helfgott in Shine, when I thought he acted Geoffrey Rush off the screen. He was also excellent in Simon Magus but who saw that?
As I always answer these threads, Steve Martin in All of Me. Simply fantastic.
Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like It Hot”
Claude Rains in Notorious.
People are mostly naming specific performances, but I’ll take the thread title literally, and name one superb actor who gave MANY Oscar-worthy performances, but never received a single nomination in his entire career:
Edward G. Robinson.
Not even NOMINATED for “The Cincinnati Kid” or “Key Largo” or “Soylent Green” or anything else? Hard to believe.
Freddie Highmore. That kid brought me to tears in Finding Neverland.
I agree with all that, and I’ll add that Jean Shepherd (who wrote the story and cowrote the screenplay) deserved an Oscar for his narration (Supporting Actor, maybe?). His performance is just as important as Billingsley’s, IMO.
John Cazale for supporting actor for any of his movies.
Jim Carrey. I know, I know…
But ‘The Truman Show’, ‘Man on the Moon’, and ‘Eternal Sunshine’ were all different personas, and he should have been at least nominated once. Didn’t see ‘I Love You Phillip Morris’ yet.
I thought your kids were teenagers? A Christmas Story was made in 1983.
Alan Rickman in the first Harry Potter movie should have gotten Best Supporting. Before I saw it, I would have thought it impossible to do Snape right.
I don’t understand why Cary Grant’s two nominations weren’t for Talk of the Town or Notorious.
No, you’re dead on. The first and the third, especially. Playing Andy Kaufman takes a ton of skill, but playing the “everyman trapped in an existential crisis,” as he did in the other two movies, takes some serious acting chops. “Eternal Sunshine” not getting a Best Picture nod is ridiculous in its own right – I thought it was the best movie of the year, if not the decade.
Me too.
Jeff Daniels as the soda shop owner in Pleasantville.
Eli Wallach as Tuco in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
His work in The Magnificent Seven wasn’t bad, either. His bank story still gets a chuckle from me:
“Once I rob a bank in Texas; your government get after me with a whole army… whole army! One little bank. Is clear the meaning: in Texas, only Texans can rob banks. Ha ha.”
[they look at him in silence]
The obvious answer here is Gary Oldman. He’s one of the greatest actors alive and he somehow has never been nominated for an Oscar.
Gene Wilder for Young Frankenstein, best comedic performance ever.
Kevin Bacon, to me, is so enjoyable. I just love Footloose and Tremors. He’s done some good acting (Murder In The First and The Woodsman), and he’s also made some really poor choices (The Invisible Man). I would like him to do something really, really great someday and get an Oscar. Maybe now that his wife is finished with her TV show he’ll get serious, get a good movie role, and, you know, give a great performance.