Which actors have the highest number of Oscar nominations but no wins?

An Academy Award can be the crowning glory of a stellar career, but some big stars have missed out on the top prize on numerous occasions. The 2024 Oscars will take place Sunday 10 March and there are a handful of actors that will be hoping to finally take home one of the golden statuettes.

Back in January, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) announced the nominees for the most illustrious awards ceremony in the film industry. ‘Oppenheimer’ dominated the pack with 13 Oscar nominations and one of the cast, Robert Downey Jr, will be looking to take the stage to finally accept the award for Best Supporting Actor. This is his fourth nomination for the title but he has yet to win.

Annette Bening, who has never won the coveted award, has been nominated for a fifth time this year, four times for Best Actress and once for Best Supporting Actress, for her leading role in ‘Nyad’. The same goes for Bradley Cooper, who will be hoping to take home the Oscar for Best Actor, he’s been nominated for the prize four times and once for his supporting role in ‘American Hustle’.

Eight nominations apiece for Close and O’Toole

The iconic Glenn Close and the late Peter O’Toole are the actors who have received the most nominations without winning, eight each. Close had her last opportunity in 2021 when she was nominated for Best Supporting Role for her turn in Netflix’s ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ but lost out to Yuh-Jung Youn for her part in ‘Minari’. Close had been the favourite to pick up the lead actress gong twice before before that but came up empty handed.

Those disappointments brought her equal to the record set by the late Peter O’Toole, who also received eight unsuccessful Academy Award nominations over the course of a stellar career. He was first nominated in 1962 for the titular role in ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, and received his last for 2006′s ‘Venus’.

However, the career of the actor, who turned down a knighthood, wasn’t completely overlooked by the Academy. O’Toole received an Academy Honorary Award in 2002 for his combined body of work spanning five decades, but replied with a letter insisting he was “still in the game” and that he wanted to “win the lovely bugger outright.”

Major actors who have not won an Oscar

Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Laura Linney, Edward Norton, Michelle Pfeiffer and Sigourney Weaver, to name just a few, have all been nominated three times but have never received a golden statuette. Saoirse Ronan, Mickey Rooney and Mark Ruffalo each have been nominated four times. Ruffalo may just break his dry spell this year, as he is up for Best Supporting Actor once again for his role in ‘Poor Things’.

Michelle Williams has picked up five Oscar nominations but never won gold. Amy Adams is the fourth most nominated actor that has never won an Oscar with six to her name, five for Best Supporting Actress and one in 2014 for ‘American Hustle’ which earned her first nomination for Best Actress. The third most nominated actor to leave the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Award ceremonies empty handed was Richard Burton with seven nominations in total, six for his lead roles and one best supporting role nod.

While the disappointment of not winning an Oscar can be harsh, not even being nominated despite years of critically acclaimed performances must be galling. None of Steve Buscemi, Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels performances have ever received a nomination for the Oscars. Jamie Lee Curtis was finally recognized for her talents last year, claiming the coveted award after receiving her first nomination for her supporting role in ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’.

Which film received the most Oscars nominations without winning?

Close and O’Toole boast an impressive eight win-less nominations, but they fall short of the most-nominated films to fail to win an Oscar.

Both ‘The Turning Point’ (1977) and ‘The Color Purple’ (1986) picked up 11 Academy Award nominations without winning a single one, sharing the record for films.

The 1978 Oscars ceremony was dominated by ‘The Goodbye Girl’, ‘Star Wars’, ‘Julia’ and ‘Annie Hall’, denying ‘The Turning Point’ in all 11 categories. ‘The Color Purple’ was also shortlisted for 11 awards in the 1986 Oscars but also failed to reach a top spot, losing out to ‘Platoon’ in a number of categories.