The Actor With The Most Oscar Nominations But No Win

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has held almost 100 ceremonies, which means people have been screaming that they got it all wrong in various categories since the Calvin Coolidge administration. It's a bit like in sports where people root for their favorites (i.e. somewhere, there's a contingent of moviegoers indignant that Terry Bradshaw failed to take home a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Hal Needham's "Hooper"), only that people are arguing over intangible accomplishments rather than touchdowns and what have you.

Once you get used to the way the Oscars work (e.g. they really hate comedy), you realize there is a certain type of film that's likely to be honored, and those certain types of films attract a certain type of actor — ergo, to a large extent, it's futile to pull for favorites. Arnold Schwarzenegger was long one of the most popular actors on the planet, but he was portrayed by the media as a walking caricature of himself; only now, in his 70s, could he earn a Best Actor nomination for playing a muscleman in winter. (Consider this Hollywood's reminder that it's never too late to drag John Milius' "Legend of Conan" out of mothballs.)

And yet, there are those actors who are routinely great in a traditional sense, Shakespearean-trained dynamos who light up the screen time and again. These people, you sense, are due Oscars. If they don't get it their first, second or even third time out, rest assured they will get it. So, what happens when they reach the end of their run on this whirling orb and they're light one competitive Oscar? You call them Peter O'Toole, and you apologize.

No actor has ever arrived more loudly than Peter O'Toole in "Lawrence of Arabia." The blonde Brit with the shimmering blue eyes possessed an exquisite instrument that could whimper and boom in the space of a single sentence. Watching him blow that match out, our ticket to the Arabian desert, will always be breathtaking. He would've been a cinch to win the Oscar had he not been up against Gregory Peck, who, with his fifth nomination (for "To Kill a Mockingbird"), was considered wildly overdue for a win. The thinking, 62 years ago, was that O'Toole's day would come.

It did and it didn't. After seven nominations and no wins, O'Toole received an honorary Oscar in 2003, which he cherished. In his speech, he declared, "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, my foot! I have my very own Oscar now to be with me till death us do part." But there's something about winning a competitive Oscar, and, sure enough, O'Toole got one more crack at it with what felt like a swan song performance in Roger Michell's "Venus." But Forest Whitaker in "The Last King of Scotland" declared it was not to be. And so O'Toole set a record that stands to this day: eight nominations and no wins.

O'Toole died seven years later, at which point Oscars felt trivial. And they are. They are, again, awards given for intangible achievement. The gift was getting to see O'Toole in "Lawrence of Arabia," "The Ruling Class," "My Favorite Year," and so much more. We were blessed.