Not Invited to the Oscar Party

In a better world, these 2020s performances would have won Academy Awards

Mikey Madison and Kieran Culkin to the side, the Oscars are all too often given to one of two performers:

1) A beloved, aging actor who receives the prize as a lifetime-achievement award, usually for a relatively subpar performance, and often as a kind of penance for having failed to grant them the Oscar for superior past performances. (Think Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart, Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club, or Kate Winslet for The Reader.)

2) Playing the lead role in the kind of movie where the credits roll over side-by-side photographs of the performer and the real-life personage they played, preferably with weight gain or weight loss or untold hours in the makeup chair as part of their transformation. These movies are, more often than not, instantly forgotten the very second the Oscar winner leaves the stage. (Quick, can you even remember whether or not you have seen Renee Zellweger in Judy, or Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour?)

We love the Oscars. We love them enough to care when they get it wrong, and to feel a sense of injustice when the wrong performers are honored. (We know. We take this awards ceremony too seriously. We are working on that.) But the passage of time is often clarifying. As the years progress, a glance back at past winners, and past nominees, may feel bracing. We decided to look at the Academy Award nominees for acting since 2020, and each suggest one superlative performance that not only did not win an Oscar, but was not even nominated. (We’ve added a few honorable-mention choices at the end, as well.) We’d love to hear from you, too. What was the best performance since 2020 that went unrecognized by the Academy?

Margot Robbie, Barbie

Much was made at the time of the 2024 Oscar nominations that Ken—that is, Ryan Gosling—scored a nomination (deservedly), while Barbie’s title star, played by Margot Robbie, did not. (In an equally gross miscarriage of justice, neither did the film’s visionary director, Greta Gerwig.) Score another one for patriarchy. But it bears repeating that Robbie, who also served as a producer, held this wildly imaginative production together with her believable performance as a life-sized doll going through an existential crisis. While other nominees that year did spectacular work as, say, a woman who pulled off an astonishing feat of athleticism, or a woman being slowly poisoned to death by Leonardo DiCaprio playing a man 25 years younger than he is in real life, Robbie had to sell us on an absolutely outrageous premise while keeping us grounded in the genuine emotion at its core. And she did a spectacular job, balancing camp, poignance, physical comedy (like when Barbie’s famous high-heel feet fall flat), and an emotional journey from doll to womanhood. It’s a singular feat of acting so great that we barely noticed, but there is no Barbie—much less a Ken—without Robbie.—Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

Cristin Milioti, Palm Springs

I agree about Margot Robbie, and wish the Oscars would recognize more comedic performances in general, including Cristin Miloti in Palm Springs. She is hilarious and charming as Sarah, a woman who gets stuck in a time loop with Andy Samberg's Nyles during a wedding weekend. Refreshingly, Sarah isn't tasked to be a straight woman to Samberg's laidback goofball, and it is a joy to watch her initial zeal in embracing the absurdity of her situation. But what makes Milioti's performance so memorable is her character's heartrending desperation to escape the time loop. Oftentimes when watching a high-concept film like this one, the characters can be too heightened. Milioti plays Sarah as a real human being caught up in bizarre circumstances, making Palm Springs not just an enjoyable film, but a deeply affecting one too.—Kirthana Ramisetti

Sidney Flanigan, Never Rarely Sometimes Always

You almost definitely do not know the name Sidney Flanigan. I will be honest and say that I had to look it up before writing this. But in the five years since I first saw Eliza Hittman’s indelible Never Rarely Sometimes Always, I have never forgotten Flanigan’s performance as Autumn, the pregnant Pennsylvania teen who makes a desperate and painfully fraught trip to New York City with her cousin and wingman Skylar (Talia Ryder) to receive an abortion. Flanigan acts with her eyes, with her fingers, with the smallest of motions. In this frequently wordless film, Autumn tucks her hair behind her ears, or lets her eyelids briefly droop, and conveys so much about the tribulations of teenagers adrift in an adult world hostile to their every need with each action.

Flanigan’s performance does not lend itself to showy actorly pyrotechnics. She simply embodies one particular teenage girl desperate to survive. In one scene, Autumn is faced with a series of difficult questions about her life at home from a kindly health-care provider. The tight set of Flanigan’s mouth, and the ways her eyes flit to corners as if she is under threat, is heartbreaking in its simplicity. Hittman’s camera stays on Flanigan, nervous and then overcome with emotion. as she acknowledges what she has endured. Never Rarely Sometimes Always came out two years before the Dobbs decision overturned abortion rights in the United States. We now live in a nation of Autumns.—Saul Austerlitz

Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers

Andrew Scott’s performance in All of Us Strangers cracked me open. He simultaneously plays a young child living out a heartbreaking non-reality with his deceased parents and an isolated writer falling in love with a man in his building who, it turns out, is also far from real life.

The film slides between different dimensions, from truth to imagination, and Scott is our tour guide throughout it all, guiding us through a complex fantasy with such an immense level of sweetness, sadness, and darkness. He deserves all the flowers, our Hot Priest, forever and always.—Thea Glassman

Some honorable mention selections:

Juliette Binoche, The Taste of Things

Ralph Fiennes, The Menu

Emilia Jones, Coda

Kani Kusruti, All We Imagine As Light

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, You Hurt My Feelings

Ilinca Manolache, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

Charles Melton, May December

Paul Mescal, All of Us Strangers

Tôko Miura, Drive My Car

Maja Ostaszewska, Green Border

Keke Palmer, Nope

Renate Reinsve, The Worst Person in the World

Jason Schwartzman, Asteroid City

Rachel Sennott, Shiva Baby

Sydney Sweeney, Reality

Koji Yakusho, Perfect Days