The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, directed by Peter Jackson, is easily one of the most impactful and important cinematic events of the 21st century. The classic fantasy novels written by J.R.R. Tolkien were often considered to be unfilmable, making the idea of successfully translating them to the big screen almost laughable at the time. Somehow, Jackson, New Line Cinema and the rest of the extensive team on the films were able to do the impossible.
The result was a series of films that was able to capture the world’s attention in an incredible fashion. Each film was a smash hit at the box office, with The Return of the King becoming just the second film in history to gross more than $1 billion worldwide.
This success was also seen at the Academy Awards, as all three films were strong contenders in their three consecutive years in a row. They were each some of the most-nominated films of their respective years, and all three of them walked away with more than one win. However, there’s a strange asterisk to be found when discussing the Lord of the Rings’ sweep of the Oscars; they were severely underrepresented in the acting categories. Throughout the entire trilogy, only one actor was nominated for an Oscar on one occasion. In retrospect, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher. Here’s why and how that happened:
Ian McKellen Was Nominated for The Fellowship of the Ring
The only occasion in which an actor from The Lord of the Rings had their performance in the films nominated at the Academy Awards came with the first chapter, The Fellowship of the Ring. At the 2002 Oscars, recognizing films from 2001, Ian McKellen was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the role of Gandalf the Grey.
While Gandalf does play a significant role in the following two films, many of the character’s most memorable moments come from the first part of the trilogy, so we are glad that McKellen was nominated for this film in particular. His performance is outstanding across all three films, but it was in The Fellowship of the Ring that he made the biggest splash and cemented his version of the character as the definitive adaptation.
In the lead-up to the 74th Academy Awards, many people had assumed that McKellen would be the winner in his category. The actor had already won several of the other major awards ahead of the Oscars, including the SAG Award and the Saturn Award. At the Oscars, he was nominated alongside Ethan Hawke (Training Day), Jim Broadbent (Iris), Ben Kingsley (Sexy Beast) and Jon Voight (Ali). Broadbent ultimately won the award, securing his first and only Oscar win, as well as the only win for Iris that year.
McKellen’s nomination for The Fellowship of the Ring marked the actor’s second nomination at the Academy Awards. He had been previously nominated for Best Lead Actor just a few years prior with 1998’s Gods and Monsters. Unfortunately, he has not been nominated again since. While it may seem a crime that McKellen is not an Oscar winner, the actor has still built an incredible career and legacy that he can be proud of. He has portrayed countless fan-favorite characters while also delivering one outstanding performance after another, all of which is in addition to the meaningful LGBT activism he has championed and led as one of the most famous and beloved gay actors in the world.
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The Trilogy Had a Massive Ensemble Cast
Looking across all three Lord of the Rings films, it’s hard to believe that McKellen’s performance in The Fellowship of the Ring was the only one deemed worthy of an Oscar nomination. The reality is that there were so many incredible performances throughout the trilogy that they may have inadvertently canceled one another out. New Line Cinema did not have the same budget for awards campaigns as many of the other major studios. While they went all out with the campaign for The Return of the King, New Line’s campaigns for The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers weren’t nearly as prevalent.
When deciding how to approach the Oscars campaign for The Lord of the Rings, New Line had to make the tough decisions of deciding which actors to push and who should be included in Best Supporting Actor, and who should be considered for the lead for Best Actor. While it may seem obvious that Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins is the lead in all three films, it would also seem strange not to include Viggo Mortensen in the Lead Actor race for his performance as Aragorn – especially in The Return of the King. Beyond that, how do you decide who to push for Best Supporting Actor when you have options like Sean Astin, Ian McKellen, Sean Bean, David Wenham, Andy Serkis, Christopher Lee, Bernard Hill and so many others?
New Line’s approach was, instead, to not decide. They got behind essentially the entire cast, submitting just about everybody for Oscar consideration. When speaking about it, Gail Brounstein, one of the leads of the campaign, stated that most of the actors were submitted in the supporting category, with a few specific people (Wood, Mortensen and Serkis) submitted for Best Actor. As a result, the voting from the Academy was likely split between multiple performances.
When the time came to vote on nominations, members of the Academy’s acting branch were voting for many different actors from The Lord of the Rings, spreading out the love for the film, though unfortunately spreading it too thin. This meant that none of the actors had the necessary number of votes to actually receive an Oscar nomination. While this approach may not have worked out for the Oscars, it did at the SAG Awards, where all three movies were nominated for the top prize of Outstanding Cast, and The Return of the King won the award.
All Three Films Still Won a Ton of Oscars
While it may be unfortunate that more actors weren’t recognized by the Academy for their incredible work in The Lord of the Rings, the films themselves still performed incredibly well. Including McKellen’s nomination for Best Supporting Actor, The Fellowship of the Ring was nominated for a total of 13 Oscars. Among these were Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and most of the technical awards. The Fellowship of the Ring won four of the Oscars it was nominated for – Best Cinematography, Best Makeup, Best Original Score and Best Visual Effects.
The Two Towers was the Lord of the Rings film that received the least amount of recognition at the Academy Awards. That said, it was still nominated for six Oscars, including Best Picture. It won two of the awards, Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects. The 2003 Oscars were quite competitive, though, as both Chicago and The Pianist took many of the biggest categories. This did, however, mark the second year in a row that a Lord of the Rings film had won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
Finally, the utter dominance of The Return of the King at the Oscars is well documented. The film was nominated for 11 Oscars, notably two fewer than The Fellowship of the Ring – which was nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Best Cinematography, whereas The Return of the King missed those two.
However, of the 11 awards it was nominated for, The Return of the King won every single one – including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and essentially all the technical awards – which tied the film for the most Oscar wins in history. This was and remains one of the most incredible Oscar sweeps in history. Though, can we take a second to acknowledge that The Return of the King wasn’t nominated for either Best Sound Editing or Best Cinematography?
