10 Amazing Horror Movie Performances That Should've Won Oscars
4. Isabelle Adjani - Possession
No discussion of Oscar-worthy horror movie performances would be complete without mentioning Isabelle Adjani's fearless turn in Andrzej Żuławski's 1981 cult classic Possession.
As Anna, a woman who suffers a psychological breakdown amid a crumbling marriage, Adjani commits harder than perhaps anyone ever has in this genre. The iconic mid-film sequence where Anna has a seizure in a subway tunnel is one of the most gruellingly physical feats of acting ever put to film, with Adjani entirely giving herself over to her troubled character.
But this performance isn't merely an act of going hard - Isabelle Adjani's subtler work in the role is similarly sublime, every facial tic and expression informing her increasingly dire predicament.
It's a performance so blisteringly brilliant that it even went on to win the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actress Award, as well as the equivalent award at the Cesars - aka the French Oscars - yet the Academy sadly shut it out.