The Top 25 Best Actor Performances NOT Nominated For An Oscar
by WalterFrith50 | created - 26 Aug 2012 | updated - 27 Aug 2012 | Public
1. Gene Hackman
Actor | The French Connection
Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Anna Lyda Elizabeth (Gray) and Eugene Ezra Hackman, who operated a newspaper printing press. He is of Pennsylvania Dutch (German), English, and Scottish ancestry, partly by way of Canada, where his mother was born. After ...
Overlooked for his convincing performance as the conscience stricken wire tapper in Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Conversation' (1974).
2. James Stewart
Actor | Vertigo
James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, to Elizabeth Ruth (Johnson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, who owned a hardware store. He was of Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and some English descent. Stewart was educated at a local prep school, Mercersburg Academy, where he ...
Overlooked for his vulnerable performance in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Vertigo' (1958).
3. Malcolm McDowell
Actor | A Clockwork Orange
Malcolm John Taylor was born on June 13, 1943 in Leeds, England, to working-class parents Edna (McDowell), a hotelier, and Charles Taylor, a publican. His father was an alcoholic. Malcolm hated his parents' ways. His father was keen to send his son to private school to give him a good start in life...
Overlooked for his blistering performance as a gang leader turned prison inmate turned "reformed" criminal at the hands of science in Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange' (1971).
4. Humphrey Bogart
Actor | Casablanca
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born in New York City, New York, to Maud Humphrey, a famed magazine illustrator and suffragette, and Belmont DeForest Bogart, a moderately wealthy surgeon (who was secretly addicted to opium). Bogart was educated at Trinity School, NYC, and was sent to Phillips Academy ...
'Overlooked for his haunting performance as a greedy prospector overcome by striking gold in John Huston's 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre' (1948).
5. Paul Giamatti
Actor | Sideways
Paul Giamatti is an American actor who has worked steadily and prominently for over thirty years, and is best known for leading roles in the films American Splendor (2003), Sideways (2004), and Barney's Version (2010) (for which he won a Golden Globe), and supporting roles in the films Cinderella ...
Overlooked for his sympathetic performance as a wine loving alcoholic English teacher looking to succeed at love and striving to make it as a successful writer in Alexander Payne's 'Sideways' (2004).
6. Spencer Tracy
Actor | Judgment at Nuremberg
Spencer Tracy was the second son born on April 5, 1900, to truck salesman John Edward and Caroline Brown Tracy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While attending Marquette Academy, he and classmate Pat O'Brien quit school to enlist in the Navy at the start of World War I. Tracy was still at Norfolk Navy Yard...
Overlooked for his towering performance as a political boss, running for re-election as Mayor of a U.S. town for the last time in 'The Last Hurrah' (1958).
7. Russell Crowe
Actor | Les Misérables
Russell Ira Crowe was born in Wellington, New Zealand, to Jocelyn Yvonne (Wemyss) and John Alexander Crowe, both of whom catered movie sets. His maternal grandfather, Stanley Wemyss, was a cinematographer. Crowe's recent ancestry includes Welsh (where his paternal grandfather was born, in Wrexham),...
Overlooked for his sweeping performance as the captain of an English ship during the Napoleonic wars in Peter Weir's 'Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World' (2003).
8. Mel Gibson
Actor | Braveheart
Mel Columcille Gerard Gibson was born January 3, 1956 in Peekskill, New York, USA, as the sixth of eleven children of Hutton Gibson, a railroad brakeman, and Anne Patricia (Reilly) Gibson (who died in December of 1990). His mother was Irish, from County Longford, while his American-born father is ...
Overlooked for his grand performance as a Scottish warrior fighting and English king's tyranny in the middle ages in his own directed film 'Braveheart' (1995).
9. Joseph Fiennes
Actor | Shakespeare in Love
Joseph Alberic Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, to Jennifer Anne Mary Alleyne (Lash), a novelist, and Mark Fiennes, a photographer. He is one of six children. Four of his siblings are also in the arts: Ralph Fiennes, an actor; Martha Fiennes, a director; Magnus Fiennes, a...
Overlooked for his boyish performance in the title role as the most famous writer in history looking for love in John Madden's 'Shakespeare in Love' (1998).
10. Victor Banerjee
Actor | A Passage to India
Victor Banerjee Early life Banerjee was born to a Zamindari Bangali Hindu family and is a descendant of The Raja Bahadur of Chanchal and the Raja of Uttarpara. He received his schooling at St. Edmund's School, Shillong, and graduated in English Literature from St. Xavier's College, Calcutta and did...
Overlooked for his heartfelt performance as an Indian doctor falsely accused of rape in David Lean's 'A Passage to India' (1984).
11. James Stewart
Actor | Vertigo
James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, to Elizabeth Ruth (Johnson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, who owned a hardware store. He was of Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and some English descent. Stewart was educated at a local prep school, Mercersburg Academy, where he ...
Overlooked for his snooping performance as a nosey neighbour confined to a wheel chair with a broken leg spying on those around him and getting more than he bargained for in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rear Window' (1958).
12. Brad Pitt
Actor | Fight Club
William Bradley "Brad" Pitt was born on December 18, 1963 in Shawnee, Oklahoma and raised in Springfield, Missouri to Jane Etta Pitt (née Hillhouse), a school counselor & William Alvin "Bill" Pitt, a truck company manager. At Kickapoo High School, Pitt was involved in sports, debating, student ...
Overlooked for his gritty performance as a visceral club organizer urging its members to vent the violent frustrations of their disappointing lives on society in David Fincher's 'Fight Club' (1999).
13. Gene Hackman
Actor | The French Connection
Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Anna Lyda Elizabeth (Gray) and Eugene Ezra Hackman, who operated a newspaper printing press. He is of Pennsylvania Dutch (German), English, and Scottish ancestry, partly by way of Canada, where his mother was born. After ...
Overlooked for his every man performance of a middle aged married man going through a mid life crisis and flirting with the prospect of an affair in Bud Yorkin's 'Twice in a Lifetime' (1985).
14. Richard Gere
Actor | Chicago
Humanitarian and actor Richard Gere was born on August 31, 1949, in Philadelphia, the second of five children of Doris Anna (Tiffany), a homemaker, and Homer George Gere, an insurance salesman, both Mayflower descendants. Richard started early as a musician, playing a number of instruments in high ...
Overlooked for his self assured performance as a naval officer candidate who butts heads with a seasoned drill sergeant and finds love with a girl who works in a factory in Taylor Hackford's 'An Officer and a Gentleman' (1982).
15. Clint Eastwood
Actor | Million Dollar Baby
Clint Eastwood was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood (née Margret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took interest in ...
Overlooked for his seasoned performance as a veteran and somewhat ailing secret service agent taunted by an assassin who plots to kill the U.S. president in Wolfgang Petersen's 'In the Line of Fire' (1993).
16. James Caan
Actor | Thief
A masculine and enigmatic actor whose life and movie career have had more ups and downs than the average rollercoaster and whose selection of roles has arguably derailed him from achieving true superstar status, James Caan is New York-born and bred.
He was born in the Bronx, to Sophie (Falkenstein) ...
Overlooked for his hard hitting performance as a professional thief who's strong stance on individualism makes him concerned with only one thing: survival...in Michael Mann's 'Thief' (1981).
17. Leonardo DiCaprio
Actor | Inception
Few actors in the world have had a career quite as diverse as Leonardo DiCaprio's. DiCaprio has gone from relatively humble beginnings, as a supporting cast member of the sitcom Growing Pains (1985) and low budget horror movies, such as Critters 3 (1991), to a major teenage heartthrob in the 1990s,...
Overlooked for his sly performance as an undercover cop battling the mob with unexpected consequences in Martin Scorsese's 'The Departed' (2006).
18. Sidney Poitier
Actor | In the Heat of the Night
Sidney Poitier was a native of Cat Island, Bahamas, although born, two months prematurely, in Miami during a visit by his parents, Evelyn (Outten) and Reginald James Poitier. He grew up in poverty as the son of farmers, with his father also driving a cab in Nassau. Sidney had little formal ...
Overlooked for his highly polished performance as a police officer and forensics expert working against racism in the deep south in Norman Jewison's 'In the Heat of the Night' (1967).
19. Al Pacino
Actor | Serpico
Alfredo James "Al" 'Pacino established himself as a film actor during one of cinema's most vibrant decades, the 1970s, and has become an enduring and iconic figure in the world of American movies.
He was born April 25, 1940 in Manhattan, New York City, to Italian-American parents, Rose (nee Gerardi)...
Overlooked for his performance as legendary crime character Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Godfather Part III'. The fact that Pacino never won an Oscar for three different portrayals of Michael Corleone is still one of the greatest mysteries the Oscars have ever offered us.
20. Tom Cruise
Actor | Top Gun
In 1976, if you had told fourteen-year-old Franciscan seminary student Thomas Cruise Mapother IV that one day in the not too distant future he would be Tom Cruise, one of the top 100 movie stars of all time, he would have probably grinned and told you that his ambition was to join the priesthood. ...
Overlooked for his flamboyant performance as a young and highly skilled defense attorney battling the odds in Rob Reiner's 'A Few Good Men' (1992).
21. Viggo Mortensen
Actor | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Since his screen debut as a young Amish farmer in Peter Weir's Witness (1985), Viggo Mortensen's career has been marked by a steady string of well-rounded performances.
Mortensen was born in New York City, to Grace Gamble (Atkinson) and Viggo Peter Mortensen, Sr. His father was Danish, his mother ...
Overlooked for his cunning performance as a man with a past to hide in David Cronenberg's 'A History of Violence' (2005).
22. Robert De Niro
Actor | Cape Fear
One of the greatest actors of all time, Robert De Niro was born on August 17, 1943 in Manhattan, New York City, to artists Virginia (Admiral) and Robert De Niro Sr. His paternal grandfather was of Italian descent, and his other ancestry is Irish, English, Dutch, German, and French. He was trained ...
Overlooked for his hard boiled performance as a bounty hunter with a streak of decency that has cost him most of the life he previously built as a cop in Martin Brest's 'Midnight Run' (1988).
23. Kevin Kline
Actor | Wild Wild West
Kevin Kline was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Margaret and Robert Joseph Kline, who owned several stores. His father was of German Jewish descent and his mother was of Irish ancestry. After attending Indiana University in Bloomington, Kline studied at the Juilliard School in New York. In 1972, ...
Overlooked for his performance as a man impersonating a U.S. president who has fallen into a coma and having a cameo as the real president in the process in Gary Ross' 'Dave' (1993).
24. Robert De Niro
Actor | Cape Fear
One of the greatest actors of all time, Robert De Niro was born on August 17, 1943 in Manhattan, New York City, to artists Virginia (Admiral) and Robert De Niro Sr. His paternal grandfather was of Italian descent, and his other ancestry is Irish, English, Dutch, German, and French. He was trained ...
Overlooked for his stoic performance as a disturbed struggling stand up comedian who resorts to crime to make it in show business in Martin Scorsese's 'The King of Comedy' (1983).
25. John Travolta
Actor | Pulp Fiction
John Joseph Travolta was born in Englewood, New Jersey, one of six children of Helen Travolta (née Helen Cecilia Burke) and Salvatore/Samuel J. Travolta. His father was of Italian descent and his mother was of Irish ancestry. His father owned a tire repair shop called Travolta Tires in Hillsdale, ...
Overlooked for his ultra cool performance as a loan shark who becomes a movie producer in Barry Sonnenfeld's 'Get Shorty' (1995).
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