Much has been written over the years about the importance of awards when it comes to defining an actor’s legacy – and it’s certainly true that many of the finest talents in Hollywood history have been rewarded with Oscars.
But there are also many stars who – despite turning in all sorts of impeccable performances in beloved films – haven’t been so lucky.
From those that have been nominated several times but never quite secured a win to those who have been overlooked altogether by the Academy, several of the most legendary stars to have ever graced the silver screen don’t have a golden statuette to their names.
We’ve rounded up 13 of the greatest of those actors below, including both icons of classic Hollywood and some major names who are still acting and could yet get their hands on that elusive Oscar.
Read on for our full list.
1) Glenn Close
With eight nods, Glenn Close jointly holds the slightly unenviable record of having been nominated for the highest number of acting Oscars without managing to secure a win (although she’s still some way off the overall record, held by 17-time nominated songwriter Dianne Warren).
Close’s nominations are split evenly across the supporting and leading categories, with her first coming all the way back in 1982 when she was up for best supporting actress for her turn in The World According to Garp, missing out to Jessica Lange for her role in Tootsie.
Among her most notable nominations were for her lead performances in Fatal Attraction in 1987 and Dangerous Liaisons in 1988, with the golden statuettes in those years being awarded to Cher for Moonstruck and Jodie Foster for The Accused, respectively.
More recently, some pundits thought she might finally win the elusive Oscar for her role in The Wife in 2018, only for Olivia Colman to secure the prize for playing Queen Anne in The Favourite. Close… but no cigar!
2) Samuel L Jackson
With his films having raked in an astronomical total of $14.6 billion over the years, Jackson is the highest-grossing male actor of all time (although he’s behind both Zoe Saldaña and Scarlett Johansson in the overall list). But he’s never managed to turn that box office success into Oscars glory.
Of course, many of Jackson’s highest-grossing films are more commercially oriented fare that never seemed likely to garner awards attention – for example, his long-running role as Nick Fury in various MCU projects.
Indeed, he’s only actually been nominated by the Academy on one occasion, for arguably his most iconic role as Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction, but he lost out in the best supporting actor category in 1995 to Martin Landau for his role in Tim Burton’s Ed Wood.
Still, while an Oscar may have eluded him, Jackson does have some very prestigious gongs in his collection. During the ’90s, he won best actor at two of the world’s most esteemed film festivals: at Cannes for his role in Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever in 1991, and at Berlin for Tarantino’s Jackie Brown in 1998. He also received an honorary Academy Award at the Governors Awards in March 2022.
3) Cary Grant
Grant is not only one of the most iconic screen presences in the history of the silver screen, but also perhaps appeared in more genuine classics than just about any other actor: Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, Only Angels Have Wings, Notorious, North by Northwest and Charade, to name just a few.
In 1999, Grant was named by the American Film Institute as the second greatest male star of the Golden Age of Hollywood behind only Humphrey Bogart (who himself only achieved one Oscar win) but despite that, Grant was never awarded a competitive Academy Award – and received just the two nominations, for Penny Serenade (1941) and None but the Lonely Heart (1944.)
Perhaps he was the victim of the Academy’s well-documented preference for more dramatic roles, with Grant most commonly seen at his charming best in more comedic fare.
Like a few other actors on this list, Grant was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1970, but it remains bizarre that perhaps Hollywood’s finest ever leading man never got his hands on a competitive award. It just goes to show that awards are very far from the main thing to define actor’s legacy!
4) Tom Cruise
A more recent leading man who has received an Honorary Oscar (just this year!) but never a competitive one is Tom Cruise – who was nominated three times in the decade between 1990 and 2000 but never again since.
Cruise’s nods came for his leading roles in Born on the Fourth of July and Jerry Maguire and his supporting turn in Magnolia, but he lost out respectively to Daniel Day Lewis for My Left Foot, Geoffrey Rush for Shine, and Michael Caine for The Cider House Rules.
As you’re probably aware, the last couple of decades of his career have largely seen him move away from dramatic roles into predominantly action movies, a genre which – rightly or wrongly – tends to be less of surefire route to awards success.
But more recently, Cruise has been vocal about returning to more dramatic work again, beginning with Alejandro G Iñárritu’s Digger later this year – so perhaps a maiden competitive Oscar isn’t too far away for the Mission: Impossible and Top Gun star.
5) Amy Adams
Adams is another case of a multiple nominee who can count herself very unfortunate never to have converted one of her six nods into a win.
The star delivered a terrific streak of performances in great films throughout the late 2000s and 2010s, earning nominations for her roles in Junebug, Doubt, The Fighter, The Master, American Hustle and Vice, but sadly couldn’t get her hands on a statuette on any of those occasions.
Also in that time, one of her very best performances – in 2016’s Arrival – was completely snubbed, which remains one of the Academy’s most puzzling omissions in recent years.
In the 2020s, the projects Addams has starred in haven’t quite attracted the same acclaim, but there is still plenty of time for her to get the Academy’s attention again, and we certainly wouldn’t rule out her eventually winning an Oscar.
6) Ralph Fiennes
Fiennes was most recently seen on the awards trail just last year, when he was nominated for his leading turn in Conclave – but it ended up being Adrien Brody who picked up his second Oscar for The Brutalist.
That was the third time Fiennes had been nominated at the ceremony, having previously received nods for best supporting actor in Schindler’s List and best actor in The English Patient – both films that went on to win the best picture trophy.
But there are also plenty of other terrific performances in Fiennes career that could certainly be considered awards-worthy (highlighted by the fact he’s been nominated seven time at both the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes) with his genius performance in The Grand Budapest Hotel possibly the most galling snub.
7) Richard Burton
Given his standing as one of the most iconic leading men in cinema history, you may be shocked to learn that Burton is another major star who never won an Oscar.
That’s despite landing seven nominations between 1952 and 1977: best supporting actor for My Cousin Rachel, and best actor for The Rope, Becket, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Anne of the Thousand Days and Equus.
But while he won BAFTAs for two of those (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf) and Golden Globes for a further two (My Cousin Rachel and Equus) none of them saw him receive a golden statuette.
He’s undoubtedly one of the most high profile stars never to receive one.
8) Annette Bening
Another more recent Hollywood star who could yet claim an Oscar in the future, Bening has won at the BAFTAs, Actor Awards and Golden Globes, but has thus far failed to add an Oscar to that impressive collection of trophies.
She’s come close on several occasions, with five previous nominations beginning with a supporting nod for The Grifters in 1990 – when she was beaten by Whoopi Goldberg for Ghost.
Her other nods all came for best actress, for American Beauty, Being Julia, The Kids Are All Right and most recently Nyad. On both of those first two occasions she lost out to Hillary Swank (for Boys Don’t Cry and Million Dollar Baby), while the winners at the latter two ceremonies were Natalie Portman for Black Swan and Emma Stone for Poor Things.
We’re sure she’ll be back in the running again at some point in the future.
9) Lauren Bacall
Golden Age Hollywood is littered with iconic stars who appeared in countless classic movies but were never awarded an Oscar – and Lauren Bacall is another name you can add to that list.
Like other actors included in the list – such as Cary Grant and Tom Cruise – Bacall was awarded an honorary career, but in terms of competitive ones she garnered just one nomination, for her supporting role in The Mirror Has Two Faces relatively late in her career in 1997.
Although she was at one point considered a frontrunner to win for that role (winning the Golden Globe and even stating that she was confident of adding the Oscar), she ultimately lost out to Juliette Binoche for The English Patient.
Other key roles in classics such as The Big Sleep and Written on the Wind went unrewarded, but Bacall remains one of the most legendary figures in Hollywood history despite the lack of an Oscar.
10) Willem Dafoe
One of the finest – and most popular – character actors currently working, Dafoe feels exactly like the sort of performer who is overdue an Oscar.
Across his career, he’s acted in a vast range of films, both blockbusters and independent fare, and worked with many of the greatest directors in Hollywood: from Martin Scorsese and David Lynch to Wes Anderson and Yorgos Lanthimos.
He’s achieved four nominations so far, three times for best supporting actor (for Platoon, Shadow of the Vampire and The Florida Project) and once for best actor (for playing Vincent Van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate).
Given how many projects he takes on, and the fact that he never seems to turn in a bad performance, it seems like an Oscar could well be in his future – and we’re sure it would be a very well-received one if it does happen.
We mentioned earlier that Glenn Close jointly held the record for highest number of nominations without a win, and Peter O’Toole is the actor with whom she shares that distinction.
The English/Irish actor’s eight nominations came across a period spanning almost half a century, with his first coming for Lawrence of Arabia in 1962 (when he lost to Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird) and his last for Venus in 2006 (when Forest Whittaker won for The Last King of Scotland).
A look at the stature of the other actors he lost out to only goes to show just how hard it can be to win an Oscar, with legends John Wayne, Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro among those to have won the statuettes in the years he was in the running.
O’Toole was at least another star who did win an Honorary Oscar, but it’s a real shame he never managed to get his hands on a competitive one.
12) Judy Garland
Hollywood legends don’t get much bigger than Judy Garland – and she seems very much like someone who you would expect might have won an Oscar or two in her time.
Technically, she was honoured with a non-competitive Academy Juvenile Award in 1939 (the year she starred in both The Wizard Of Oz and Babes in Arms) but she never added another to her collection.
She was nominated twice, for best actress for A Star is Born in 1954 and for best supporting actress for Judgement in Nuremberg in 1961, but lost out to Grace Kelly for The Country Girl on the first of those occasions and Rita Moreno in West Side Story on the latter.
Regardless, Garland’s impact and influence are not overshadowed by her lack of a competitive Oscar.
13) Isabelle Huppert
Finally, a star who many actors cite as their own personal favourite – French star Huppert has largely been overlooked by the Academy throughout her unrivalled career.
She has been nominated on one occasion for her role in Paul Verhoeven’s Elle in 2016 (the year Emma Stone won for La La Land), but that pales in comparison to the incredible 17 nods she’s had at France’s equivalent the Cesars (though she’s won just the twice, for Elle and La Cérémonie).
Of course, though some French stars (such as Marion Cotillard and Juliette Binoche) have won Oscars, the Academy has, until fairly recently, tended to overlook international cinema, and so there are a number of other iconic stars – like Catherine Deneuve – who don’t have an Oscar to their name.
With the Academy having embraced films from around the world to a far greater extent in recent years, there’s every chance we could be looking at that changing some time soon.
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