The Oscars have passed us again and it’s time to get ready to complain about the winners and losers. Let’s be honest: we all love complaining about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’s decisions each year and arguing about why this actor wasn’t nominated or that actress should have won the award.
Don’t feel bad about criticizing The Academy’s selections, though, because everyone does it. Come to think of it – everyone just loves complaining in general. In this spirit of complaining, here is a list of 8 actors, in no particular order, who were blatantly robbed of the acting world’s highest plaudit.
There are countless blunders and oversights that are crying out to be analysed and dissected to the nth degree. In one way or another, these acting performances were all denied their rightful Oscar glory. So read on, and by all means, have a rant of your own and vent about the decisions that have really got under your skin in previous years.
8. Ellen Burstyn (Requiem For A Dream, 2001)
Ellen Burstyn’s harrowing performance in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem For A Dream was criminally overlooked by the Academy in 2001. Instead they opted for Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich in the film of the same name. Burstyn stole the show in Requiem For A Dream, a film about the terrible power of drug addiction, skillfully directed by Aronofsky. She completely inhabits her character of Sara Goldfarb, a lonely widow who is absorbed by her addiction to television, sugar and ultimately diet pills.
As Sara Goldfarb contends with her son’s addiction to heroin and clings to a desperate fantasy of appearing on her favourite TV game show she spirals further and further out of control right in front of our eyes. Burstyn’s performance is devastating and overwhelmingly affecting.
Julia Roberts’ Erin Brockovich, the legal assistant with a heart of gold, admittedly had a down to earth charm and charisma, as well as a decent helping of sass; we all recall her most quoted line, “They’re called boobs, Ed”. However Roberts’ never approached the same gravitas or heartbreaking desperation in her portrayal. It was a good performance but glaringly run of the mill compared to Burstyn.
Roberts’ role was unashamedly Oscar friendly; based on a real person who stood up for the little people against a giant corporation and won against the odds. Burstyn’s role is the more complex and challenging of the two and she absolutely deserved to walk away with the award.
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7 Comments
Hugh Jackman, watching the news, the bloke who was on about the oscars said Anne Hatheway got hers due to acting good but transforming her body. Now on them terms look at Hugh Jackman, lost weight, haircut, looking ill etc plus try singing nearly every word perfectly everytime.
I totally disagree with the #8. In my opinion Ellen Burstyn is quite overacted in ‘Requiem for a dream’. On the other hand, her performance was more supporting. I do not understand the current trend to say that Julia Roberts stole that Oscar. She won almost every award that season, and nobody bet on a Burstyn’s win that year… On the other hand, Roberts’ work in ‘Erin Brockovich’ is the archetype of what an Oscar-winning performance should be: iconic, charismatic, touching and career-defining.
Which performance will be more remembered within the next 10, 20, 30 years? I totally bet on Roberts’.
Can we add Emanuelle Riva for her loss at the oscars this year for amour? She was so amazing, did better than Jennifer, will probably not get another chance in her life to win(Jennifer will get so many more chances and this wasn’t even her best performance ie Winter’s Bone), she had a much more memorable character/movie, and then even stuff like it was Riva’s birthday and the award was given by a fellow frenchman…it was like Riva was destined for it and should have gotten it with her spectacular performance. Such a disappointment.
I think Robert Downey Jr deserved the Oscar for Chaplin. He is so talented and didn’t have one day of formal training and so completely underrated.
Begnini stole the Oscar from Sir Ian McKellen, not from Edward Norton.
I agree with a but one: Denzel Washington/Russell Crowe. To reduce Washington’s win to making up for Malcolm X is a disservice to his work in Training Day. They both gave fantastic performances – truly; but it is Denzel’s subtle complexity and rawness as the corrupt detective that far exceeds Crowe’s descent into mental illness. Washington felt as if he were plucked out of the streets of Compton and splashed on the screen. As an LA native – it was far beyond perfect.
To this I would add Joaquin Phoenix in The Master. Yes, Daniel Day Lewis is great, but there is a realness that he lacked when portraying someone; it felt contrived and forced. Phoenix in The Master was so raw and natural; truly a great piece of work.
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