The actors with the most Oscar nominations and no win
On 15 November 2026 Glenn Close receives an honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards. She has been nominated for acting eight times and has never won, which ties her with Peter O’Toole for the most acting nominations without a competitive win. Twelve actors have five or more acting nominations and no win, and three of them have been given the honorary award instead.
The counts below are acting nominations only. Bradley Cooper, for example, has twelve nominations in all, but seven of them are for producing, writing and directing.
Five or more nominations, no win
| ACTOR | NOMINATIONS | HONORARY OSCAR |
|---|---|---|
| Peter O'Toole | 8 | 2003 |
| Glenn Close | 8 | 2026 |
| Richard Burton | 7 | – |
| Deborah Kerr | 6 | 1994 |
| Amy Adams | 6 | – |
| Thelma Ritter | 6 | – |
| Annette Bening | 5 | – |
| Bradley Cooper | 5 | – |
| Irene Dunne | 5 | – |
| Albert Finney | 5 | – |
| Arthur Kennedy | 5 | – |
| Michelle Williams | 5 | – |
Peter O’Toole: eight times for Best Actor
| YEAR | FILM | LOST TO |
|---|---|---|
| 1962 | Lawrence of Arabia | Gregory Peck, To Kill a Mockingbird |
| 1964 | Becket | Rex Harrison, My Fair Lady |
| 1968 | The Lion in Winter | Cliff Robertson, Charly |
| 1969 | Goodbye, Mr. Chips | John Wayne, True Grit |
| 1972 | The Ruling Class | Marlon Brando, The Godfather |
| 1980 | The Stunt Man | Robert De Niro, Raging Bull |
| 1982 | My Favorite Year | Ben Kingsley, Gandhi |
| 2006 | Venus | Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland |
Lawrence of Arabia won Best Picture and six other Oscars, and the man playing Lawrence was not one of the winners. Two years later he was nominated for Becket alongside his co-star Richard Burton, and both lost to Rex Harrison. In 1968 Katharine Hepburn won Best Actress for The Lion in Winter while O’Toole, opposite her, lost Best Actor.
In early 2003, after seven losses, he was offered an honorary award. He wrote back asking them to wait: he was “still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright,” so would they please defer it until he was 80. The Academy replied that the award was for achievement, not retirement, and he accepted it that March. He was nominated once more, for Venus in 2006, at 74, and lost to Forest Whitaker.
Glenn Close: four supporting, four lead
| YEAR | FILM | CATEGORY | LOST TO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | The World According to Garp | Supporting | Jessica Lange, Tootsie |
| 1983 | The Big Chill | Supporting | Linda Hunt, The Year of Living Dangerously |
| 1984 | The Natural | Supporting | Peggy Ashcroft, A Passage to India |
| 1987 | Fatal Attraction | Lead | Cher, Moonstruck |
| 1988 | Dangerous Liaisons | Lead | Jodie Foster, The Accused |
| 2011 | Albert Nobbs | Lead | Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady |
| 2018 | The Wife | Lead | Olivia Colman, The Favourite |
| 2020 | Hillbilly Elegy | Supporting | Youn Yuh-jung, Minari |
Close was nominated for her first three films in a row, all in the supporting category, and lost each time. Her two best-known roles, the stalker in Fatal Attraction and the Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons, came in back-to-back years and lost to Cher and Jodie Foster.
The Wife was the one she was expected to win. She had taken the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild award for it, and Olivia Colman won instead for The Favourite. Colman spent part of her speech talking to Close in the audience, telling her she had been her idol for a long time and that this was not how she wanted it to be.
Richard Burton: seven, and no honorary award
Burton is the only one of the top three who never received anything. His nominations run from My Cousin Rachel in 1952 to Equus in 1977, and twice he shared the ballot with someone from the same film. In 1964 he and O’Toole were both nominated for Becket. In 1966 he and Elizabeth Taylor, his wife at the time, were both nominated for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Only she won, and Best Actor went to Paul Scofield for A Man for All Seasons. In 1969 he and O’Toole lost together again, this time to John Wayne.
His last chance was Equus, for which he had won the Golden Globe. The Oscar went to Richard Dreyfuss for The Goodbye Girl. Burton died in 1984, at 58.
Amy Adams: six nominations in 14 years
After Close, Adams has the most nominations without a win of any living actor: Junebug, Doubt, The Fighter, The Master, American Hustle and Vice, between 2006 and 2019. Five of the six were in the supporting category. For The Fighter she lost to Melissa Leo, who played Mark Wahlberg’s mother in the same film.
The honorary award as a consolation
The Academy has used the honorary Oscar to cover for long losing runs more than once. Deborah Kerr received one in 1994 after six losses for Best Actress, O’Toole in 2003, and Close this year. Tom Cruise was given one at the 2025 Governors Awards, after three acting nominations and one as a producer of Top Gun: Maverick.
It has not always been the end of the story. Paul Newman got an honorary Oscar in 1986 after six losses as an actor, and won Best Actor a year later for The Color of Money. O’Toole’s point in 2003 was that the same thing could still happen to him. It did not: Venus was his last nomination, and he died in 2013.
The names that beat them
Three of the people on the winning side of these tables were working under names they were not born with. John Wayne, who beat both O’Toole and Burton in 1969, was Marion Morrison. Ben Kingsley, who beat O’Toole for Gandhi, was Krishna Bhanji, and Cher, who beat Close in 1987, was Cherilyn Sarkisian. There are 150 more like them in Celebrity Real Names.
Most of the films these actors lost with were up for Best Picture as well: Lawrence of Arabia, Becket, The Lion in Winter, The Big Chill, Fatal Attraction, Dangerous Liaisons, The Fighter, American Hustle and Vice. Only Lawrence won. The winners from every year since 1928 are in Best Picture Winners.