Because they’re mediocre actors in my opinion. They’re good at acting, as in they do the lines well and give a good performance but they’re nowhere on level with the types of Daniel Day Lewis or Cate Blanchett, who rather than trading on their looks to get roles, worked on their craft to obtain respect within the acting profession.
Sure, those two guys might win one when they’re older, in the type of a life time achievement award, but for a role they played? I don’t hold out much chance for them. I maybe wrong, if not, who else would fit into that category?
I can’t watch Pitt in 12 monkeys or DiCaprio in What’s eating Gilbert Grape and conclude that they aren’t amazing actors. They were phenomenal in those roles.
Brad Pitt is a perfectly good actor. Good, not great.
Leo is average to awful. In particular he completely ruined every scene in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape that he was in. He just overdid it in a completely cliche ridden way. I have no idea why other people thought this was anything but a terrible performance. Much worse than his Razzie nominated work in The Beach. His best performance was in Catch Me If You Can and that was merely tolerable. And let’s not even get started on Titanic.
[ol]
[li]Tom Cruise - too famous and too inconsistent. He riles the box office; but he’ll only earn a Lifetime Achievement Oscar[/li][li]Will Smith - See also Tom Cruise[/li][li]Patrick Stewart - Had he remained a Shakespearean actor,perhaps. Branched out too far and now he’ll have settle for a Lifetime award.[/li][li]Sean Connery - retired after giving Hollywood the bird. Too inconsistent. Another Lifetime award[/li][/ol]
Leo is young and will win an Oscar eventually. I wasn’t a huge fan of Wolf of Wall Street, but he totally nailed that role.
I’ve always thought Pitt lacked the charisma to pull off leading roles, but he’s pretty good at smaller, supporting roles. I can still see him winning an Oscar someday in a supporting actor category.
Pitt is very good, but not an Oscar-level actor. But DiCaprio has always been great in everything I’ve seen him do since This Boy’s Life. But I haven’t seen Gilbert Grape or Titanic, so I can’t speak for those. I was discussing him with a few friends this week and we concluded that the only reason that he hasn’t won yet is because of his baby face. The voting seems to favor actors that look at least a bit “weathered”.
Pitt’s won a Golden Globe and been nominated three times for an Oscar. Hardly seems inconceivable that he’ll win one someday. Plus it probably helps that he’s still in several movies a year, and a lot of his films tend to be Oscar bait.
Tom Cruise seems a better candidate, because while he can act, he seems pretty happy just appearing in block-buster action or sci-fi films which make him a lot of money and don’t ask much of his acting talents.
People rave about DiCaprio being such a great actor, but all I see is Leonardo DiCaprio acting. I don’t see him becoming the role. I see an actor playing a role. Pitt is a good actor and to me he seems to be having a good time and sharing an inside joke with the audience of “isn’t this a hoot I get paid to do this?”
There’s been several actors who win the Oscar as a somewhat lifetime achievement award, like Al Pacino winning for Scent of a Woman. If in another decade or two Brad Pitt hasn’t won an award, I could see him winning Best Actor for a film in which he was good, but maybe not great, and not the greatest of the year. Same with DiCaprio.
Johnny Depp received his first Oscar nomination for his role in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and has been nominated twice more since then for Finding Neverland and Sweeney Todd. So if anything it seems like POTC helped his odds of getting an Oscar.