The nominations for the 95th Academy Awards have been announced and there were plenty of surprises. Many of the most talked about performances got nominated, from Brendan Fraser in The Whale to the showdown between Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All At Once and Cate Blanchett in Tár for Best Actress. There were certainly some surprises, like Andrea Riseborough in To Leslie and Brain Tyree Herny for Causeway, and certainly some major snubs, like Viola Davis in The Woman King, Paul Dano for The Fabelmans, and Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, just to name a few.
Yet there were plenty of great performances that went overlooked by the Academy Awards. These great cinematic performances went mostly overlooked by the Oscars and other awards voting bodies. They may not have had the biggest awards push, but these are all great performances that should not be slept on.
Dale Dickey in A Love Song
Dale Dickey has been one of the best working character actors since making her Broadway debut in The Merchant of Venice in 1989. Since then, she has been a welcome presence in a wide variety of films like Winter's Bone, Hell or Highwater, Iron Man 3, Palm Springs, and many more. In 2022, she got the chance at a lead role in the romantic drama A Love Song, a sweetly intimate story about a widow looking to reconnect with a former high school love.
The movie is a beautiful character study, and Dickey anchors the film with a heartbreakingly moving performance that shows how great of a performer she is. A Love Song premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022 and was released theatrically on July 29, 2022, and while it did receive positive reviews from critics, it sadly never gained the momentum of awards attention that the film and the actress deserved.
Aubrey Plaza in Emily the Criminal
Most audiences associate Aubrey Plaza with comedic work like her role in Parks and Recreations or films like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. Yet Plaza has dipped her toes into dramatic work like on the FX series Legion and the dark satire Ingrid Goes West. Emily the Criminal premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022 and opened in theaters on August 12, 2022, and critics immediately took note of Plaza's captivating performance.
Plaza plays a young woman trying to get out of debt and make a career for herself, who ends up turning to a life of crime. Her performance is terrific, with her socially relevant monologue chastising unpaid internships being a real showstopper. Likely in another year, Plaza could have pulled off the Best Actress nomination, but 2022 was crowded with higher-profile performances.
Danielle Deadwyler in Till
Danielle Deadwyler not being nominated for Best Actress for Till might be the biggest shock of the nominations and the biggest snub of the season. Every review for Till highlighted Deadwyler's performance as a powerhouse, and she seemed like a lock for Best Actress, yet the performance was completely ignored by the Academy. Deadwyler had been nominated by multiple critics' awards associations and a Screen Actors Guild nomination, but that wasn't enough for the Academy.
Gabriel LaBelle in The Fabelmans
The Fabelmans has generated a great deal of awards buzz, locking seven Academy Award nominations including Best Actress for Michelle Williams and Best Supporting Actor for Judd Hirsch. Yet it is the actual star of the movie, Gabriel LaBelle, who has been sadly overlooked much of the awards season. The Fabelmans' is a fictional take on the life of director Steven Spielberg, with LaBelle playing Sammy the film's stand-in for the young Spielberg. LaBelle is the main character and while the parents get the more showy role, it is Labelle who is given much of the quite more emotionally devastating scenes.
The two standouts are the moment where he discovers his mother's emotional affair, all done without a single line of dialogue, yet all conveyed with his face, and the other is the scene where he yells at his school bully. These scenes not only showcase an awards-worthy performance but a breakout young star with a bright future ahead of him.
Keke Palmer in Nope
Keke Palmer is the co-lead of Nope, and the star delivers an incredible performance that combines comedy and dramatic pathos. She gets some of the movie's biggest laughs but is also given the film's epic emotional climactic scene and the star manages both with ease. It seemed like a long-shot that Palmer would score a nomination for Nope, despite how good the reviews were for the film, but it is still disappointing to see the performance go unnoticed by the Academy.
Adam Sandler in Hustle
It really does feel like the Academy hates Adam Sandler. Likely due to the actor's history of broad poorly reviewed comedy movies, even when the actor goes outside his comfort zone and delivers critically praised dramatic performances, he is still ignored.
Punch Drunk Love might be his best movie, and the actor didn't get nominated for that, and he was snubbed for Uncut Gems despite many people thinking it was one of the best performances of 2019. While some thought the Academy might make up for that snub by nominating him for Hustle, this is another case of a great Adam Sandler performance going unrecognized by the Academy.
Lashana Lynch in The Woman King
The Woman King was shut out of every category at the Oscars, which has baffled many. While most of the attention was paid to Viola Davis in the lead role, Lashana Lynch was a standout as Izogie and should have been considered for Best Supporting Actress.
Lynch has been a breakout star over the past few years with roles in films like Captain Marvel and No Time To Die, and her role in The Woman King cements her as one of the best actors working today, taking on a role that needs to be both the wise mentor, comedic relief, and tough warrior and does all three with ease. The awards season seems like it is missing something without Lynch in the Best Supporting Actress race.
Mia Goth in Pearl
Horror movie performances rarely get awards attention, so Mia Goth in Pearl was always a long shot. Yet there was hope she could be the wild card nomination. While her role in X required double the work, as she played two different characters and one under heavy makeup, Pearl was the more showy performance that in many ways was riffing on the classic, Oscar-winning roles of technicolor classics in the early days of Hollywood. The movie seemed to be too niche for the voting members and Goth was snubbed, but the snub is likely softened with how the character of Pearl has now become a horror movie icon.