The Most Nominated Actor Who Still Doesn’t Have An Oscar

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 20, 6:00PM EST

The Most Nominated Actor Who Still Doesn’t Have An Oscar — © Carlo Allegri / Getty Images

It is amazing how many obscure actors and actresses have won several Oscars. He won Best Supporting Actor for “Come and Get It” (1936), “Kentucky” (1938), and “The Westerner” (1940). He was also nominated for Sergeant York (1941). There are dozens of actresses and actors almost no one has heard of who won one. Harry Morgan, who starred in the TV series “Mash”, was an actor for over five decades. Morgan starred in some of the most critically acclaimed movies in history–The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and High Noon (1952)–and was never nominated by the Academy’s voters.

Every year, members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences select a handful of performers whom they deem worthy of nominating in the categories of Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress.

Some years, the favorite goes on to win, but there have also been some major upsets. Back in 1975, for example, Art Carney beat out both Jack Nicholson (for “Chinatown”) and Al Pacino (for “The Godfather Part II”) for his performance in a film called “Harry and Tonto.” More recently, in 2021, “The Father” star Anthony Hopkins was named Best Actor over the late Chadwick Boseman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), shocking just about everyone, including Hopkins.

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To determine the actor with the most Oscar nominations who never won, 24/7 Tempo reviewed data on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Oscar website. Only actors who are still alive were considered.

Because the actors we considered includes only living performers, it might be interesting to note some now deceased stars of legendary status who were nominated but never won: Richard Burton (seven nominations), Kirk Douglas (three nominations), Greta Garbo (four nominations), Cary Grant (two nominations), Peter O’Toole (eight nominations), and Orson Welles (one nomination).

The actor who had the most nominations but has never won is Glenn Close. Here are the details:

> Best Actress nominations: 4
> Best Supporting Actress nominations: 4
> Nominated for: The World According to Garp (1982); The Big Chill (1983); The Natural (1984); Fatal Attraction (1987); Dangerous Liaisons (1988); Albert Nobbs (2011); The Wife (2018); Hillbilly Elegy (2020)

Click here to read Most Nominated Actors Who Still Don’t Have an Oscar

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.