10 Iconic Performances That Weren't Even Nominated For An Oscar

7. Christian Bale - Empire Of The Sun

Watching Christian Bale's performance in Empire Of The Sun should be outlawed among struggling actors. Seeing a thirteen year old kid carry a Stephen Spielberg film on his back, and do so with a maturity and innate acting ability that most adults don't have, has to be hard. In Empire Of The Sun, Bale plays a young English boy who is separated from his parents during the Japanese occupation of China in World War II. Audiences watch him transform from a spoiled, self-important kid into a serious young man wearied by war over the course of the film. It's unbelievably impressive that he was capable of playing both versions of the character, and although he stays roughly the same age during the making of the film, he somehow seems to have aged at least five years. You look into his empty, exhausted eyes at the end of Empire of the Sun and it seems so incredibly unfair that he was not recognized for his performance. Yeah, he was still really young, so he didn't need to win, but a nomination would have been nice.