10 Forgettable Performances That Somehow Were Oscar-Nominated

Image via 20th Century Fox Published Sep 24, 2026, 7:48 PM EDT Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely passionate about the work of Martin Scorsese, John Ford, and Albert Brooks. His work can be read on Collider and Taste of Cinema. He also writes for his own blog, The Empty Theater, on Substack. He is also a big fan of courtroom dramas and DVD commentary tracks. For Thomas, movie theaters are a second home. A native of Wakefield, MA, he is often found scrolling through the scheduled programming on Turner Classic Movies and making more room for his physical media collection. Thomas habitually increases his watchlist and jumps down a YouTube rabbit hole of archived interviews with directors and actors. He is inspired to write about film to uphold the medium's artistic value and to express his undying love for the art form. Thomas looks to cinema as an outlet to better understand the world, human emotions, and himself. Sign in to your Collider account The history of acting nominations at the Academy Awards is a varied collection of iconic, solid, flat-out poor, and forgettable performances. An Oscar win, let alone a nomination, doesn't automatically signal that a performance will stand the test of time. If anything, the Academy is often behind the current cultural landscape. While we've discussed the most notorious acting winners in nearly 100 years of the Academy Awards, there's another discussion about the crop of completely forgotten nominees who didn't win. From head-scratching turns by legendary actors to nominations suggesting that voters didn't watch the movie, these 10 Oscar-nominated performances have been memory-holed in the public consciousness, and that's probably for the better. 10 Holly Hunter - 'The Firm' (1993) image via Paramount Pictures The Academy loves honoring a brief, sometimes one-scene, performance—take, for example, Beatrice Straight in Network or Ben Johnson in The Last Picture Show. They recognize the unique power of a performance with roughly 10 minutes of screen time that looms over the entire movie. One of the shortest nominees in this niche category, Holly Hunter's six-minute performance as an aide in the John Grisham legal thriller, The Firm, was a curious Best Supporting Actress nod that defied standard Oscar logic, as it lacks the explosiveness or emotional thrust of other brief supporting turns. Not only was Hunter nominated for such a minor part in The Firm's stacked cast, which included Tom Cruise, Gene Hackman, and Ed Harris, but she also accomplished the rare feat of receiving two nominations in the same year, with her other nod being for The Piano, which she won Best Actress for. In the film, directed by Sydney Pollack, Hunter plays Tammy Hemphill, a fast-talking Southern legal assistant who helps Mitch McDeere (Cruise) uncover a sinister secret about his firm. Her fiery and gregarious performance in The Firm is totally solid, an unsurprising conclusion given Hunter's exceptional talents. However, it's ultimately a one-note and marginal bit part with little narrative or dramatic weight. Innate charm can go a long way in winning over voters. 9 Rip Torn - 'Cross Creek' (1983) Image via Universal It may come as a pleasant surprise that the beloved character actor Rip Torn indeed has an Oscar nomination to his name. However, if you gave an average cinephile a hundred guesses to name what movie earned him his lone nomination, they would never utter the name of this 1983 biographical drama, Cross Creek. From absurdist comedies like Dodgeball and Freddy Got Fingered to inspired dramatic turns in The Insider and Marie Antoinette, Torn is an impactful screen presence. Still, it's hard to argue that his Best Supporting Actor-nominated performance in this biopic about author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings belongs in any pantheon. Starring Mary Steenburgen and directed by Hud's Martin Ritt, Cross Creek follows Rawlings, novelist of The Yearling, who moves to Florida to focus and find inspiration for a great book. Down South, Rawlings interacts with many of the locals, notably Marsh Turner (Torn), whose run-ins with the law become the inspiration for The Yearling. The 1980s were a peculiar era for the Academy, as the separation between popular favorites and critical darlings was at an all-time high. As a result, many Oscar-nominated movies have slipped through the cracks. Cross Creek is no different, as the film is a rudimentary display of milquetoast Oscar fare that seemed to get obligatory nominations. Torn brings a different style of charm and grace that he would later shed as a gruff, darkly comic character actor, but the performance is forgettable and a cheap excuse to set up the film's denouement. 8 Penélope Cruz - 'Nine' (2009) Image via The Weinstein Company One year after winning an Academy Award for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the Oscars doubled down on Penélope Cruz, the acclaimed Spanish actor who had fully crossed over as a star in America. The Academy is clearly fond of Cruz, who has also been nominated for her work with Pedro Almodóvar, including Volver and Parallel Mothers. It's hard to quibble with any of her nominations, but the fact that we have to remind you that she not only starred in Rob Marshall's Nine, but also was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, tells you that this was a needless honor. Nine, based on the stage musical of the same name, which itself is based on Federico Fellini's 8½, is best known for being one of Daniel Day-Lewis' rare late-period screen performances. Playing a disillusioned director in a movie musical was something the ultimate method, chameleon actor couldn't pull off, and the film in general is a whiff. Even with its impressive cast and solid performances, Nine lacks any propulsive direction or showstopping musical numbers. Cruz plays Carla, the mistress of Day-Lewis' character. Providing the role with her usual streak of seductive radiance, she is undoubtedly alluring, but she can play this kind of role in her sleep. Still, Cruz has been far more daring and engaging in other, stronger movies. The nomination suggests that the Academy was going to automatically reward this performance with a nod due to its dramatic potential. 7 J.K. Simmons - 'Being the Ricardos' (2021) Image via Amazon Studios Upon release in 2021, Being the Ricardos was met with a collective shrug, if not an outright rejection. The film, about the relationship between celebrity couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, was a further confirmation that Aaron Sorkin needs to let others direct his scripts. Believe it or not, though, Being the Ricardos somehow earned three Oscar nominations, all for acting. At least Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem were nominated for playing acting icons, while J.K. Simmons' nod for Best Supporting Actor remains baffling. Everyone agrees that Simmons gave the performance of a lifetime in Whiplash, and his Oscar was one of the most deserved wins in recent history. His work as William Frawley, Ball and Arnaz's co-star on I Love Lucy, was the opposite—a forgettable turn hindered by Sorkin's theatrical writing and contrived narrative dynamics. No one feels like a person in Being the Ricardos, and Simmons is more or less on autopilot as he's used as a vessel to dissect the complex marriage and professional bond between Ball and Arnaz. From his relatively minimal impact on the final product to his dramatically inert scenes with Kidman and Bardem, this nomination was just a waste, and there are at least 10 other Simmons performances worth nominating instead. It's a shame that some other exceptional performance this year got bumped in favor of a mind-boggling third acting nod for Being the Ricardos. 6 Robert Duvall - 'The Judge' (2014) Image via Warner Bros. The #OscarsSoWhite movement began following the Academy Awards celebrating the films of 2015, but it first kicked into gear the prior year, which featured 20 white actors nominated across its four acting categories. Robert Duvall's laughable nomination in The Judge, the Robert Downey Jr-led legal drama and failed Oscar bait, speaks to a stodgy voting body honoring the same crop of old-timers that needed a radical transformation. The late Duvall is an undisputed legend, but most people wouldn't believe you if you told them he was nominated for this forgotten film. Voters appeared to have penciled him in on their ballots before watching the movie. Amid his tenure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Iron Man, RDJ, before Oppenheimer, tried to win himself a statuette with The Judge, a David Dobkin prestige drama about a troubled father-son relationship that seemed manufactured to win Oscars. In the end, The Judge proved to be just a hackneyed, staid, and tonally imbalanced film dressing up as a serious Oscar heavyweight. Duvall, playing Downey Jr.'s father, who is on trial for a hit-and-run, was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for a role that was way beneath his stature. Voters appeared to have penciled him in on their ballots before watching the movie. Filled to the brim with tired tropes and lackluster characterization, the film does no favors to Duvall and his performance as Joseph Palmer. Between The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Tender Mercies, his nod for The Judge, the last of his career, sticks out like a sore thumb. Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best PictureIs Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one. 🪜Parasite 🌀Everything Everywhere ☢️Oppenheimer 🐦Birdman 🪙No Country for Old Men FIND YOUR FILM → 01 What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind. ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours? AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does. NEXT QUESTION → 03 How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means. AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you? AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical. NEXT QUESTION → 05 What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like? AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible. AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable. AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could. NEXT QUESTION → 08 What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you. ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense. NEXT QUESTION → 09 How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately. AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action. NEXT QUESTION → 10 What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want? AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days. REVEAL MY FILM → The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works. ParasiteYou are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image. Everything Everywhere All at OnceYou want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about. OppenheimerYou are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort. BirdmanYou are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all. No Country for Old MenYou are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 5 Jennifer Lawrence - 'Joy' (2015) Image via 20th Century Studios The early 2010s was a dominant period for Jennifer Lawrence, who received a staggering four Oscar nominations before turning 27. Since then, as she's moved into a new stage of her career and become more selective about which projects she takes, awards buzz has waned, with her last nomination being one most people likely forget even existed as a movie. Along with Lawrence, David O. Russell was an Oscars darling throughout the early 2010s, but his last collaboration with the Silver Linings Playbook Oscar winner, Joy, was quickly disregarded. Still, that didn't stop Lawrence from earning yet another nomination. In Joy, Lawrence, nominated for Best Actress in 2015, plays the titular founder and matriarch of a family business dynasty. While met with mixed reviews, its lead star, who was arguably the face of Hollywood at the time, received what appeared like an obligatory Oscar nod. Lawrence's work in Joy, her third collaboration with Russell, pales in comparison to her star-making turn in Silver Linings and the divisive supporting role in American Hustle. There's a lack of energy and infectious charm that made her so special in this era. Thiis performance feels way too controlled and rehearsed, and it is a watered-down rehash of her previous work. The general lukewarm response to Joy and Lawrence's unenthusiastic nomination proved that she needed to let loose and push new boundaries, something she has successfully done as a force of comedic nature in No Hard Feelings and shocking vulnerability in Die My Love. 4 Al Pacino - 'Dick Tracy' (1990) The Oscars were so desperate to finally give Al Pacino an Oscar that they somehow nominated him for a performance as unhinged as Big Boy Caprice, the villain in Dick Tracy, Warren Beatty's strange but beautifully stylized adaptation of the classic comic strip. As over-the-top and outlandish as Pacino's performance is in Dick Tracy, it's hard to argue that it's any less cartoonish than his eventual Oscar-winning performance in Scent of a Woman. Being such an odd candidate for Oscar consideration and its place in history before the start of Pacino's comeback in the '90s, this nomination is unsurprisingly lost to time. At the Academy Awards celebrating the films of 1990, Dick Tracy received a worthy nod for Best Makeup, but perhaps it should've received an additional nod for the crew's work done on Pacino, whose garish prosthetics do all the heavy lifting in this performance. Even for Pacino, who is notorious for hamming it up, Big Boy Caprice is one of the legend's most outrageous roles. Despite its transfixing aura, his work in Dick Tracy is all flash, and the sensationalism shouldn't have been enough to grant him a Best Supporting Actor nod. Before Glengarry Glen Ross, Carlito's Way, and Heat, Pacino couldn't modulate his bombastic screen persona with gravitas and dramatic sincerity, making his performance in Dick Tracy a sheer farce that did not warrant any Oscar buzz. If anything, it should've been Madonna who came out of Dick Tracy with the most heat from the Academy. 3 Stanley Tucci - 'The Lovely Bones' (2009) Image via Paramount Pictures When asked who the best living actors are without an Oscar nomination to their name, many would be inclined to suggest Stanley Tucci as a gut response. A tremendous screen performer and a marvelous celebrity icon, Tucci would probably prefer that you think he is without any love from the Academy, as his own response to his own work in The Lovely Bones at the Academy Awards ceremony tells you everything. Peter Jackson's adaptation of the popular book of the same name was a grave misfire, and at the center of this misbegotten fantasy drama is Tucci's mystifying performance as serial killer George Harvey. Following making the largest-scale movies possible in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Jackson seemingly lost the ability to direct a smaller, intimate character study, as shown in the final product of The Lovely Bones, which relies way too much on CGI and blockbuster sensibilities. George Harvey, a sociopath with a twisted personality complex, is a rich part for any actor, but Tucci, who has given a handful of other performances worthy of an Oscar nod, is left up a creek without a paddle here. Forced to play the broadest notes of a typical movie sociopath, you can't help but feel the strain that Tucci is putting into his performance. As a result, his ill-advised Oscar-nominated turn lacks nuance or ease, giving the entire film a sense of false prestige. Tucci can usually make anything interesting, but perhaps his effortless charm wasn't well suited for such a bracing character. 2 Fred Astaire - 'The Towering Inferno' (1974) Image via 20th Century Fox The 1970s belonged to New Hollywood—the movie brats and anti-establishment filmmakers who broke all the rules. This cultural takeover was surprisingly reflected by the Academy throughout the decade, though remnants of Old Hollywood occasionally snuck in with the rebels. Look no further than the baffling career achievement nomination for Fred Astaire, nominated alongside winner Robert De Niro in The Godfather: Part II, in the famous disaster movie, The Towering Inferno, which we're still trying to break down today. Astaire is a totemic figure in Hollywood and one of the art form's most talented performers, but the Oscars never gave him their due. Shockingly, his only competitive Oscar nomination came at the tail end of his career playing against type. The Irwin Allen-produced disaster movies were all the rage in the '70s, but they've become drastically lost to time. The Towering Inferno, stuffed with a cast of A-tier movie stars and loaded with spectacle, represented the subgenre's peak. Between Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, and William Holden, it was Astaire who came out with a nomination. Voters were obviously transfixed by the song-and-dance man's presence in this nonmusical film about life-or-death stakes. Beyond the novelty of the casting, there's not much to this brief performance that warrants a nod. Playing a flirtatious con artist, Astaire does his best to subvert his glamorous charm, and while he has moments of alluring magic, his performance distracts from the greater scope of the story. More so, it's frankly an insult that the Academy never bothered to nominate Astaire for his truly exceptional work in Swing Time or The Band Wagon. 1 Meryl Streep - 'Florence Foster Jenkins' (2016) Image via Pathé With a whopping 21 acting nominations to her name, Meryl Streep practically has a residency at the Academy. There was a stretch of time from the late '80s through the early 2010s when Streep was ostensibly guaranteed a nomination if she appeared on-screen. While she's been in a handful of great movies and given more earth-shattering performances than we can count, some of her nominations suggest that viewers didn't watch her respective movies, but rather placed her on a ballot due to name recognition. Streep's nomination for the incredibly mediocre and forgettable Florence Foster Jenkins should've been a telltale sign that voters were slacking. Out of 21 nominations, not all are going to be classics, but Streep's Best Actress nod for Florence Foster Jenkins, based on the true story of a New York socialite with notoriously poor singing chops, has more or less vanished into obscurity. The film, directed by Stephen Frears and co-starring Hugh Grant, is unworthy of being an Oscar-nominated movie. While it's not objectively terrible, Florence Foster Jenkins is so resigned to being average that it insults the viewers' tastes even more, and it proved that Academy voters can be tricked into thinking something is prestigious based on its historical backdrop. Streep is always engaging to watch, but critically speaking, this is not her finest hour, as she relies on her usual tricks of mastering tricky accents and dramatic conviction. Although these roles have suited her well in the past, the results are ultimately uninspired. By having so many undeserved nods to her name, the Academy lost sight of what makes Streep such a gifted talent. Release Date May 6, 2016 Runtime 110 minutes Director Stephen Frears Writers Nicholas Martin