10 Legendary Actors Who Have Shockingly Never Won an Academy Award

It can be surprising when someone brings up just how many successful actors have never won an Oscar. Of course, awards are subjective. The wins don’t always line up with what some might believe are the best performances of the year, and that’s alright. But looking at the filmographies of some of these actors, it can feel a little unfair.

These actors have shaped modern cinema in ways that are worthy of lifelong recognition. Here are 10 of the absolute best who have yet to win an Academy Award.

1. Samuel L. Jackson
2. Willem Dafoe
3. Amy Adams
4. Ralph Fiennes
5. Sigourney Weaver
6. Bradley Cooper
7. Michelle Williams
8. Tom Cruise
9. Glenn Close
10. Michael Keaton

Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel L. Jackson’s career exploded with roles in movies like Pulp Fiction. He’s played dozens of sharp and complicated characters over the years, but that part remains his only Oscar nomination. 

He also has 150 film credits to his name and is the highest-grossing male actor of all time. In 2022, Jackson received an honorary Academy Award, which is great, but it’s about time he wins one for a particular piece of work.

Willem Dafoe

Willem Dafoe’s acting style proves he isn’t afraid of any corner of storytelling.

He took strange roles early on, including bits in cult comedies and indie projects, and then early films like The Last Temptation of Christ showed just how great he can be. Dafoe has four Oscar nominations, including for his part in The Florida Project, which is one of the warmest, most subtle performances of the last decade. 

Amy Adams

Amy Adams first showed up in small TV parts in the late ’90s, and people often forget she did comedic work early on. She has one of the most impressive filmographies for a female actor in the 21st century, and most of those great movies were released in or after 2010—including The Fighter, The Master, Her, American Hustle, Arrival, Nocturnal Animals, and Vice. 

She has a whopping six acting nominations, but no wins yet.

Ralph Fiennes

Ralph Fiennes started on the stage, and when he moved into film, he surprised audiences with Schindler’s List, where he played Amon Göth with quite the chilling stillness. He earned nominations for both that film and The English Patient, but never won.

He’s proved his range again and again. He played Voldemort, who is now one of the most recognizable villains in modern pop culture. He also jumped into comedy with The Grand Budapest Hotel, with a role he definitely should have been nominated for.

Sigourney Weaver

Sigourney Weaver’s start in acting looked nothing like the queen-of-sci-fi image people know today, thanks to the Alien movies. She studied drama at Yale and bounced around stage roles before Ridley Scott cast her as Ripley in Alien. 

That role launched one of the most iconic and influential female characters ever put on screen. Weaver has three Oscar nominations, all within a short window too; Aliens, Working Girl, and Gorillas in the Mist were all released within two years.

Bradley Cooper

Bradley Cooper has an impressive career arc, starting in small comedic roles.

Now, he has an impressive 12 nominations, encompassing acting, writing, directing, and producing. A Star Is Born proved he had a director’s eye, especially with how he shaped the sound and rhythm of the film. And of course, Maestro pushed that even further as he tried to understand the inner life of Leonard Bernstein without turning it into a simple biography.

Michelle Williams

Michelle Williams began her career in television, and people might remember her best from Dawson’s Creek. She kept choosing roles that allowed her to act in emotional and intense corners.

She has five Oscar nominations but has never won, despite having delivered some of the most haunting performances of the last couple of decades. This includes her parts in Brokeback Mountain, Blue Valentine, and Manchester by the Sea.

Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise is one of the biggest movie stars ever, but he hasn’t won a competitive Oscar. He did receive an honorary Academy Award in 2025, which the Governors Awards used to celebrate his influence on the industry. 

Cruise has shaped modern blockbusters with the amazing Mission: Impossible series, which proved you don’t have to dumb down your action movies. This is where he started, famously, insisting on doing his own stunts, which still feel unbelievable.

Glenn Close

Glenn Close shares the unfortunate record with the late Peter O’Toole for the most Academy Award nominations in an acting category without a win. She has a staggering eight nominations that span five decades of film history.

Her incredible career began not on screen but on the Broadway stage, where she made her debut in 1974. Speaking on her many nominations, she once expressed that she doesn’t believe losing should define any actor’s worth, and that she has learned to let the whole awards business pass through without getting to her.

Michael Keaton

Michael Keaton also started in comedy, including stand-up and sketch work, and landed roles in shows that leaned heavily on improv. When Tim Burton cast him as Batman, people weren’t sure at first (which seems to be a constant theme with Bruce Wayne castings).

But Keaton brought a strange, quiet intensity to the role, and he changed the way people imagined superheroes, greatly contrasting Christopher Reeve’s take on Superman.

Yet his Oscar conversation really strengthened after Birdman, a film many people thought would finally bring him the win. He came close;  he won the Golden Globe for that role, but he did not win the Oscar. The movie itself won Best Picture, which was an honor he shared in the following year as well, when he starred in the Best Picture winner Spotlight.