12 Actors Who Won Oscars For Completely The Wrong Role
9. Jennifer Connelly
Won For... A Beautiful Mind
Should Have Won For... Requiem For A Dream
Sure, Connelly's performance in A Beautiful Mind is capable and anchors the film around Russell Crowe's grander performance (which he incidentally should also have won an Oscar for), but it has none of the intricacies or the devastating intensity of her turn in Requiem For A Dream.
The differences in her performances as Alicia Nash (and there are several since the film jumped through the years) were adept and engaging, but they're nothing like the grotesque, haunting portrait of addiction and spiralling despair in Requiem. In one film she deals with a tortured mind, in another she lives the torture, and the latter is just as more rewarding as it is exhausting.