When the average moviegoer today thinks of unrewarded talent, Leonardo DiCaprio springs to mind with his zero-for-four win rate at the Academy Awards.
DiCaprio’s association with being snubbed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has become so popular it has reached meme status.
I’ve always wondered why DiCaprio became the poster boy for Oscar snubbing. DiCaprio has never before been the favorite in his category and there are many actors with similarly disappointing Oscars performances. Classical actors who never took home the golden statue include Robert Redford, Ian McKellen and Cary Grant. DiCaprio’s status as the face of Oscar snubs has more to do with his status as a teenage heartthrob and his high visibility than it does with his spurned acting chops.
His Oscars career began in 1994 when he was nominated for best supporting actor for “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” In what was his most Oscar-worthy performance, DiCaprio played Arnie Grape, convincingly portraying a character who has developmental disabilities and the dynamic between himself and Johnny Depp’s Gilbert Grape.
DiCaprio was arguably better than eventual winner Tommy Lee Jones in “The Fugitive,” but the clear snub in the 1994 best supporting actor category was Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes played Amon Goeth in “Schindler’s List,” one of the most chilling villains in the history of cinema. For the academy, Jones was a safer pick than either Fiennes’ performance as an SS officer or the performance of an unestablished child actor.
DiCaprio was not nominated again until 2005 when he received recognition for his second collaboration with director Martin Scorsese in “The Aviator.” That year, he lost to Jamie Foxx, who played another historical figure – Ray Charles in “Ray.”
While the academy does have a soft spot for historical-figure roles, Foxx’s performance as the blind musician surpassed DiCaprio’s singularly ambitious Howard Hughes. Foxx went to great lengths to portray Charles, even using his training as a classical pianist to perform the pieces in the film. In addition, by rewarding Foxx’s portrayal, the academy paid tribute to Charles, who had died shortly before the film was completed in 2004.
Leo’s next nomination was in 2007 for “Blood Diamond,” when he lost to another actor playing a historical figure: Forest Whitaker as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. While DiCaprio was praised for maturing into grittier roles with his performance as Danny Archer, Whitaker’s humanizing yet brutal performance was met with widespread acclaim and he rightly took home the Oscar.
Even before getting to DiCaprio’s 2014 Oscar nomination, examining his performance history at the Academy Awards reveals two trends: DiCaprio has never been in the right role to win an Oscar and the academy is highly predictable in the types of roles it rewards.
The academy has proven, for example, that it cannot resist when actors make physical and mental sacrifices for their role. DiCaprio’s most recent supposed Oscar snub was for “The Wolf of Wall Street” in 2014. He played Jordan Belfort with incredible charisma, accurately depicting the excesses of a Wall Street lifestyle, but he once again came off second best, this time to Matthew McConaughey for “Dallas Buyers’ Club.” McConaughey’s intense physical transformation all but guaranteed him the award.
Twenty-two years after his first Oscar nomination, DiCaprio has finally found a role that takes physical sacrifice to another level. In “The Revenant,” he eats raw bison and sleeps inside a horse carcass during a shoot that took months in subzero temperatures. This year, following in the footsteps of many best actor winners before him, DiCaprio finds himself virtually uncontested in the position of the actor who did the most extreme things for his role.
If DiCaprio wins this year, netizens everywhere will rejoice and memes of Leo will flood social media sites. The face of underrecognition will finally have been recognized. But in an ideal world, DiCaprio’s lack of an Oscar should not come as a surprise and more importantly, nobody should think DiCaprio even needs one to cement his legacy as a great actor.
– Tridib Biswas