20 Terrible Oscar Nominations From The Past Ten Years - Corrected

This one was just a mess.

There were three absolutely unforgivable snubs: Tom Hardy in Locke, Brendan Gleeson in Calvary and Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler. Three spots should've been cleared for them, more specifically Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game, Bradley Cooper for American Sniper and the eventual winner, Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of Everything.

Redmayne was excellent, but he was stuck with weak material and his performance mostly came down to imitating the physical symptoms of Motor Neurone Disease. He does that brilliantly, but that alone doesn't make him a top-five nominee.

Cooper and Cumberbatch were both great, but they were also working with fairly safe Oscar-Bait material and although they'd be worthy nominees in other years, in 2014 there were better performances and it just wasn't quite their year. Michael Keaton and Steve Carrell deserved their nominations for Birdman and Foxcatcher though.

Corrected:

Tom Hardy's astonishing, career-best performance in Locke, in which he's the only actor on-screen and carries the entire film in a beautifully emotional performance, was arguably the rightful winner.

Meanwhile, Brendan Gleeson's wonderful performance as a priest navigating a spiritual crisis in Calvary and Jake Gyllenhaal's brilliantly hateful turn as a sociopathic reporter in Nightcrawler were similarly exceptional and the way in which those three performances were snubbed still hurts all these years later.