8 Performances Better Than What The Actor Won An Oscar For

6. Tommy Lee Jones

Won For: The Fugitive, Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Better In: JFK. You'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger Tommy Lee Jones fan than me, and his Oscar winning turn in Andrew Davis' The Fugitive sure is good, tight, fun work. But there's long been a fleeting (probably false) rumour that the wrong name was read out at the 1994 Oscars, and that would make sense considering that it was also the year in which Ralph Fiennes was nominated for his harrowing work as Plaszow concentration camp commander, Amon Göeth, in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List. That would certainly have made more sense, especially considering TLJ's work in The Fugitive is the pretty straightforward, hardbitten cop role. Much better is his work two years earlier, as the shady, ostentatious, Clay Shaw, in Oliver Stone's JFK (which saw Jones nominated as Best Supporting Actor). It's a supporting role in the purer sense (he and Harrison Ford are basically top-billed co-stars in The Fugitive), showing up every now and then to steal a few scenes before departing and letting the main players get on with it. Jones lost out to Jack Palance's performance in City Slickers the year of JFK, but of all the nominees that year (inc. Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley), it's Jones' work that stands out most.