Ranker
A-List Actors Talk About Losing Awards
By Ann Casano
January 9, 2025
Perhaps the biggest acting job of an actor’s career is pretending to be happy after hearing someone else’s name winning a significant award. Read about what these A-List actors had to say about losing awards.
Selena Gomez practiced Rachel’s “gracious loser face” from Friends to prepare for the 2024 Emmy Awards. Samuel L. Jackson doesn’t think that it’s an honor just to be nominated. Bette Midler joked that she was “livid” after losing out on the Oscar in 1980.
The whole world watches these actors win or lose on live television. What’s really going on behind the pasted smiles and forced applause?
1′ Samuel L. Jackson Does Not Think It Is An Honor To Be Nominated
Samuel L. Jackson has appeared in over 100 films in his prestigious career. However, the actor only has one Oscar nod for his performance as a spiritual hitman in 1994’s Pulp Fiction.
While the politically correct thing to say for anyone receiving an award nomination is that it is an “honor to be nominated,” Jackson disagrees.
The Unbreakable star told the Associated Press in 2024:
We’ve been in the business long enough to know that folks who go, “Well, it’s just an honor to be nominated,” no it ain’t. It’s an honor to win. You know, you get nominated, folks go “Yeah, I remember that,” or most people forget.
In 2022, Jackson received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement.
2. Sylvester Stallone Told His Disappointed Fans To ‘Hang Onto Their Dreams’ Following His 2016 Oscar Loss
In 2016, it seemed the whole world wanted Sylvester Stallone to win an Oscar for his performance in Creed. However, Mark Rylance wound up taking the trophy for Best Supporting Actor for Bridge of Spies, and Stallone fans were not happy.
But a body blow never kept Stallone down for the long. He thanked the fans for their support following the near-universal disappointment.
Stallone wrote on Instagram:
To all the ‘real Rocky’s’ of the world, Please hang on to your dreams, NEVER GIVE IN, NEVER GIVE OUT, NEVER GIVE UP! thanks for the support.
3. Denzel Washington Said He Probably Went Home And Drank After Losing The Oscar To Kevin Spacey In 2000
By the turn of the century, Denzel Washington had three Oscar nominations and one win for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in 1989’s Civil War film Glory. He was nominated yet again in 2000 for his turn as boxer Rubin Carter in the 1999 biopic The Hurricane.
The actor was hoping to win his first statue for Best Actor; however, Kevin Spacey wound up taking the trophy home for his work in American Beauty.
In a 2024 interview with Esquire, Washington candidly talked about his reaction to hearing Spacey’s name:
I have a memory of turning around and looking at him, and nobody was standing but the people around him.
And everyone else was looking at me.
Not that it was this way. Maybe I felt like everybody was looking at me. Because why would everybody be looking at me? Thinking about it now, I don’t think they were.
Washington also talked about his past issues with alcohol during the interview and how he turned to the bottle to cope with the disappointment:
I’m sure I went home and drank that night. I had to. I don’t want to sound like, Oh, he won my Oscar, or anything like that. It wasn’t like that.
The Cecil B. DeMille Award winner got to take home the trophy for Best Actor two years later for his villainous performance in Training Day.
4. Peter O’Toole Initially Turned Down An Honorary Oscar
Peter O’Toole received eight Oscar nominations for Best Actor over his prolific career. However, the English thespian never took home cinema’s biggest prize.
In 2003, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Board of Governors wanted to make it right and offered O’Toole an honorary Oscar. The Lawrence of Arabia star initially turned down the honor. He wrote to the Academy:
I am still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright. Would the Academy please defer the honor until I am 80?
Academy President Frank Pierson explained to O’Toole the award was about celebrating the actor’s incredible life on the big screen and not about the end of his career.
O’Toole changed his mind and finally got his hands on an Oscar. After Meryl Streep handed him the gold statue, he joked, “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride my foot! I have my very own Oscar now to be with me ’til death do us part.”
5. Bette Midler Has Been In A Faux Oscar Feud With Sally Field For Decades
Bette Midler had her first leading role in the 1979 Janis Joplin-inspired musical drama The Rose. She was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role but lost to Sally Field’s performance in Norma Rae.
Since the 1980 ceremony, Midler has humorously engaged Field in a feud where she contends she was “robbed” of the award. Midler has discussed the loss during concerts and talk show appearances.
During a 2001 interview with Oprah Winfrey, the talk show host asked Midler if she was depressed about losing the Oscar.
Midler responded, “I was livid!”
6. Bill Murray Said You Can’t Get All ‘Ramped Up And Amped Up’ About Awards
Bill Murray went from everyone’s favorite comic actor to an acclaimed thespian. Perhaps Murray’s best dramatic performance came in Sofia Coppola’s 2003 sophomore gem Lost In Translation. The film earned Murray his first and only Oscar nod.
In 2004, Murray’s chances to win the Oscar looked golden after gathering accolades from several other award shows like the Golden Globes. However, Sean Penn went on to win the Oscar for Best Actor that year for his performance in Mystic River.
Murray learned a valuable lesson after missing out on Oscar gold. He explained:
You can’t get all ramped up and amped up about this thing all the time. I mean, I got excited about it once, and it was odd. I won all the prizes, I won literally all the prizes all the way up to the last one. And I really thought, well, “I’ve just to go get this thing, I’ll be right back.” And then I didn’t win, and I thought, “Well, that’s odd. How odd is that? I’m feeling so odd now.” And I came all dressed up and didn’t win. So I’m not going to get all crazy about that.
7. Selena Gomez Pulled Her ‘Friends’ ‘Gracious Loser’ Face After Missing Out On An Emmy Award
Friends superfan Selena Gomez paid homage to the beloved sitcom after losing the 2024 Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series for Only Murders in the Building. After Jean Smart’s name was announced, Gomez gave the TV audience a look at her “losing face,” which she had previously practiced on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
The “losing face” was made famous during a Season 7 episode of Friends when Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) shows Joey (Matt LeBlanc) how to do a “gracious loser face” if he misses out on winning the Soapy Award.
Gomez addressed fan rumors that she did the face at the ceremony on her Instagram Stories: “Facts. @jenniferaniston taught me too lol.”
8. Timothée Chalamet Called It ‘Uniquely Hilarious’ Ripping Up An Acceptance Speech After A Loss
Before turning 30, Timothée Chalamet had four Golden Globe nominations under his belt with zero wins. In 2025, Chalamet earned a Golden Globe nod for his acclaimed turn as Bob Dylan in the biopic A Complete Unknown. However, Adrien Brody won the award for his performance in The Brutalist.
The actor talked to Sirius XM in 2024 about having to rip up his acceptance speech following his first three losses:
This is my fourth Golden Globe nomination. Look, I’ll just say this… There’s nothing more uniquely hilarious and something you cannot share with anyone when you get home and you tear up the little thing that you never had to use and you think to yourself, ‘You narcissistic arrogant prick. On what planet did you think you were gonna use this?’
9. Glenn Close Blames The Press For Making Everything About Winners And Losers
In 2021, Glenn Close lost the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress to Youn Yuh-jung, who won for her performance in Minari. Close was nominated that year for Hillbilly Elegy.
The LA Times ran with the headline, “After 8 Oscar losses, Glenn Close is now tied as the most nominated actor without a win.”
It prompted Sarah Paulson to defend Close in a tweet: “I wish this conversation would cease. She’s brilliant and continues to have an extraordinary and enviable career. Nighty night to this click bait convo to nowheresville.”
Close agreed with Paulson. She said:
First of all, I don’t think I’m a loser.
Who in that category is a loser? You’re there, you’re five people honored for the work that you’ve done by your peers. What’s better than that? And I honestly feel that the press likes to have winners and losers. And then they say, “Who is the worst dressed?” And, you know, “Who made the worst speech?” Forget it. It’s not what it’s about.
