Where we last left off, we had discussed the actors who had most been rewarded at the BAFTAs but persistently snubbed by the Oscars, and we were all a bit ticked off on Dirk Bogarde and Mia Farrow’s behalf’s.
Now, though, let’s investigate the actors that Oscar did in fact have something of a crush on, even though BAFTA was far more impressed. Just like before, here are the tiebreakers:
1. If an actor received multiple nominations for different films in the same year, that counted as less for the rankings.
2. If the actor won a BAFTA Award for one of their performances.
3. If an actor received their nomination as a “British Actor” rather than the more all inclusive category.
10. Simone SignoretNominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (Room at the Top, Ship of Fools)
Nominated for Just Oscar: None
Nominated for Just BAFTA: 4 (Casque d’Or, The Crucible, The Deadly Affair, Games)
Winner? 1 Oscar (Room at the Top) and 3 BAFTA’s (Casque d’Or, The Crucible, Room at the Top)
Closest She Got to Another: Most likely none…if I had to pick one, maybe Deadly Affair?
Signoret is one of those foreign film actors that BAFTA became obsessed with during its early run, giving her multiple nominations for films that are little seen in the United States even now, much less when they originally ran, so Oscar probably didn’t notice aside from his two films that he nominated the French leading lady for. I put Deadly Affair as most likely just because it did quite well with BAFTA, and had a lot of Academy favorites above and below the title (James Mason, Maximilian Schell, Sidney Lumet, Paul Dehn, Freddie Young) and sometimes that’s what it takes to get a nomination.
9. Gene Hackman
Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (The French Connection, Unforgiven)
Nominated for Just Oscar: 3 (Bonnie and Clyde, I Never Sang for My Father, Mississippi Burning)
Nominated for Just BAFTA: 5 (The Poseidon Adventure, The Conversation, The French Connection II, Night Moves, Superman)
Winner? 2 Oscars (The French Connection, Unforgiven) and 2 BAFTA’s (Dual win for French Connection/Poseidon Adventure and Unforgiven)
Closest He Got to Another: The Conversation
Hackman is one of only two actors to show up on our nominated but royally-missed actors at the Globes and the BAFTAs, and what’s even more bizarre is that three of his films at the BAFTAs (and three of his films here) didn’t get nominated. Perhaps I’m underestimating the power of The French Connection II, since Hackman got Globe and BAFTA nominations for both, but I feel like he had a better shot for the Best Picture-nominated The Conversation. The BAFTAs kept him in favor of Dustin Hoffman in Lenny and Art Carney in Harry and Tonto (who inexplicably won the Oscar) and the Globes skipped Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express, so while everyone had a precursor to tout, Hackman had more.
8. Sir Ralph Richardson
Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 1 (Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes)
Nominated for Just Oscar: 1 (The Heiress)
Nominated for Just BAFTA: 5 (The Sound Barrier, Doctor Zhivago, Khartoum, The Wrong Box, Lady Caroline Lamb)
Winner?: No Oscars, but he won the BAFTA for The Sound Barrier
Closest He Got to Another: Doctor Zhivago?
It has been many, many years since I last saw Doctor Zhivago and I have never seen Greystoke, so the next two observations are more “on-paper” than anything else, but considering how popular Zhivago was with the Academy, it’s safe to assume that Richardson’s next nomination probably would have come from that movie. It should be noted, though, that the acting branch wasn’t wild for the film-despite major precursors for different actors (Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Ralph Richardson, and Geraldine Chaplin) it only got one Oscar nomination, and oddly for none of those four actors (it was for Tom Courtenay).
I will also say that I wonder, had he still been alive, whether Richardson would have been a threat for winning with Greystoke. The 1980’s were the peak of “old age” Oscars (something we see less and less of today, particularly with more and more people winning Honorary Oscars at the Governor’s Ball), and names like Henry Fonda, Don Ameche, Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, and Jessica Tandy all took home Oscars in the twilight of their careers. Had they had another speech to enjoy from the witty Richardson, perhaps his name would have been on that list.
7. Lord Laurence Olivier
Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 3 (all of these counts are just for acting, as clearly Olivier won nominations for other things during his career) Richard III, The Entertainer, Sleuth
Nominated for Just Oscar: 7 (to be fair, the bulk of these were before the BAFTA Awards existed) Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, Henry V, Hamlet, Othello, Marathon Man, The Boys from Brazil
Nominated for Just BAFTA: 5 (Carrie, The Prince and the Showgirl, The Devil’s Disciple, Term of Trial, Oh! What a Lovely War)
Winner?: Olivier won one acting Oscar for Hamlet and picked up two BAFTA’s for Richard III and Oh! What a Lovely War
Closest He Got to Another: Carrie, probably
This is of course a tad bit ridiculous, as Olivier scored just as often with the Oscars as BAFTA and he’s one of the most rewarded men in the history of the Best Actor category. That said, of course, he still had a relatively strong following in his native land, and especially during the 1950’s (when Olivier wasn’t as en vogue with Oscar) he seemed to do quite well. Carrie was my selection more because it was one of the only films here that Oscar noticed, giving it Best Art Direction and Costume nominations, and Olivier’s costar was Oscar winner Jennifer Jones, so a film with two Academy favorites had to at least have been on the radar of Oscar.
6. Peter Finch
Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (Sunday Bloody Sunday, Network)
Nominated for Just Oscar: None
Nominated for Just BAFTA: 5 (A Town Like Alice, Windom’s Way, The Nun’s Story, The Trials of Oscar Wilde, No Love for Johnnie)
Winner? 1 Oscar (for Network, the only posthumous Oscar for acting until Heath Ledger) and 5 BAFTAs (A Town Like Alice, The Trials of Oscar Wilde, No Love for Johnnie, Sunday Bloody Sunday, and Network)
Closest He Got to Another: Probably none-maybe The Nun’s Story?
Finch was one of those British actors who got so big in his native country that Oscar had to notice one time or another, and they did, late in his career. By that point, though, thanks to the split British Actor categories, his place on this list was cemented. I’ve always been curious what would have happened if he hadn’t died before Network. He didn’t have an Oscar, so they may have just given him the trophy anyway (Howard Beale is a character not to be denied), but his fellow nominees, particularly costar William Holden and Best Picture lead Sylvester Stallone both look really strong for the win on paper if Finch didn’t have some sympathy factor in his direction. Either way, I think that The Nun’s Story was his best shot of the misses, not because of his performance per say, but because the film, which was nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture, is the only one I can guarantee the bulk of the Academy saw in that year.
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| Julie Christie with fellow snubee Dirk Bogarde |
5. Julie Christie
Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (Darling, Away From Her)
Nominated for Just Oscar: 2 (McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Afterglow)
Nominated for Just BAFTA: 6 (Billy Liar, Doctor Zhivago, Fahrenheit 451, The Go-Between, Don’t Look Now, Finding Neverland)
Winner? She has one Oscar and one BAFTA, both for Darling
Closest She Got to Another: Tough call-maybe Billy Liar?
Julie Christie is such an iconic, beautiful actress of the 1960’s (…good reference, says Jessa), that you forget that she’s also one of Oscar’s most enduring actresses, being one of the few performers to score a nomination in four separate decades of her career. It’s easier to make the argument that she came close to winning a second Oscar or BAFTA than to say she was on-track to get another nomination with Oscar (and quite frankly, if she was going to get another one I think it would have been for 1975’s Shampoo over any of the films that she got for BAFTA), but if I had to take a guess it’d be for Billy Liar. The film was a hit and made Christie a star (she would have made it for supporting actress at Oscar, rather than lead like BAFTA, as they didn’t have supporting yet), but if the Academy hadn’t been so enamored with Tom Jones (which took 60% of the nominees in that category that year), Christie may have made it.
4. Shirley MacLaine
Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 3 (The Apartment, Irma la Douce, Being There)
Nominated for Just Oscar: (again, for acting only) 2 (Some Came Running, The Turning Point)
Nominated for Just BAFTA: 6 (The Trouble with Harry, Ask Any Girl, What a Way to Go!, Being There, Postcards from the Edge, Steel Magnolias)
Winner? 1 Oscar (Terms of Endearment) and 2 BAFTAs (Ask Any Girl and The Apartment)
Closest She Got to Another: Postcards from the Edge
If you look at the Globes and BAFTA lists together, Mia Farrow is clearly the actor who was most screwed out of an actual nomination at some point in her career, making second place on both lists. If you look at the people Oscar actually blessed with nominations, though, it’s hard not to feel like MacLaine was royally snubbed. She topped the Globes list and manages to be the highest-ranking non Brit on this list, so you have to continually ask-what did Oscar have against MacLaine? It doesn’t seem like it would have been the politics (Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda regularly got nominated during the same period). You don’t hear a lot about her being particularly difficult to work with (and again, Brando was nominated).
Either way, Postcards seems to be the biggest miss-Diane Ladd did some interesting work in Wild at Heart, but it seems stunning that the more traditional MacLaine didn’t make it instead. Perhaps there was category confusion (she was lead with BAFTA, after all)? That’s about the only thing I can think of to explain it.
3. Dame Maggie Smith
Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 2 (Room at the Top, Ship of Fools)
Nominated for Just Oscar: 2 (Othello, Travels with My Aunt)
Nominated for Just BAFTA: 6 (Young Cassidy, Death on the Nile, Quartet-though the one from 1981, not the recent one, oddly enough, A Private Function, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Tea with Mussolini)
Winner? 2 Oscars (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, California Suite) and 5 BAFTAs (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, A Private Function, A Room with a View, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Tea with Mussolini)
Closest She Got to Another: None of these films, but she’s been very close before
Smith is one of my all-time favorite actresses of any era, and you don’t get enough chance to write about her in film anymore, so I relish the idea of doing so here. The first really noteworthy thing about this list is that she’s made two films with the same name (Quartet, both of which landed her a precursor nomination and neither of which won her an Oscar nod)-can anyone think of another actor that’s done that without it being a remake/winking cameo?
Like Julie Christie, it’s easier to make an argument that Smith was closer to another Oscar win (A Room with a View, where she was fighting it out royally with Dianne Wiest and pulled off both the Globe and the BAFTA) than another nomination, particularly for these films. You may recall she was definitely in the running for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and many people (including myself) expected her to score a nomination for that movie over Jacki Weaver in Silver Linings Playbook. Perhaps the lack of a BAFTA nod should have been a telling sign to us all to look elsewhere?
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| Delliott with his Room with a View costar Judi Dench |
2. Denholm Elliot
Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 1 (A Room with a View)
Nominated for Just Oscar: None
Nominated for Just BAFTA: 6 (A Doll’s House, Saint Jack, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Trading Places, A Private Function, Defence of the Realm)
Winner? No Oscars, though he did pull off back-to-back-to-back wins for Trading Places, A Private Function, and Defence of the Realm (and A Room with a View was his fourth in that series, which he missed for but considering the film scored almost everywhere else, you know he was close).
Closest He Got to Another: You tell me.
The Denholm Elliot thing escapes probably a lot of us (well, me at least)-I hadn’t realized quite what a star the actor was in his native Britain before he managed to land a nod for Room with a View and become a noted supporting player in the Indiana Jones series as Marcus Brody. Raiders was the only one of his BAFTA only films to make a major impression on the Academy, but the series never scored an Oscar nomination for acting despite a plethora of citations elsewhere, and one assumes that Harrison Ford or Sean Connery were more likely to score than Elliot if they did get a nomination. His other work was very “British” (and not in a David Lean/James Ivory sort of way), so I don’t know that he would have gotten in for any of this latter two wins. Trading Places did get an Oscar nomination (for score), but it’s not the sort of thing the Academy goes for, even in the 1980’s when it would have been a hit.
1. Dame Judi Dench
Nominated for Both Globes and Oscars: 6 (Mrs. Brown, Shakespeare in Love, Chocolat, Iris, Mrs. Henderson Presents, Notes on a Scandal)
Nominated for Just Oscar: None
Nominated for Just BAFTA: 7 (Wetherby, A Room with a View, 84 Charing Cross Road, A Handful of Dust, The Shipping News, My Week with Marilyn, Skyfall)
Winner? 1 Oscar (Shakespeare in Love) and 5 BAFTAs for film (A Room with a View, A Handful of Dust, Mrs. Brown, Shakespeare in Love, Iris)
Closest She Got to Another: The Shipping News, maybe?
Each of these lists has been won by someone clearly at the top of the heap-someone who is either obviously beloved by the one awards body or shamefully snubbed by AMPAS (depending on how you want to look at it). With seven additional nominations (and two wins for those performances), Dench is obviously that candidate, and I suspect we all knew she’d be at the pole position.
Dench’s career is bizarre of course because she became a major film star late, late in her career. She’d had a long and distinguished couple of decades in theater and television before Mrs. Brown managed to pop her onto the international circuit (it’s worth mentioning she was a noted supporting player in Britain for film at this time). Had she been DAME JUDI DENCH in the eyes of the world in 1986, A Room with a View surely would have gotten her her first Oscar nomination, but I think it’s safe to assume she came the closest during one of her peak fame years: either The Shipping News or Skyfall, with The Shipping News’s SAG nomination breaking the tie for me. With Philomena coming out in a few weeks, she’s the only actor on this list who seems guaranteed to add to her numbers soon-will it be for BAFTA, Oscar, or both is the question?
Those are the top ten-what is the most surprising name on the list? Who do you think came the closest overall to another nomination (I’m torn between Smith and MacLaine)? Who deserved another nomination the most? And what part should they have cast Shirley MacLaine in in A Room with a View, since clearly the top three found success with it? Share in the comments!
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