I usually think that an Academy Award nomination means an actor now has access to a larger variety of roles than previously available. It's an opportunity to vault oneself to the next level. Some actors are perennial nominees (think Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, and Meryl Streep) actors we know will be delivering strong work throughout their careers. This is not a list about those people. This is about smaller actors, many who have the ability to become big stars, who somehow let their chance slip away though a series of poor film choices. I have not included many foreign actor candidates because the prospect of a Hollywood film career would always be a stretch for an indie star of South America or Japan (we were never gonna be hearing much about Fernanda Montenegro, Adriana Barraza or Catelina Sandino Moreno again, at least not in the mainstream). There are also many candidates I didn't include because I think the Oscar nod gave them exactly the career they deserved. Take Thomas Haden Church: before his nod he was mostly known for playing a one-note character on an '80's sitcom. After his nod he has worked in a series of successful supporting parts of much higher quality than his previous career, and also more suited to his talents. This is just a sampling of the squandered opportunities out there. (And it should be noted, I do not always blame the actor for the loss of these opportunities. Sometimes, shit happens.)
An actor with so much promise, such great charisma and such presence, in the years immediately after his nomination (in the banner year of 2005) he took supporting roles in Four Brothers, Get Rich or Die Tryin', August Rush and Awake. He got a big break in 2008 as Tony Stark's best bud Colonel "Rhoady" Rhoads in Iron Man, a part he lost to Don Cheadle in the sequel due to contract and money disputes. Lately he's been seen in The Company You Keep, Prisoners, Lee Daniel's The Butler, and The Best Man Holiday, all respectable ensemble roles. But Howard has the ability to play in the big leagues with Denzel Washington and he is miles from that. The accusations in his personal life surely did him no favors either.
Hudson is most definitely a bonafide A-lister (or at least she was for 10 years after her nomination) but never again has she shown the kind of vulnerable determination of her Almost Famous role. She had a lot of high-profile gigs (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Raising Helen, The Skeleton Key, Bride Wars, You Me & Dupree) and has most recently been found shilling for television's "Glee." The last challenging part she took was in 2002's The Four Feathers, which didn't work out for anyone involved. In fact, looking at some of these movies, many of them commercial flops (Le Divorce, Something Borrowed, Alex and Emma) I'm amazed she stayed on the A-list as long as she did. Unfortunately we may never see anything as promising as Penny Lane from Hudson ever again.
Adrien Brody: Won Best Actor for The Pianist (2002)Post Oscar win, he had a decent run of box office success with The Village (however much maligned, it still pulled in $114 million) and King Kong, but his leading roles in The Jacket and Hollywoodland went largely unnoticed. He stepped out of the box with roles in indie fare like The Brothers Bloom and The Darjeerling Limited (a personal favorite), but wasn't really able to parlay his talent into any mainstream longevity. Between 2009 and 2013 he took part in a list of mostly forgettable films ranging from Wrecked to Splice and apart from a great cameo in Midnight in Paris, went largely unseen. Here's hoping this year's The Grand Budapest Hotel proves to be a more successful venture.
Weisz had a varied career as a character actress before her win, and there were many high profile roles in the years after including the rebooted Bourne Legacy and Oz the Great and Powerful. She also continued to take interesting parts in smaller films such as The Brothers Bloom and the experimental adventure The Fountain, with then-fiancee Darren Aronofsky. But for an actress with the charm to pull of a daffy librarian in The Mummy, realistically sweep Hugh Grant off his feet in About a Boy and off course play the moral crusader in The Constant Gardener, not to mention being one of the most beautiful woman in the world, while not always playing to that - and well as being Mrs. Daniel Craig, I just think she deserves more than second banana roles in duds like The Lovely Bones and Dream House.
Mickey Rourke: Nominated for Best Actor in The Wrestler (2008)
This isn't really fair given the massive train wreck his career was before the nomination, but it hasn't seemed to open very many doors for him either. He was the villain in the worst Iron Man, the villain in the forgettable Immortals, and part of the male-fantasy abomination The Expendables. Everything else is straight direct-to-video D-list. He has a part in the much anticipated Sin City: A Dame to Kill For; he could use it. Almost wish he'd won that year instead of Sean Penn cause I very much doubt he will ever be nominated again.
Wasn't Clive Owen supposed to be our next leading man? He was in contention for the Bond franchise for Pete's sake! Post-nom he had a pretty good run including Sin City, Shoot Em' Up, Inside Man and one of the seminal films of the last 20 years, Children of Men. It was looking pretty good, even with an ambitious flop like Derailed or Duplicity thrown in. I remember there being a lot of pre-award buzz around his performance in The Boys Are Back in 2009, but the film must have had a small run in theaters because despite mostly decent reviews, I never heard anything else about it. And after that, the most buzz-worthy thing on Owen's resume has been the TV movie Hemingway and Gellhorn. Owen should be right up there on the A-list with Daniel Craig, Tom Hardy, Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt; his skills are in the same league.
I think this is less a fault of Madsen's and more an indication of the lack of women's roles for actresses between 40 and 60. Madsen has had a long and productive career as a character actress, so perhaps a vault to Meryl Streep and Sandra Bullock-level roles was always going to be a stretch. But just watch this beautifully acted scene from Sideways and tell me she doesn't deserve better than "the wife" roles in Firewall, The Astronaut Farmer, The Number 23 and Red Riding Hood.
Whatever there is to say about the quality of roles picked, Gooding certainly did work, consistently, in the decade following his nomination. There were strong, but standard supporting roles in As Good As It Gets and What Dreams May Come; attempts at historical drama in critical bombs Men of Honor and Pearl Harbor; and then the descent into "anything for a paycheck" roles in everything from Snow Dogs and The Fighting Temptations, to Boat Trip and Daddy Day Camp. Maybe this was all we should ever have expected from Cuba Gooding Jr. and he has indeed made what success was available to him. But I would have liked to see him in another role that was full of life and joy again and not all this hammy shit.
Shue had a few high profile gigs in The Saint, Cousin Bette and Deconstructing Harry, but mostly a lot of horrible roles in horrible films like The Hollow Man, The Trigger Effect, Molly and Hide and Seek. In recent years, in between standard mom roles, she's managed to make fun of herself in Hamlet 2 and "Curb Your Enthusiasm," but watch Leaving Las Vegas again and tell me she isn't worthy of so much more. We're talking the star of Adventures in Babysitting! Where's the respect?
Apart from the sublimely brilliant Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Sorvino's post-Oscar career careens from failed experiment Mimic (an early Guillermo Del Toro picture) to the nauseatingly bittersweet At First Sight. These may be the kinds of big-name roles she could expect, but the quality was sadly lacking. There has been nothing noteworthy in at least 10 years, and though her IMDb page is full of roles, I only recognize a handful.
Reynolds had been trudging through standard comedy fare, mostly trading on his former good looks, when Boogie Nights came along and showed a true thespian hiding behind the swarm and swagger. Unfortunately Reynolds turned right around and took every pitiful paycheck role in sight, eventually stooping to self-parody in The Crew and The Dukes of Hazzard. Nowadays he pops up in cameos on every Fox animated television show.
Part of Driver's appeal was the very cool part she was given to play in Good Will Hunting. Skylar was witty and confident, but heartbreakingly honest and vulnerable, with the kind of "one of the guys" cool we all wish we could pull off. And Driver had the goods before that as well - check her out in the little know Circle of Friends with a charming Irish accent and 30 lb. weight gain, or as the - again - very cool object of John Cusack's affection in Grosse Point Blank. She eventually took a few good roles in films like Return to Me and the television series "The Riches," but has been mostly slumming it in unsatisfactory supporting roles in everything from Ella Enchanted to Conviction. Her latest venture is the Fiona role in the television remake of About a Boy; it looks atrocious.
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