Source: Wikimedia
Disclaimer: The Ivory Belltower is purely satirical. Don’t take it too seriously.
It is Oscar season, folks! Get excited.
The Oscars have never really been the most squeaky-clean award show, as it has had its fair share of controversy in terms of who is nominated, and, of course, who wins. The Oscars are repeatedly criticized for being “white-washed” due to their lack of diversity in nominations. But, let’s not forget the main problem with the show: Leonardo DiCaprio has still not won. Is your blood boiling? Good. You’re just like everyone else who cares about movies or simply thinks that DiCaprio is a pretty dang good actor.
But why are people hung up on the fact that he hasn’t won? There are plenty of other actors and actresses who have had plenty of complicated roles who haven’t won any either. Spread the wealth, Meryl Streep.
Leonardo has been nominated for Oscars since one of his first roles, “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” in 1994. That’s a long time ago, and since then, he has been nominated three more times, but never came out with a win. I know. Boo the Academy. In 2014, he lost to Matthew McConaughey for best actor since McConaughey gave a career-changing performance in “The Dallas Buyers Club,” for which he lost 38 pounds. Quite the transformation.
But if you want to talk about when actors change dramatically for roles, you can’t fail to mention the king of alteration, Johnny Depp. Through the years, we have seen him as everything from a heartless pirate to a creepy tycoon who invites kids to his factory by luring them with candy. He changes so much for each of his roles that I barely know what he really looks like. Depp, like DiCaprio, has never won an Academy Award, despite being nominated three times. Also, since Hollywood is a small, small world, Depp was actually the “Gilbert Grape” part of “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” Craziness.
Aside from Johnny Depp and our main squeeze Leo, Will Smith, Michelle Pfeiffer and Edward Norton have not had the honor of receiving an Academy Award yet. Pfeiffer is so popular that she was even mentioned in Vance Joy’s “Riptide.” It is nearly inaudible since Vance Joy hardly enunciates, but he mentioned her, I swear. Glenn Close, another Oscar loser, has been nominated six times (two more times than DiCaprio) and never went home with one of those gold statues. Now, that’s really just sad. What can these poor actors do to finally get that gold? Probably nothing. The Academy probably just hates them.
But, the numbers don’t lie. It is strange that DiCaprio has never won an Oscar but neither has Amy Adams, who is clearly good at what she does, since she has been nominated five times. So why does everyone focus on the fact that Leo has never won? My guess is that we are still torn up about the whole leaving-him-to-freeze-in-the-North-Atlantic when there was clearly space for both him and Rose. Maybe this year he will finally win so that we can pity someone else on the list of frequent Oscar losers.