Deserve is a strange word to use when referring to the Oscars, and as The Wire said, deserve rarely has anything to do with it. Except that here maybe it does, and maybe Leonardo DiCaprio hasn't won an Oscar yet for one simple reason: he hasn't deserved to. He's brilliant in all the roles he's been nominated for, but in no year is he the absolute, far-and-away best on show. For the roles he hasn't been nominated for, there are only a couple where he truly needed to be, and even then he still wouldn't have been the obvious front-runner. He's only 41 and he's had five acting nominations overall, a great achievement in its own right and a baffling one when people try to use it as some sort of example of how bad DiCaprio has it. Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, near good-looking stars-cum-actors of the same quality, only have three. Paul Newman, a similar kind of star to DiCaprio in many ways, had two less nominations than DiCaprio does now at the same age, and he would have to wait another 20-odd years to win the damn thing. DiCaprio is 90% going to win this year. Would Paul Newman have been subject to endless memes and gifs and articles about how much of a travesty it is that he's yet to win an Oscar? Of course, none of this will matter to Leo's Oscar Groupies„, who can only see a gorgeous, talented, likeable actor being victimised, because he's clearly an impeachable icon among cinema's great stars, and how could you not give him an Oscar when he so clearly deserves one because he was in that film that you and your girlfriend both LOVED, the one with all the drugs or something, and he does that funny dance that you found in gif form, and now you trot it out every February and moan about how Leonardo DiCaprio didn't win an Oscar, AGAIN. Well, there are reasons DiCaprio has yet to win an Oscar, and by refusing to even acknowledge them, people are showcasing a distinct misunderstanding of how the Academy Awards actually work. But whatever, this year will likely put an end to all that, and I for one can't f*cking wait. Do you agree? Should Leo have won an Oscar already? Have your say down in the comments, and be sure to check out our review of The Revenant for more talk of DiCaprio's Oscar hopes.
