From Charles Farrell to Tom Cruise: Biggest Oscar Snubs

Elizabeth Taylor: Bypassed at the Oscars for her work in George Stevens’ Giant.

(See previous post: Biggest Oscar Snubs: Eric Stoltz, Cher, Peter Bogdanovich, Al Pacino, and Catherine O’Hara.) In addition to Audrey Hepburn, Cher, Eric Stoltz, Al Pacino, and Catherine O’Hara, hundreds of other deserving performers have been “snubbed” by Academy voters for various reasons. One of those reasons is a very logical one: no matter how many good performances you get to admire in any given year, the Oscars only have 20 slots reserved for acting.

The list below isn’t a reflection of one’s personal tastes. And unlike the other posts in the “Biggest Oscar Snubs” series – which features some of the most talked-about Oscar “snubs” – this partial list of non-nominated actors is supposed to be an illustration of which performers were bypassed by the Academy while their vehicles (especially if a Best Picture winner) and costars (especially if more than one) were shortlisted. Some of those omissions were followed by widespread outrage; others were duly ignored.

Note: In early 1940, Judy Garland received a Special Academy Award for “outstanding performance as a screen juvenile during the past year.”

Note Part II: If a performer had two Oscar-“friendly” movies in the same year, s/he could only be nominated for one. Therefore, I’ve left out actors who were bypassed for one Oscar-nominated movie (e.g., William Holden for Born Yesterday in 1950) but that were nominated that same year for something else (in Holden’s case, Sunset Blvd.).

Note Part III: There were no official nominations for the period 1928–1929, but several names were “considered” for that year’s Academy Awards. I’ve included below a handful of names not found under official “consideration” by the Academy.

Charles Farrell – 7th Heaven & Street Angel (1927–1928)
Clara Bow, Richard Arlen & Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers – Wings (1927–1928)
Anita Page & Charles King – The Broadway Melody (1928–1929)
Jeanette MacDonald – The Love Parade (1929–1930)
Lew Ayres – All Quiet on the Western Front (1929–1930)
Ina Claire – The Royal Family of Broadway (1930–1931)
Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery & Lionel Barrymore – Grand Hotel (1931–1932)
Jackie Cooper – The Champ (1931–1932)
Miriam Hopkins – Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931–1932)
Clive Brook – Cavalcade (1932–1933)
Myrna Loy – The Thin Man (1934)
Charles Laughton & Fredric March – The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)
Jean Arthur – Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
Leslie Howard – Romeo and Juliet (1936)
Cary Grant – The Awful Truth (1937)
Charles Boyer – Love Affair (1939)
Judy Garland – The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Leslie Howard – Gone with the Wind (1939)
Merle Oberon – Wuthering Heights (1939)
Jean Arthur – Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Cary Grant – The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Herbert Marshall & Gale Sondergaard – The Letter (1940)
Herbert Marshall, Carl Benton Reid, Charles Dingle & Dan Durya – The Little Foxes (1941)
Charles Boyer & Paulette Goddard – Hold Back the Dawn (1941)
Paul Henreid – Casablanca (1943)
Joel McCrea – The More the Merrier (1943)
Edward G. Robinson & Fred MacMurray – Double Indemnity (1944)
Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews & Teresa Wright – The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Tyrone Power & Gene Tierney – The Razor’s Edge (1946)
Humphrey Bogart & Tim Holt – The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Montgomery Clift & Miriam Hopkins – The Heiress (1949)
Elizabeth Taylor – A Place in the Sun (1951)
Kirk Douglas – Detective Story (1951)
Lana Turner – The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
Burt Lancaster – Come Back, Little Sheba (1952)
James Mason – Julius Caesar (1953)
Gregory Peck – Roman Holiday (1953)
Clark Gable – Mogambo (1953)
William Holden – The Country Girl (1954)
Doris Day – Love Me or Leave Me (1955)
Burt Lancaster – The Rose Tattoo (1955)
Elizabeth Taylor – Giant (1956)
Rock Hudson & Lauren Bacall – Written on the Wind (1956)
William Holden – The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Tyrone Power & Marlene Dietrich – Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
Burt Lancaster & Rita Hayworth – Separate Tables (1958)
Tony Curtis & Marilyn Monroe – Some Like It Hot (1959)
Lee Remick & Ben Gazzara – Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Montgomery Clift – Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
Jean Simmons – Elmer Gantry (1960)
Robert Mitchum – The Sundowners (1960)
Fredric March – Inherit the Wind (1960)
Fred MacMurray – The Apartment (1960)
Natalie Wood (nominated that same year for Splendor in the Grass) & Richard Beymer – West Side Story (1961)
Laurence Harvey – Summer and Smoke (1961)
Alec Guinness – Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Paul Newman – Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)
Joan Crawford – What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton – Cleopatra (1963)
Susannah York – Tom Jones (1963)
Audrey Hepburn – My Fair Lady (1964)
Vivien Leigh – Ship of Fools (1965)
Christopher Plummer & Eleanor Parker – The Sound of Music (1965)
Sidney Poitier – A Patch of Blue (1965)
Alan Bates – Georgy Girl (1966)
Sidney Poitier – In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
Martin Sheen – The Subject Was Roses (1968)
Michael Sarrazin – They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969)
Michael Jayston & Irene Worth – Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)
Timothy Bottoms & Cybill Shepherd – The Last Picture Show (1971)
Michael York – Cabaret (1972)
Paul Newman & Robert Shaw – The Sting (1973)
Max von Sydow – The Exorcist (1973)
Ryan O’Neal – Paper Moon (1973)
Diane Keaton – The Godfather Part II (1974)
Robert Redford & Dustin Hoffman – All the President’s Men (1976)
Sophia Loren – A Special Day (1977)
Julie Christie – Heaven Can Wait (1978)
Gregory Peck – The Boys from Brazil (1978)
Liv Ullmann – Autumn Sonata (1978)
Burt Reynolds – Starting Over (1979)
Alan Bates – The Rose (1979)
Shirley MacLaine – Being There (1979)
Paul Le Mat – Melvin and Howard (1980)
Donald Sutherland – Ordinary People (1980)
Kristy McNichol – Only When I Laugh (1981)
Sally Field – Absence of Malice (1981)
Ben Cross & Ian Charleson – Chariots of Fire (1981)
Charlotte Rampling – The Verdict (1982)
Richard Gere – An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)
James Garner – Victor/Victoria (1982)
Victor Banerjee – A Passage to India (1984)
Kelly McGillis – Witness (1985)
Raul Julia – Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)
Kathleen Turner – Prizzi’s Honor (1985)
Jane Fonda – Agnes of God (1985)
Robert Redford – Out of Africa (1985)
Helena Bonham Carter & Julian Sands – A Room with a View (1986)
Tom Cruise – The Color of Money (1986)
Charlie Sheen – Platoon (1986)
John Lone, Peter O’Toole & Joan Chen – The Last Emperor (1987)
Nicolas Cage – Moonstruck (1987)
John Malkovich – Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
William Hurt & Kathleen Turner – The Accidental Tourist (1988)
Harrison Ford – Working Girl (1988)
Tom Cruise – Rain Man (1988)
Paul Newman – Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990)
Al Pacino & Diane Keaton – The Godfather Part III (1990)
John Cusack – The Grifters (1990)
Ray Liotta & Robert De Niro – Goodfellas (1990)
Annette Bening – Bugsy (1991)
Jessica Lange – Cape Fear (1991)
Barbra Streisand – The Prince of Tides (1991)
Kevin Costner – JFK (1991)
Anthony Hopkins – Howards End (1992)
Johnny Depp – Ed Wood (1994)
Sally Field & Robin Wright – Forrest Gump (1994)
John Cusack – Bullets Over Broadway (1994)
Tim Robbins – The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Mel Gibson & Patrick McGoohan – Braveheart (1995)
Meryl Streep & Leonardo DiCaprio – Marvin’s Room (1996)
Renée Zellweger – Jerry Maguire (1996)
Leonardo DiCaprio – Titanic (1997)
Mark Wahlberg – Boogie Nights (1997)
Russell Crowe & Guy Pearce – L.A. Confidential (1997)
Joseph Fiennes – Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth (1998)
Brendan Fraser – Gods and Monsters (1998)
Ralph Fiennes – The End of the Affair (1999)
Bruce Willis – The Sixth Sense (1999)
Winona Ryder – Girl, Interrupted (1999)
Tobey Maguire – The Cider House Rules (1999)
Al Pacino – The Insider (1999)
Leonardo DiCaprio & Cameron Diaz – Gangs of New York (2002)
Meryl Streep – The Hours (2002)
Richard Gere – Chicago (2002)
Nicole Kidman – Cold Mountain (2003)
Melissa Leo & Charlotte Gainsbourg, 21 Grams (2003)
Ralph Fiennes – The Constant Gardener (2005)
Michael Sheen – The Queen (2006)
Anne Hathaway – The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
James McAvoy – The Last King of Scotland (2006)
James McAvoy & Keira Knightley – Atonement (2007)
Gordon Pinsent – Away from Her (2007)
Josh Brolin & Tommy Lee Jones – No Country for Old Men (2007)
Michael Sheen – Frost/Nixon (2008)
James McAvoy – The Last Station (2009)
Amy Adams – Julie & Julia (2009)
Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana & Sigourney Weaver – Avatar (2009)
Matt Damon – True Grit (2010)
Mark Wahlberg – The Fighter (2010)
Julianne Moore – The Kids Are All Right (2010)
Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake – The Social Network (2010)
Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey & Winona Ryder – Black Swan (2010)
Leonardo DiCaprio – Inception (2010)

Note: Unlike the other posts in the “Biggest Oscar Snubs” series – which features some of the most talked-about Oscar “snubs” – this partial list of non-nominated actors is supposed to be an illustration of which performers were bypassed by the Academy while their vehicles (especially if a Best Picture winner) and costars (especially if more than one) were shortlisted. Some of those omissions were followed by widespread outrage; others were duly ignored.