This list contains men and women who never received Oscars in their respective fields but definitely at some point deserved one. This list does not include Honorary Oscars or Lifetime Achievement Award Oscars.
Albert Finney has been nominated for 5 Oscars in his lifetime. His most notable performance came in one of his first, Tom Jones. He was also nominated for Erin Brokovich, The Dresser, and Volcano. If you have never seen Finney in a film, I strongly recommend you watch him in The Browning Version – a lesser known but fantastic film about a teacher of classics.
Richard Burton was nominated 7 times for an Oscar and of those 7; six were in the best actor category. His most famous role was in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf.
Ah, Mrs. Lovett. How I love her, and how the Academy Awards do not. This star was nominated 3 times for Oscars, most notably for Portrait of Dorian Grey, and The Manchurian Candidate. She is probably most famous amongst the thespians as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd (the GOOD one, not the crappy one with Helena Bonham Carter who I do usually enjoy).
Peter O’Toole holds the record for most nominations without ever winning, he has been nominated 8 times, most recently in 2006 with his amazing performance in Venus. He would have won in 1962 for Lawrence of Arabia, if it had not been for Atticus Finch aka Gregory Peck.
He was nominated only once in his long career. He is ranked fifth on AFI’s best actors of all time. He was nominated for Towering Inferno but did not win. He was later awarded honorary awards. He was most famous for his musical movies with Ginger Rogers!
Recently ranked fifth on AFI’s greatest female stars of all time. She was the queen of silent film and is credited as having some of the most unforgettable movie performances ever. She was nominated four times and never won. The nominations were for films such as Anna Christie, Romance (nominated for both in 1930), Camille, and Ninotchka.
You may know Deborah Kerr best as Anna Leonowens from The King and I. She was nominated 6 times for an award and never won. She is considered one of the best female actresses of all time. She has the most nominations for a woman in the Best Actress role with six. She was also nominated for Edward My Son, From Here to Eternity, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, Separate Tables and The Sundowners.
Cary Grant is ranked second on AFI’s best actors of all time. He is most known for some of the greatest movies of all time including North by Northwest, The Philadelphia Story, and To Catch a Thief.
Hitchcock is widely viewed as one of the greatest directors of all time; he never won an Oscar. Known for classics such as Rear Window, The Birds, Rebecca, Lifeboat, and Spellbound (all of those movies where ones in which he was nominated), this Sultan of Suspense deserved one, if not all-5 Oscars he was nominated for…. Boo on the Academy!
SURPRISE! Charlie Chaplin never won an Oscar, EVER! This is rumored to be because of his public disdain for the Oscars. Nonetheless, Charlie Chaplin is considered by many to be the most influential and greatest actor of all time. He received 2 honorary Oscars, but as I said earlier those don’t count. No doubt he should have at least won ONE!
Notable omissions (and there are a few): Glenn Close, Orson Wells, Rosalind Russell, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, D.W. Griffith, and King Vidor
Contributor: Schiesl
Great list!
Great first comment!
Wow… a couple of these entries really surprised me – Greta Garbo, Alfred Hitchcock, and Charlie Chaplin. The others I don’t know enough about to have an opinion.
Cool idea for a list Scheisl
Can’t argue with this list.
very cool idea for a list, some of them really surprised me!
It is surprising that such well known celebrities have not received an Oscar, but they do only have one winner per year (and per category). As several nominee’s have said, “It’s an honor to be nominated.”
Other notable omissions: Keanu Reeves and Tom Cruise
(just kidding, just kidding!)
robert mitchum
Cool list, i didnt know they had oscars back in chaplins day.. and knowing hitch*****didnt get one is very dissapointing
hey where is arnold…… the greatest actor in the world… how many know that he is not of this planet..
Not a bad list, but not one of the best either.
Regarding #8: I loved the Burton Sweeney Todd.
Not bad but where is film genius STANLEY KUBRICK? He should be in the Top 3, not a notable omission!
He was nominated for Best Director for the classic films Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange. His filmography also includes other iconic works like Spartacus, Lolita, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, and Full Metal Jacket! Pretty much every film he directed is a gem!
Anyone in Hollywood would agree that Kubrick deserves to be near the top of this list!
Also, it’s worth mentioning that while notable omission D.W. Griffith certainly deserved an Oscar (Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Broken Blossoms), pretty much everything he directed was done BEFORE the Academy Awards began in 1929!
ohrmets: As Schiesl wrote, this is “10 of the best”, not the top 10… therefore I suspect that it is in no particular order.
Excellent Idea, Excellent List.
Thank You!
ps: can’t you find a more flattering picture of Mr. O’Toole?
Charlie Chapman won an Oscar for Best Score….and Kubrick for Best Visual Effects for 2001 IIRC.
Also spelling mistake in no 6 ‘…did not won.’
jim carrey considering he won the golden globes and not the oscars
I personally wouldn’t have given Chaplin the title of best actor of all time. I was kind of disappointed when Peter O’ Toole missed out on an Oscar again…how many more films is he going to be in? Also, I think if it’s a list in no particular order then it should go from 1-10.
It should be noted that Kubrick did, in fact, win an Oscar as part of the team who did the special effects for “2001.”
Amazing list! Some of my favourite actors are on here, as well as directors (Hitch*****and Kubrick). The fact that greats like Cary Grant, Peter O’Toole and Charlie Chaplin haven’t won Oscars seems very wrong to me. It really is too bad that Peter O’Toole couldn’t win for Lawrence of Arabia, but Gregory Peck WAS incredible as Atticus. And I LOVE Cary Grant — The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, Gunga Din, North By Northwest … gah, amazing!
Excellent, excellent list, Schiesl!!
Andy: Mitchum never won an Oscar? Wow. He certainly deserves to be- at least- number three on this list.
Charlie Chaplin, Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles all won Oscars. They weren’t for acting or directing but they were Oscars never the less.
What about Kevin O’Connell? He’s sound mixer who has been nominated 20 times and never one!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0640114/
Count the Americans.
Count the non-Americans
dangorironhide said:
Regarding #8: I loved the Burton Sweeney Todd.
Have you seen the one that Angela Lansbury and George Hearn were in? Even for a recording of a stage performance, I think it kicks the film out of the water. Tim Burton greatly disappointed me with this film because he didn’t do all he could’ve done with the film, instead choosing to emphasize a plot that became a skeleton after their cuts. If you’ve never seen the original, I reccommend you do. It shows that it is one of Sondheim’s finest pieces.
Check.
American
Great list, I was very surprised about the last three.
I think a list for the top most disappointing wins would be interesting just to show how silly the Academy is
Anon: Count where Hollywood is at.
I’ll wait…
Schiesl: Great idea and good choices. I would have preferred a little bit more flesh in the bio’s of each actor. A little more info for those not familiar with classic cinema would have been great. A note for next time eh?
James Dean anyone????
This is one of the greatest lists of all time!
Kreachure,
It was a mere observation, a small detail that might otherwise have been overlooked. No big deal. There’s always Bob Hope, after all …
And Sir Maurice Joseph Micklethwaite jr., inter alia.
Albert Finney was actually nominated for an Oscar for “Under the Volcano” a 1984 feature that starred he and Jacqueline Bissett–not that piece of crap movie “Volcano” from 1997 that starred Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche.
Nice list! I would like to add Ingmar Bergman & Fellini
A few notes on this list
First off, Hitchcock’s film Rebecca did win best picture in 1940. I’m not sure if the Oscar went to him or the producers, but his film did win an Oscar.
Second, in the honorable mentions you mentioned that Orson Welles hadn’t won an Oscar. However, he did win Best Original Screenplay for Citizen Kane, so he actually did win an Oscar.
Thirdly, I think Sidney Lumet should be on this list, with classics like Network, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and 12 Angry Men. He did get a Lifetime Achievement Award recently, but his genius was never truly rewarded.
I think someone worth mentioning is Martin Scorsese, who almost made this list. He only won his first Oscar last year for directing The Departed, despite it being almost 40 years of his renowned career in Hollywood.
His Best Director Oscar was in fact something that the entire industry considered was long overdue for him, and some even cosidered it to be his “lifetime achievement Oscar”.
The funniest thing of the story is that when it was time to give out the Oscar for Best Director that year, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and George Lucas came out to present the nominees and present the award; they all happened to be Scorsese’s long time best friends and colleagues. Of course, everyone went “Gee, I wonder who will win this one *wink wink*!”, and sure enough, Scorsese finally got his Oscar. It was without a doubt one of the most touching and exciting moments in Oscar history.
She’ll most likely win one yet, but so far Kate Winslet has been nominated five times with no wins, which ties her with Olivia de Havilland for noms-w/out-wins. Both would be deserving for sure, though dear Olivia is in her 90′s now.
Yeah it’s true that Kubrick and Welles both got Oscars, they were both in non-directing categories. They are first and foremost directors, after all, and two who made incredible achievements in film history. The fact that Welles’ screenplay for “Citizen Kane” (which was mostly written by Mankiewicz anyways) and “2001′s” nod for effects doesn’t detract from the fact that those two men, arguably two of the greatest directors of all time, never got proper recognition in the directing category. Kubrick in particular had a number of accessible, critically-acclaimed films that never got him the Oscar he deserved (same with Hitchcock).
Djb522: While Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” did win Best Picture, in those days the award for that category was given to the film’s producer, which in this case was David O. Selznick at United Artists.
Chaplin Won in 1972 for a movie he made 20 years ago…it was an honorary award, and Hitch*****did not produce Rebecca, just directed it so he didnt win an oscar for it
looking back on it, i didnt even think of Kubrick till i was doing notable ommisions and thought how dumb i was. Sorry to all you Kubrick fans, he should be on the list.
charlie chaplin lost a charlie chaplin lookalike contest
Hey, be nice to Kubrick. It would’ve been his 80th birthday today!!
What a boring waste of a list. Cary Grant was great, the others are ok, but in general, a waste of space.
great list, no arguments here
Im suprised Johnny Depp hasnt won an oscar yet, i find him one of the best Charachter actors of our generation and the guys range is phenomenal.
woops spelt character wrong
Chaplin won an academy award for Best Original Score in 1972. The film was made in 1952, but not released in LA until 1972, hence the delay. He still won the award though, even if it wasn’t for acting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin#Academy_Awards
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000122/awards
bah none of my commenst are showing
how irritating
oh that one showed. Just want to say that Chaplin won an academy award for Best Original Score in 1972. The film was made in 1952, but not released in LA until 1972, hence the delay. He still won the award though, even if it wasn’t for acting.
What’s with all the movie/TV show/music lists? :/
The oscars are rigged anyways by the Stonecutters.
I don’t know if anyone else has said this, but wouldn’t Angela Lansbury have been nominated for a TONY award since she did Sweeny Todd on the stage, not film?! Or am I mistaken and she did a film version?! Because she did win a TONY for her portrayal of Mrs.Lovett
I just watched “Amazing Grace” the other night and was thinking that Albert Finney is an excellent, underrated actor. Funny though, I’ll always think of him as “Daddy Warbucks” in the movie version of Annie the musical…Just goes to show what my childhood influences were!
Great list BTW.
good list! surprising too. lol
Let’s not forget Claude Rains.
Cant really argue wit this
nice list.
Lon Chaney, Sr.
i know she won a tony, i threw that in there because that i believe was an amazing performance, whether it was on stage or not (i am a theatre nerd…)
Great list, all the entries make sense.
*jaw drop*
Helloooo, Buster Keaton?? I can’t believe Chaplin is #1 and Buster Keaton is nowhere to be seen. Wait, I can believe because Buster is *always* snubbed!
StarDust – There is a filmed video release of Sweeney Todd with Angela and George Hearn; it wasn’t released theatrically and therefore ineligible for Oscar nominations. I think he meant that it is one of her stand out roles (supposedly Sondheim wrote the part for her specifically) among her lengthy career.
I knew a lot of these, but still a fun list. Maybe to include who they lost to, and for which film would have added to this list. Only #7 (Peter O’Toole)was explained.