The Academy isn’t just a couple of guys who watch every movie released within a year. It’s a collective of over 10,500 global film industry artists and leaders, so there’s bound to be wildly varied opinions on what is and what isn’t nomination-worthy. What one person considers great, another might find pandering and vice versa. That’s why in the nearly 100 years the Academy has been in existence, they’ve messed up as many times as they’ve gotten it right. The amount of iconic directors who were overlooked, big screen superstars who were ignored, and all-time classics that received no love is so big, they form an unofficial group called the “Snub Club.” Honorary members include Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, The Shawshank Redemption, Charlie Chaplin, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Glen Close, Saving Private Ryan and many, many others. After the list of 2024 nominees was revealed, The Snub Club received two new members: Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie for Barbie. The internet was so incensed by their lack of nominations that it completely dominated the conversation. While shocking, it’s not that surprising considering the strength of that year. They weren’t snubbed, there was just a glut of talented directors and actresses that year. This list will highlight true snubs that should’ve gotten a nom (and probably should’ve won) but didn’t.
These are the 100 Biggest Oscar Acting Snubs of All Time.
100. Sumiko Sakamoto | The Ballad of Narayama (1983)
Based on a book (and loosely inspired by the 1958 film of the same name), The Ballad of Narayama explores the infamously inhumane true-life practice of ubasute, in which elderly people were carried to a mountain and abandoned to die. According to tradition, once a person reaches the age of 70, they must travel to a remote mountain to die of starvation. Despite being in perfectly fine health, the 69-year-old Orin (Sumiko Sakamoto) accepts her fate and spends the year arranging all the affairs of her family while helping out her fellow villagers. If this was a comedy about the last year of someone dying of cancer, her performance would still make the cut. She oscillates between heartfelt and humorous throughout the first half in such a nimble way that you wonder why it isn’t canonized for that section alone. Watching her spin as many plates as she does while still dealing with the reality of the situation, feels like watching a pro athlete perform an impossible trick but making it look effortless. When it gets to the second half, when time has officially run out and she finally needs to go to the mountain, her performance no longer looks effortless. Any viewer is acutely aware of how much work she’s putting into this role. There’s a scene involving a rock and her mouth that I don’t know how they pulled off unless she was already missing a mouthful of teeth beforehand. It’s a haunting performance filled ironically with nothing but life.
99. Denis Lavant | Holy Motors (2012)
The Academy has famously made it a rule that actors performing multiple roles within the same movie are ineligible for nomination. That’s why brilliant performances such as Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Alec Guinness in Kind Hearts and Coronets, and Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor (yes, I am serious) never received a nom. The rule is dumb and should be discontinued. If an actor is giving five excellent and varied performances in one movie, the least you can do is acknowledge their hard work with a nomination. But setting aside the argument of whether or not it should be abolished, it technically doesn’t apply to Lavant in Holy Motors even though he plays multiple characters in it, so there’s no reason why he should have been ineligible or overlooked. The best way to describe Lavant’s character Mr. Oscar is to refer to him as a performance artist who inhabits a role for a play no one is watching or is even aware is not real. The only audience for his work is us, which is clearly a not-so-subtle commentary on the importance of an audience when it comes to art but that’s the movie. Set aside the artsy-fartsy meaning and focus on what Lavant is doing in this. You don’t need to apply meaning to his actions for them to still be impressive. Every role he inhabits — whether they be an old beggar woman, a hitman, or even his famous character Monsieur Merde from a previous film — is pitch perfect. When the film ends, you may walk away feeling confused by what just transpired, which is understandable but what is crystal clear is the level of Lavant’s brilliance as an actor.
98. Nicole Kidman | To Die For (1995)
Since the quality of her movie roles and performances increased tenfold after she worked with Kubrick, many believe he’s the reason she became one of the best actresses working today. She was good before but the master made her great. And while looking through her filmography, it’s hard to argue against this stance. Her career was solid, if not unremarkable, and then it exploded post-Eyes Wide Shut. But there’s one movie she made before that that’s so good, it kind of punches a hole in the entire theory. And that’s To Die For. Inspired by the story of Pamela Smart, the film follows Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman), a weather reporter at a small-town cable station who dreams of being a big-time news anchor. However, she feels that her middle-class husband (Matt Dillon) is holding her back, so she decides to have him murdered. For this, she enlists Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix), a high school boy who is enamored with her. She uses heavy metal and the promise of sex to bait the hook but since the fish is a dumb teenager, the plan immediately falls apart and her husband’s family starts to suspect that she was involved in his death. Watching Kidman play a seductive black widow who’s playing film noir games that she isn’t mentally equipped to play while trying desperately not to let the facade drop as the world crumbles around her is delicious. It was the best showcase of her abilities up to that point and is most likely the film that put her on Kubrick’s radar in the first place.
97. Val Kilmer | Tombstone (1993)
It takes a once-in-a-lifetime kind of actor to steal every scene in a movie as stacked as Tombstone, but that’s how gifted Val Kilmer was. He stamps this performance with such a unique signature that he forever owns the role of Doc Holliday. Stacey Keach, Kirk Douglas, and Dennis Quaid (among many others) have all tackled the character and Kilmer retroactively makes them and every other depiction of the legendary gunfighter feel like they were borrowing from him. Even though he was most likely inspired by them. That’s how good he is in this. I doubt it’s historically accurate in any way and I even admit it’s a bit showy but there’s no denying how electric he is on screen. Every design element and actor choice feels like it was designed to be the ultimate sidekick character. From his look to his voice to his dialogue, it’s all iconic.
96. Jeff Goldblum | The Fly (1986)
If you want to turn this list into a drinking game, take a shot every time I bemoan the fact that the Academy straight up hates horror and I guarantee you, unless you are Richard E. Grant’s character from Withnail and I, you won’t make it to the half way point. The amount of times it has ignored flawless performances within the genre, is criminal. While not the best example of their inexplicable disdain for the genre, Goldblum in this is also a perfect case of their double standards. If this was simply a drama about a man dying of AIDS, there would be no question as to whether or not he’d get the nom. In fact, he most likely would’ve taken it from Caine (from Hannah and Her Sisters) that year. But since it’s a metaphor about AIDS through the prism of horror, there was no chance in hell it was getting a nom and that’s why the Academy will always be a sham. If it’s too challenging for the members to watch, they simply won’t watch it. So only the best performances that don’t offend their delicate sensibilities ever have a chance of getting the gold man. They need more horror lovers who aren’t afraid of envelope pushing cinema to vote on movies because there’s no world where this wasn’t one of the best performances that year, period. Goldblum has never been better as a hyper intelligent man slowly losing his body and mind to an infliction that’s turning him into a literal bug. It’s the worst version of Kafka’s famous story imaginable and like I said, a look at AIDS as a horror story. Goldblum never got another chance to be this good again. Maybe if the Academy didn’t overlook him, he would’ve been offered better roles that would’ve turned him into a character actor instead of a meme. There’s no way to know for sure but it’s definitely a possibility.
95. Agathe Rousselle | Titane (2021)
Titane gave me everything I want from art. It made me laugh. It made me cry. It constantly kept me guessing as to where it was going and it definitely showed me things I had never seen before. If all you know about it is that a character has sex with a car, you’re in for a treat when you finally watch it. There’s no other film to compare it to to even pitch it. It has shades of Cronenberg’s Crash mixed with the WTF am I watching feel of insanity of Holy Motors but with an actual human heart at it’s center. The film isn’t just weird for the sake of weird, there’s a thematic point to everything. And that’s Rousselle’s character arc. Their journey is as rollercoaster of emotions. The film dares you to sympathize with what could be described as a monster and by the end of it, you do. It’s the kind of performance every critic would call brave, which is exactly why the Academy needs to purge itself of the majority of its older members. They’re just not hip enough to watch this movie to even witness it.
94. Willem Dafoe | The Lighthouse (2019)
The Lighthouse is everything Eggers has ever loved or was inspired by, thrown into one giant pot. The film feels like Kubrick doing Bergman doing H.P Lovecraft. Shots linger on images far too long, the pace is glacier, nothing is ever explained and the sound design and aspect ratio are designed to make you claustrophobic and annoyed, which is a good thing. This film’s idea of answering a riddle, is to provide the audience with an even crazier riddle. Since the meaning behind the events of the film are up for interpretation, I don’t believe it’s a spoiler to say that the film juggles at least five or so explanations. The main characters could both be dead and are now in purgatory or hell, they could be the same person, there could be a force within the lighthouse that’s driving them mad or it could just be a tale of insanity. What’s not in question however, is the power of Dafoe’s acting in it. He’s chewing up the scenery like it’s made of lobster. It’s so big and over the top, it threatens to turn the entire movie into a comedy but somehow, Dafoe makes it work. It’s calibrated in such a way, that it makes you question not only his intentions but whether or not he’s real. He could be a sea god tormenting Pattinson’s character, his character decades in the future driven mad by isolation and the drink or a manifestation of his guilt. Or he could just be a lighthouse keeper who likes to fart and jerk off constantly. It’s impossible to know and it’s a testament to the strength of this performance that it keeps you guessing.
93. Matt Damon | The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Due to his involvement in the Bourne series, I feel like Damon is seen as an action star and less like an actor nowadays. The public perception of him (even if it’s entirely a construction in my own head) needs to change. He is a bonafide movie star who happens to also be an exceptional character actor. He has the stage presence of the former and the undeniable talent of the latter. He’s always been great but he’s very rarely been as good as he is in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Multiple actors have taken on the role (seriously, there’s way more Ripley movies then you think there is), with many being solid in their own right but I don’t any hold a candle to this performance. He’s charming, manipulative, devious, sexually confused and emotionally fragile. He’s definitely a sociopath and social climber but there’s something about the way Damon plays him that seriously makes you question your sympathizes. You want to root for him because he’s put a spell over you but he’s also not doing a single good thing to warrant that sympathy. It’s a rich and layered performance that you would never suspect from Damon.
92. Leandro Firmino | City of God (2002)
Li’l Zé Is a villain so good, I almost considered putting him on my greatest villains list twice. Once as a kid and the other as a young man. While not being drastically different in behavior, the two have vastly different types of motivation driving their crimes. The boy murders anyone he sees indiscriminately with the slightest provocation. He kills because killing is fun. He’s not doing it for fame or profit, he simply enjoys the act of murder. His systemic slaughter of an entire hotel is arguably the single most cold blooded act any child has ever committed on film. If Rhoda Penmark is considered a “bad seed” for killing a couple of kids for shoes and trophies, Lil Zé is a bad orchard. Firmino only has about twenty minutes of screentime but man, he really makes a meal out of every second.
91. Björk | Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Lars von Trier is the last person you’d suspect of making something with actual heart. He’s a self proclaimed Nazi sympathizer who loves to court controversy and in later years has crawled so far up his own ass, it’s impossible to find him. But a quarter of a century ago, there used to be the heart of a genuine artist. The films Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark are so gentle and heartbreaking when it comes to their characters, it’s almost unreal that the same man who made Nymphomaniac parts 1 and 2 also made them. Dancer in the Dark stars legendary Icelandic musician Björk as a factory worker who suffers from a degenerative eye condition and is saving for an operation to prevent her young son from suffering the same fate. Her desperation leads her down a path of self destruction that’ll have you screaming at the screen to get her to stop while also understanding her position. It’s a heavy performance that asks a lot from even a seasoned professional, which makes it all the more incredible that this is her debut. Unfortunately due to the horrible experiences she suffered on set (turns out von Trier is a piece of shit, who could’ve guessed), it would take another 22 years before she would ever act again and that’s a shame. She showed so much promise here. Hopefully her time on The Northman was good enough that she’ll stage a comeback in the near future.
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What do you think of the selection so far? Which Oscar snubs do you think are the most egregious? Maybe they will show up further on the list!
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