8 Actors Robbed Of An Oscar

3. Dustin Hoffman (Midnight Cowboy, 1970)

Dustin Hoffman is sublime as the iconic character "Ratso" Rizzo in John Schelsinger 's bleak and disturbing 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. Joe Buck, played by Jon Voight who is also outstanding in the film, is a naive young man who has come to New York City in the hopes of making it big by being a male prostitute. After a string of frustrating encounters Buck meets and eventually befriends crippled conman Enrico Salvatore "Ratso" Rizzo who offers to be his manager.

Rizzo is a sleezy, coughing mess and the two lost souls find comfort in each other's company. Hoffman is at the top of his game as the desperate and lonely Rizzo. At first Hoffman is brash and full of false confidence, as a taxi almost crashes into the pair while walking down the street he yells the famous improvised line, "I'm walking here! I'm walking here!" Yet as his role develops we sees cracks appearing in Rizzo's facade and Hoffman delicately reveals how scared and alone Rizzo really is. The interplay between the two actors is truly unforgettable. It is outrageous then that Hoffman lost his Oscar to the glorified life time achievement award that was John Wayne's Best Actor award for True Grit. At this point in time John Wayne was a legend towards the end of his career and was the archetypal image of the rugged western cowboy. Yet his performance in True Grit was rather uninspiring and lacking in depth compared to the exceptional Hoffman. It is such a shame that the Academy had to rewrite its wrongs by giving Wayne a belated Oscar which he should have earned for films like The Searchers, Rio Bravo or Red River.