The standard, polite line for award season goes, "It's an honor just to be nominated." And yet, there's a long list of great performers who've never received this honor. What gives?
On a recent episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour, we each made the case for a performer who's never been nominated for a competitive acting Oscar, but should have at least one on their mantle by now. Our criteria were: They have to be living and currently active in the industry. Here's our list:
Pam Grier
Glen Weldon: Pam Grier is known for playing gorgeous badasses in Blaxploitation films: Foxy Brown, Coffy, Sheba and Friday Foster. There's a sameness to those roles — genre has a formula — but there is an individuality in her performances. There's nothing cookie cutter or pat about them. And you have to respect the grind, right? She puts in the work. She's been in a Steven Seagal movie. She did women in prison movies. She's the best thing in Scream Blacula Scream.
In Jackie Brown, the 1997 Quentin Tarantino film, Grier plays an LA flight attendant who smuggles money for a gunrunner. It's widely agreed that should have been her moment. Say what you will about Tarantino and how he writes women — and there's plenty to say — but he wrote that role for her. And I don't think it's a stretch to think that he wrote it with the Academy in mind. Jackie Brown is resourceful, savvy, always looking for an angle. I think Tarantino wanted Grier to come to the attention of the Academy — and she should have.
When it comes to the Oscars, are we rewarding the actor? Or are we rewarding their ability to conform to the kind of parameters that we are setting with our expectations of what an Academy Award performance looks like? Pam Grier can give you indomitable, resolute, persevering. She can also give you sexy badass. She can give you intelligence, defiance, resourcefulness. So, justice for Pam Grier! But also justice for any actor who isn't playing into the Academy's very narrow parameters of whatever they think is "Oscar worthy."
John Goodman
Stephen Thompson: John Goodman was best known, at first, for playing Dan Conner, the lovable TV dad on Roseanne. He spent a chunk of the '90s playing Fred Flintstone and King Ralph. He does marvelous voice work in the Monsters, Inc. movies, and the various Emperor's New Groove properties.
Goodman is the type of character actor who is really always terrific in everything he does, whether the thing he's in is good or terrible. He is a big part of the Coen Brothers movies, including perhaps his most iconic film performance as Walter in The Big Lebowski. Goodman came to film with such a deep reputation for playing lovable figures and then the Coen Brothers made him terrifying. They did that in The Big Lebowski. They did that in Barton Fink and O Brother, Where Art Thou? He pops up in these movies again and again, often as a figure of menace.
When you talk about John Goodman performances that should have been nominated for Oscars, you can certainly bring up The Big Lebowski, which was nominated for zero Academy Awards. But when I looked at his filmography, what I would often see is extremely memorable performances in movies that were either too idiosyncratic, like Barton Fink, or where his role was too small for a nomination. He is very often brought in to just bring a pop of something.
Oscar Isaac
Marc Rivers: Oscar Isaac is one of the best actors in his generation. I first saw him in Drive from 2011, playing a very small and kind of stereotypical role — he was a Latino felon, out of prison. But what I remember from that performance is not the criminality aspect — it's the intimacy, the connecting that you see him do on screen.
I think the closest he came to an Oscar nomination was Inside Llewyn Davis from 2013. This is one of the great breakthrough performances that we've had in the last decade or so. It is the only time I've genuinely cared about a Coen Brothers protagonist in a way where I felt close to this guy's pain and agony. He does his own singing in the role — and with such authenticity.
I think Isaac is someone who would have flourished in the '70s with folks like Dustin Hoffman, De Niro, Pacino, where it's less about the plot and more about reveals of character. But if he were born then, maybe his Latino ethnicity would have held him back.
Regina Hall
Aisha Harris: The first time I noticed Regina Hall was in Scary Movie playing Brenda. It's a great role. There's a lot of references to her being a Black person in the movie and she handles the tacky, tasteless jokes so perfectly. And it plants the seed for what Regina Hall can do, which is everything. She can do the broadest comedy possible, and the dramas and the nuance and all of the layers of a character.
I would have loved for her to get nominated for the 2018 film Support the Girls. Oftentimes with women, especially Black women, there's this need for them to be suffering to the utmost degree. This is not that kind of movie, but it is the kind of role that does occasionally get nominated if you're a white actress. Hall plays Lisa, an exasperated manager of a breastaurant sports bar. She basically has to deal with all of the little annoyances and challenges at work and in her personal life. The New York Film Critics circle named Hall the best actress that year. And sadly, she was the first Black woman to win that award — that's a whole other thing to talk about. I think that it's the type of role that you don't usually see Black women getting and doing.
She also should have won for Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul., which came out a few years later. She is playing the first lady of a Southern Baptist megachurch whose pastor husband is embroiled in a sex scandal. She has to keep it all in, but is also slowly unraveling in this very weird satire. Regina Hall should have an Oscar.
300x250 Ad
300x250 Ad