15 Awesome 2014 Performances That Deserve Oscars (But Won't Get Nominated)

7. Tom Hardy - Locke

Few actors can carry a film almost entirely by themselves, and Tom Hardy had an extra-challenging job considering that the entire movie is set inside a car, and so the actor has an almost complete lack of environmental cues to draw from. If Hardy couldn't keep the drama intriguing on the virtue of his performance, facial expressions and all, then Locke would have been a total dud. As it turns out, Locke is a marvelously-executed drama that, thanks to Hardy's brilliant work, manages to make the ins-and-outs of a concrete pour seem tense and interesting. Hardy's performance is confined entirely to a series of phone calls with his family, his boss, his co-workers and a mysterious woman (Olivia Colman), as well as imaginary conversations with his father, all of which Hardy rips through with a ferocious intensity. Hardy gives what's arguably his best performance here (if not as volcanic as, say, his work in Bronson), of a frustrated man placed in an impossible spot over the course of a 2-hour drive from Birmingham to London. Hardy recently won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association's Best Actor award, but the movie's minimalist approach is just the antithesis of what the Oscars are looking for, sadly.