Netflix is streaming the SAG Awards on its YouTube channel on Sunday,
February 26. The Screen Actors Guild ceremony is usually a great predictor for the Oscars,
but not always. You may remember some of these famous performances that got snubbed.
Cary Joji Fukunaga's 2015 film Beasts of No Nation, a drama about child soldiers in West
Africa, has the distinction of being Netflix's first-ever original feature film. It's possible
that Academy members were resistant to awarding a streaming release, which could explain why the
critically-acclaimed film didn't receive a single Oscar nomination despite significant
awards success elsewhere — particularly for Idris Elba's performance as the Commandant.
"All of you that have never been listened to before and have seen your family killed,
you know have something that stands for you."
Of course, another factor could also explain the snub. CNN blamed it on the Academy's
racism. 2016 was the second year in a row where all the acting nominees were white,
resulting in the #OscarsSoWhite controversy.
"Some people are born to be leaders. Others are
born to be followers. And others are just waiting to be dying."
Elba, SAG's only Black nominee that year, won the guild's best supporting actor award,
despite his Oscar snub, while the Oscar for best supporting
actor that year ultimately went to Mark Rylance for Bridge of Spies.
Emily Blunt’s performance as Evelyn Abbot in the 2018 horror blockbuster A Quiet
Place earned her a SAG award win, but she was snubbed of an Oscar nomination. The
Academy doesn't always recognize great acting in horror movies,
but A Quiet Place was such a hit that it seemed like Blunt had a genuine shot at a nomination.
"No, she was with me. She was
with me and then I had to go and do laundry and he was with you. How did they – ?"
Category confusion may have been another obstacle for Blunt. She and co-star/director
John Krasinski were originally pitched in the lead acting categories but switched to the
supporting columns midway through campaign season. Blunt won the 2018 SAG award for
best supporting actress, which speaks to SAG's own snubs that year. Regina King,
heartbreaking as Sharon Rivers in If Beale Street Could Talk, was a highly
deserving Oscar winner for best supporting actress but wasn't nominated by the Guild.
There are debates to be had over who most deserved the best actor Oscar in 2021. Both
posthumous SAG winner Chadwick Boseman as musician Levee Green in Ma Rainey's Black
Bottom and Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins as dementia patient Anthony in The Father
delivered incredible performances. However, the way the Oscars telecast
handled Hopkins' victory places this among the most egregious snubs in recent Oscar history.
"All right, Cutler. Straighten that out."
Boseman was seen as such a sure bet to win that Oscar attendees were given
NFTs of his face. Whereas best picture is traditionally the final award of the night,
this time best actor was saved for last, presumably to send viewers
off on the emotional high of the late Black Panther star's family accepting the award.
"I got talent. Me and this horn, we's tight. If my
daddy woulda known I was gonna turn out like this, he woulda named me Gabriel."
When Boseman didn't win, foiling the send-off the show had seemingly planned,
there was serious backlash. To make matters even more awkward,
Hopkins wasn't there, given that it was 4 AM in his native Wales,
and the Academy wouldn't let him accept the award via Zoom, despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The Screen Actors Guild members are much bigger fans of Viola Davis than the Academy is. Both
groups awarded her their best supporting actress awards for playing Rose Lee Maxson
in Denzel Washington's 2016 adaptation of the August Wilson play Fences. However,
Davis has yet to win a best actress Oscar, despite having SAG awards for playing Aibileen
Clark in 2011's The Help and the title role in 2020's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
"You is kind. You is smart. You is important."
Davis' performance in The Help lost to Meryl Streep, who won her third Oscar for playing
Margaret Thatcher in the otherwise mediocre The Iron Lady. Davis in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom lost
to another three-time Oscar winner, Frances McDormand, for her performance in Nomadland.
"I don't care what nobody else do. Ma was the first. Don't you forget it."
It's worth noting that the Screen Actors Guild is one of many awards bodies to
nominate Davis for playing General Nanisca in Gina Prince-Bythewood's 2021 historical
epic The Woman King. But The Woman King failed to garner a single Oscar nomination.
So why did Meryl Streep win for The Iron Lady? Well, the film had the backing of
Harvey Weinstein, who was at the height of his ability to bulldoze his way into most major Oscar
races. A more charitable read of the situation, however, is that Oscar voters felt Streep was
robbed three years earlier for her performance in Doubt, John Patrick Shanley's adaptation of
his Tony-winning play. Sister Aloysius is among the richest roles Streep has played,
and would have made a more deserving third Oscar win for the legendary actress.
"I can fight you."
"You will lose."
The performance that beat Streep's for the best actress Oscar that year was
also a SAG Award-winning one — just in a different category. Kate Winslet's work
as the Nazi concentration camp guard Hanna Schmitz in The Reader earned the
best supporting actress nod from SAG but was considered a lead role by the Academy,
and ultimately won that category. In retrospect, it doesn't look great that a movie that tried to
sell an extremely questionable relationship between a teenage boy and a grown woman as
a "very genuine love story" beat out a movie about standing up to child abusers.
If Streep's 2012 Oscar victory over Davis was due to people feeling she was owed for Doubt,
then Winslet's 2008 campaign beat out Streep in large part due to the sense that she was
owed for her whole career up to that point. The Reader was Winslet's sixth Oscar nomination,
and many felt she should have won for one of her earlier nominated
roles such as Clementine Kruczynski in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
Rose DeWitt Bukater in Titanic, or Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility.
"Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds."
Winslet's acclaimed performance as the hyper-emotional middle child in
Ang Lee's 1995 Jane Austen adaptation was only her second feature film role,
following her debut in Peter Jackson's true crime drama Heavenly Creatures the previous
year. Winslet's best supporting actress victory at the age of 20 made her the
youngest SAG Award winner in history. At the Oscars, however, Winslet ended up losing to
Mira Sorvino in the middle-of-the-road Woody Allen flick Mighty Aphrodite.
Ties can happen at the Oscars, but they're exceedingly rare. It's only happened six times in
Academy Awards history. One wonders how close the Academy was to another tie at the 1998 ceremony,
the year the SAG Awards had its first and thus far only tie in the best supporting
actress race. The dual SAG honors went to Kim Basinger as Lynn Bracken in L.A. Confidential
and Gloria Stuart as Rose Dawson Calvert in Titanic. Basinger ultimately took the Oscar.
Stuart, who played Rose as an old woman, and Kate Winslet,
who played Rose for the majority of the film, both lost their respective Oscar
races. Basinger won for skillfully evoking Old Hollywood glamor in a gritty neo-noir,
but Stuart, who'd been acting since the 1930s, was actual Old Hollywood glamor! Though awards
ties are statistical anomalies, in this case, maybe it would have been justified.
In 1996, the Oscars and SAG Awards didn't agree on who gave the most worthy supporting performances
of the year. Not only did Winslet win best supporting actress at SAG yet lose at the Oscars,
but Ed Harris as NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz in Apollo 13 won best supporting
actor at SAG only for the Academy to prefer Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects. When it
comes to the question of "Which performance would you actually want to watch today?",
it goes without saying that Harris easily beats Spacey.
"We never lost an American in space. We're sure
as hell not gonna lose one on my watch. Failure is not an option."
But even if we ignore all of the sordid details we now know about Spacey,
Harris would have been a worthy Oscar winner for his powerful portrayal of heroism and
professionalism under extreme pressure. This was Harris' first Oscar nomination. He was
later nominated for best supporting actor for 1998's The Truman Show and 2002's The Hours,
as well as best actor for 2000's Pollock. He's one of those actors who's been doing
such great work for so long that it's strange that he hasn't yet won an Oscar.
Two of the strongest performances in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy,
Andy Serkis as Smeagol/Gollum and Sean Astin as Samwise Gamgee, weren't nominated by the
Academy or SAG — though SAG did nominate all three films and award Return of the King best ensemble.
The questions of whether motion capture acting "counts" likely killed Serkis' awards chances,
and the general ensemble nature of the trilogy made singling out individual performers difficult.
The one individual performance in the trilogy to get significant awards
recognition was Sir Ian McKellen as the wizard Gandalf the Grey in the first film,
2001's The Fellowship of the Ring. He won best supporting actor at the SAG Awards
and was nominated in the same category at the Oscars, ultimately losing to Jim Broadbent in
Iris. Had McKellen won, he would have been the first openly gay man to win an acting Oscar.
"A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to."
Comparisons can be drawn between McKellen's nomination and Alec Guinness' nomination for the
original Star Wars. The Academy might not take acting in fantasy movies seriously very often,
but when they do, they seem drawn to wizened mentor figures played by beloved older actors.
Martin Scorsese's 2002 historical crime epic Gangs of New York was nominated for 10 Academy
Awards but didn't win any of them. In Oscars history, only 1977's The Turning Point and
1985's The Color Purple had more nominations – 11 – without a win. Gangs of New York is one of
Scorsese's more divisive films. It seemed to have the Academy's respect but not much of its love.
Even critics who weren't crazy about the film as a whole, however, were enamored with Daniel
Day-Lewis' performance as the xenophobic gang leader William Cutting, aka "Bill the Butcher."
"I defeat my enemy. I extinguish his life. I consume him as I consume these flames."
Ireland's favorite method actor eventually won Oscars for similarly transformative performances
as Daniel Plainview in 2007's There Will Be Blood and as Abraham Lincoln in 2012's Lincoln,
in addition to his 1990 Oscar for My Left Foot, in which he played a man with cerebral palsy who
has only the use of his left foot. The best actor Oscar that year ultimately went to Adrien Brody in
The Pianist, a film which remains controversial due to the actions of director Roman Polanski.
Johnny Depp may be a polarizing figure, but it's difficult to argue against the fact
that his performance as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean:
The Curse of the Black Pearl, was a defining moment in a career that has gotten bogged
down in repetitive collaborations with Tim Burton that yield ever-diminishing returns.
"You are without doubt the worst pirate I have ever heard of."
"But you have heard of me."
The idea that Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, a movie based on
a Disneyland attraction, could be in serious awards contention at all – let alone against
Sean Penn in Mystic River and Bill Murray in Lost in Translation – is entirely due to the incredible
job Depp did as Captain Jack Sparrow. All the more impressive that he got in on the strength of his
chaotic comedic energy, given that awards bodies far too often overlook comedic performances.
On paper, Eddie Murphy's performance as soul singer Jimmy "Thunder" Early in Dreamgirls, Bill
Condon's 2006 film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, seemed like a lock for the Oscar. It had
everything Academy voters love: a beloved comedic actor taking on a serious role, a character
inspired by a real person, a drug addiction story, and the revelation of unexpected musical talent.
And Murphy was great in the role, stealing every scene Jennifer Hudson hadn't already stolen.
Murphy won the SAG Award for best supporting actor, as well as the Golden Globe and Critics
Choice Award. He ultimately lost the Oscar to Alan Arkin as grandpa Edwin Hoover in Little Miss
Sunshine. How did Arkin win? Affection for Little Miss Sunshine as a whole definitely helped; the
indie comedy was nominated for best picture, while Dreamgirls wasn't. Then there's the Norbit factor.
“Don’t you think I realize what’s going on here, miss.”
Starring in a terrible movie while campaigning for an Oscar didn't help Murphy's chances,
although Norbit snagged an Oscar nomination for best makeup the following year.