But only by default. In 2008, I predict that Jude Law will be nominated for all 5 slots of the Best Actor category for 5 different roles. People will be up in arms, as there will be at least 13 other roles for which he should have been nominated for that year.
There’s almost always a pretty strong slate for Best Actor, but honestly I think that Don Cheadle’s performance was possibly the Best Actor in the last five years or so. But it’s possible a lot of people didn’t see the movie; it sure wasn’t easy to watch.
McKellen doesn’t have an Oscar? Well, hell, there’s your answer right there.
I agree with this 100% - I would have loved to have seen Don Cheadle win this year (and I not-so-secretly believed that he would). However, I do take solace in knowing that my all-time favorite actor, Tom Hanks, went on to win two Oscars after not winning for what I (seriously) believe is his best performance (in Big - say what you want, but that was a tough part, and he did it very well).
Natalie Portman.
no?
well, she’s the hottest.
(mmm)
Actually, the one Oscar Kubrick did win (and he did win a competetive one) was the one he didn’t deserve.
Am I the first to say Paul Giamatti? He hasn’t even been nominated yet, though. He really should have won for American Splendor, and his non-nomination for Sideways was the biggest snub of this Oscar year.
Kate Winslet, easy, far and away. Lots of great actors are without Oscars, but she’s better’n any of them. I have mucho respect for Glenn Close, Jeff Bridges, Annette Bening, Ed Harris, et al, but Winslet’s better - in some cases, a LOT better than many of the actors cited so far. She’s one of the ten greatest actresses in the history of cinema. Assuming she stays in acting - bear in mind she’s not even thirty years old - fifty years from now her name will be spoken with the same reverence as Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, and Meryl Streep.
Yeah, that’s who I came in to post about, but Sampiro beat me to it. He was nominated for Supporting Actor for Fellowship of the Ring but lost out to Jim Broadbent (who I think is great, but dude, McKellen!)
Also, I should probably mention that I lost my last bit of faith in the Academy Awards in 1996 when Derek Jacobi (another non-Oscar-winner) didn’t even get nominated for his turn as Claudius in Branagh’s Hamlet… (though the RotK sweep restored that bit ;))
Joan Allen is my #1 Choice.
Alot of people already mentioned, so I will avoid repeating myself… but also think: Toni Collette, Barbara Hershey, Bette Midler, Lauren Bacall, Lynne Redgrave and Kristen Dunst.
Bill Murray.
And she wasn’t one I thought of when I saw the thread title, but Kate Winslet, too.
The Academy’s still pissed with him, perhaps, for turning down the role of Hannibal Lecter (yep, he did, though I can’t think he’d have done as much with it- he’s as talented as Hopkins but save for being 60 something and British he’s a different type= it’d be like seeing Morgan Freeman take on the role of an Islamic soldier in medieval England or something equally unfeasible.)
I second Giamatti’s snub- I thought he was many times better than Church who is for whatever reason getting nominations and awards by several agencies.
How about Gary Oldman? One of the best actors ever and he’s never even been nominated for an Oscar.
And a trivia question. I originally planned to mention a second actor in my previous post whom I thought had never been nominated: Harvey Keitel. But I found out I was wrong - he had received a single nomination. A prize of no value to the first person who can name what year and the movie Keitel was nominated for without looking it up.
I forget the year, but I thought Keitel was nominated for “Mean Streets”.
And I was almost not quite entirely wrong as I could possibly be.
For females I would say Kate Winslett or Naomi Watts.
For the males I would second Edward Norton or Gary Oldman.
Was Keitel nominated for the Bad Lt? (No idea the year)!
1991, Bugsy. He may have split the vote that year with his co-star Ben Kingsley. Jack Palance won.
Yes, I’m an Oscar geek. 
But actually, mention of Keitel brings out the fact that sometimes, the very best actors only get nominations when they’re in big, Oscar-bait, Best Picture nominees. Bugsy & Keitel is one example.
Another is the absolutely brilliant Ian Holm, who’s only been nominated once, for Chariots of Fire.