First things first: the Academy Awards aren’t everything… but neither are they nothing. Some people swear them off, and perhaps even steer clear of the inevitable discussions around Oscar nominees and winners in the early months of any given year, but others get at least a little interested. Seeing which movies do well and which ones get snubbed can be at least a bit intriguing, with the ceremony and the lead-up to it often starting conversations.
As of 2024, there have been 601 movies that have received a nomination for the top prize on Oscar night: the Academy Award for Best Picture. For most A-listers, there seems to be a better chance than not that such stars have appeared in at least one Best Picture nominee, if not an outright Best Picture winner. But if you do enough digging, it’s possible to find some widely beloved and iconic stars (perhaps even nominees for acting themselves) who’ve never been in one of these nominees, with the following being some of the most high-profile unlucky few who belong in this camp.
10 Jackie Chan
Movies include: ‘Drunken Master II’ (1994), ‘Who Am I?’ (1998), ‘Police Story’ (1985)
A handful of action movies have won Best Picture at the Oscars before, but the genre does still feel a little under-represented overall, especially when it comes to action movies made outside America. Anyone who knows their martial arts cinema will be aware that many of the greatest action movie stars in history hail from outside the U.S., including the legendary Jackie Chan (who did nevertheless find success in Hollywood from the mid-1990s onwards).
Exploring the best Jackie Chan movies out there is a surefire way to witness some of the greatest action sequences in cinema history, with titles like Police Story and Drunken Master II being especially remarkable. No action star has been as prolific and consistently committed to the craft as Jackie Chan has, and his stunt work is unparalleled. Even when taking into account the fact that the Oscars used to be particularly biased against Foreign Films outside the category of Best International Feature Film, it’s still a little upsetting to consider no movie featuring this legend has ever been a Best Picture nominee.
9 John Belushi
Movies include: ‘Animal House’ (1978), ‘The Blues Brothers’ (1980), ‘1941’ (1979)
John Belushi’s career was tragically cut short by his passing in 1982, when the already legendary actor was only 33 years old. That does mean the number of films he was able to appear in make up a relatively short list, but he stole the show in a couple of all-time classics, like The Blues Brothers and Animal House, and also worked with Steven Spielberg for the infamous 1941.
Yes, that war/comedy film isn’t regarded as one of Spielberg’s best (it’s kind of over-hated though), but Spielberg’s made plenty of other films that have earned Best Picture nominations. Additionally, even if Animal House might’ve been a bit crude for Academy voters, resisting something as great as The Blues Brothers would require a gargantuan amount of snobbery… well, in fairness, 1980 was a pretty strong year. But still!
8 Pam Grier
Movies include: ‘Jackie Brown’ (1997), ‘Coffy’ (1973), ‘Foxy Brown’ (1974)
Rising to fame by starring in the kinds of low-budget movies the Oscars tend to overlook, Pam Grier is an iconic 1970s actress who also had a noteworthy comeback in the 1990s, but never landed a role in a Best Picture nominee. Still, being immortalized as the titular characters in both Foxy Brown and Coffy might well be a more esteemed honor than being in a movie Academy Award voters considered a top 5 movie for its respective year.
The biggest snub relating to Grier would be Jackie Brown, though, which is one of Quentin Tarantino’s best films, and Pam Grier’s portrayal of the titular character there marked a return to the spotlight. Owing to her screen presence and effortless performances, she often comes across as someone too cool for the Academy Awards, in any event.
7 Bruce Lee
Movies include: ‘The Way of the Dragon’ (1972), ‘Fist of Fury’ (1972), ‘Enter the Dragon’ (1973)
Given he was a martial arts star like the aforementioned Jackie Chan, and also died while in his early 30s, like John Belushi, it might not seem too surprising, at least initially, that Bruce Lee never appeared in a Best Picture nominee. He had four completed films to his name at the time of his death (plus another that was in production when he passed away), and while they’re classic martial arts movies, they don’t jump out as Oscar-ey films… besides maybe one.
Look, Enter the Dragon is one of the all-time great films from the martial arts genre, was a co-production between Hong Kong and the U.S., and most of the dialogue was in English. It can’t have scared away voters the way other martial arts movies might’ve, and the estimated earnings of Enter the Dragon sit at about $2 billion when adjusted for inflation. Blockbusters getting Best Picture nominations tends to happen more nowadays, but it wasn’t unheard of in the 1970s (see Jaws and Star Wars), so why not say – at least in retrospect – that Enter the Dragon should’ve got at least a nomination?
6 Meg Ryan
Movies include: ‘When Harry Met Sally’ (1989), ‘Top Gun’ (1986), ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ (1993)
For When Harry Met Sally Alone, Meg Ryan should be excluded from appearing here, but somehow, that film – which some might call the best romantic comedy of all time – wasn’t nominated for Best Picture. The film was critically acclaimed, and screenwriter Nora Ephron did receive a nomination for Best Original Screenplay, but that’s as far as things went for the film at that year’s Academy Awards.
Ryan’s been in plenty of other noteworthy movies, especially throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including Top Gun, The Doors, and Sleepless in Seattle, but she hasn’t yet acted in a Best Picture nominee. However, archival footage of her from Top Gun did appear in the 2022 sequel Top Gun: Maverick, so Meg Ryan is technically on-screen for a portion of that Best Picture nominee, though she didn’t directly reprise her role as Carole Bradshaw (the character passed away at a point between the first movie and the second).
5 Toshiro Mifune
Movies include: ‘Seven Samurai’ (1954), ‘Yojimbo’ (1961), ‘The Sword of Doom’ (1966)
Nothing demonstrates the Academy Awards’ lack of love for foreign movies in decades past quite like the fact that the ground-breaking action/drama/epic movie Seven Samurai didn’t receive a Best Picture nomination. People at the Oscars did know about it, because the film did receive nominations for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design, but apparently, consideration for the top prize was out of the question.
It’s a situation that continued repeating for Toshiro Mifune, who starred in Seven Samurai and too many other iconic Japanese films to count, with many of them – though not all – also being samurai-related movies. Still, his talent as an actor remains undeniable to this day, and both he and his films were well-recognized by other awards bodies, just not the Oscars.
4 Arnold Schwarzenegger
Movies include: ‘The Terminator’ (1984), ‘Predator’ (1987), ‘Terminator 2: Judgment Day’ (1991)
Arnold Schwarzenegger is the sort of legendary actor who doesn’t need Academy Awards validation, what with how many timeless classics he’s starred in, and how much his films have earned at the box office. Still, he might be worth bringing up as someone who’s surprisingly missing a Best Picture nominee in his body of work simply because he’s collaborated with James Cameron several times… just not on any of Cameron’s Best Picture nominees.
The filmmaker’s directed nine feature films, three of which starred Schwarzenegger (The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and True Lies), and three of which were Best Picture nominees or winners (Titanic, Avatar, and Avatar: The Way of Water). And sure, nothing else in Schwarzenegger’s filmography feels anywhere close to Oscar bait or anything like that, but very few other stars at his level have had a Best Picture-nominated film elude them for so long.
3 Halle Berry
Movies include: ‘Monster’s Ball’ (2001), ‘Bulworth’ (1998), ‘X-Men’ (2000)
Though she’s starred in some of the best superhero movies of all time (and, admittedly, one of the most notorious), Halle Berry’s done a lot more than just that genre. Unlike some of the aforementioned stars, she has actually won an Oscar, for playing Leticia Musgrove in Monster’s Ball, though that 2001 release wasn’t nominated for Best Picture at the same ceremony.
Outside Monster’s Ball, there isn’t a ton Halle Berry’s starred in that feels like typical Oscar fare, but 1998’s Bulworth not getting a nomination could feel a tad surprising, given it was directed by Warren Beatty, who’d been the director of previous Best Picture nominees like Reds and Heaven Can Wait. Berry might well end up in a Best Picture nominee one day, but even if she doesn’t, she’ll always have the Oscar win for acting, which is something one imagines most actors pursue more so than the broader Best Picture category.
2 Leslie Nielsen
Movies include: ‘The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!’ (1988), ‘Forbidden Planet’ (1956), ‘Airplane!’ (1980)
Sure, parody movies don’t tend to get much love from Oscar voters, and that’s the genre that Leslie Nielsen is most well-associated with, but he wasn’t always a comedic actor. Even then, who’s to say that classics like the first The Naked Gun and 1980’s Airplane weren’t deserving of consideration for Best Picture? (Actually, like The Blues Brothers, Airplane runs into that pesky 1980-related problem… too many bangers that year).
Before 1980, Nielsen was better known for his roles in less comedic films, particularly Forbidden Planet, and a supporting role among The Poseidon Adventure’s supporting cast. That 1972 disaster movie is worth mentioning here, because it was nominated for eight Academy Awards without any of those nominations being for Best Picture (a similar thing happened to the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, which got one more nomination without one of them being Best Picture).
1 Idris Elba
Movies include: ‘Beasts of No Nation’ (2015), ‘Molly’s Game’ (2017), ‘The Suicide Squad’ (2021)
Idris Elba first rose to prominence in the early 2000s, largely thanks to a role in one of the greatest TV shows of all time: The Wire. He’s remained a prominent TV actor thanks to playing the lead role in Luther, but he also started picking up more movie roles as the 2000s went along, including a supporting part in the underrated Guy Ritchie gangster movie RocknRolla.
Elba always brings his A-game and has also had his fair share of great movie roles so far; some even seem like the kinds of films Oscar voters would tend to gravitate towards, like Beasts of No Nation, Molly’s Game, and – potentially – the overlooked Three Thousand Years of Longing. He’s also been in several MCU movies, and look, it honestly wouldn’t have been out of the question for one of them – 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War – to score a Best Picture nomination, especially since the category widened the number of movies eligible from five to (up to) 10 in 2009.
