Quentin Tarantino changed the film industry forever with his brand of independent filmmaking; the idea of a self-financed feature film that succeeded off of the buzz of the Sundance Film Festival was a game-changing moment for the industry, as evidenced by the success of Reservoir Dogs. While Reservoir Dogs was a modest hit, Pulp Fiction was the defining film of an entire generation and skyrocketed to many lists of the all-time greatest films.
Pulp Fiction was a success with critics and audiences, but it was also a major contender at the Oscars. Tarantino won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and the film also received nominations for Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, and Uma Thurman. Sadly, Tarantino and the film itself ended up losing both Best Picture and Best Director to Forrest Gump in a win that feels particularly egregious considering that film’s faded reputation. Tarantino has yet to win a directing award, although he did end up receiving a second writing win for Django Unchained.
Tarantino sadly did not win what would have been his third Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for or his first Best Director award for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, even if both categories’ winner, his personal friend Bong Joon-ho, thanked him later on in the same evening. What’s even stranger is that his films seem to be passed up for their excellent performances more often than not, despite the wins for Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz. These performances in Quentin Tarantino movies deserved Oscar nominations.
8 Michael Madsen – Reservoir Dogs
Reservoir Dogs is packed with great characters, and Tarantino’s debut feature certainly deserved to get the attention from awards bodies that he didn’t get until Pulp Fiction a few years later. While Steve Buscemi and Tim Roth were also worthy of recognition, it was Madsen’s sadistic performance as Vic Vega that deserved to earn the film a Best Supporting Actor nomination.
7 Harvey Keitel — Pulp Fiction
While Jackson, Travolta, and Thurman all earned Oscar nominations for their performances in Pulp Fiction, they’re just a small sample size of the great actors in the film. When looking at who else could have been in contention for the Best Supporting Actor award outside of Jackson, there’s a compelling case to be made for Bruce Willis, Tim Roth, and Christopher Walken. However, it’s Keitel scene stealing work as “The Wolfe” that leaves the film with one of its most memorable scenes; even though Jackson and Travolta were doing some of the best work of their careers, Keitel managed to upstage them both.
6 Pam Grier — Jackie Brown
Those that complain that Tarantino has not offered women with significant roles in his feature films have clearly not seen Jackie Brown, his loving tribute to Blaxploitation cinema that went criminally ignored for decades. The story of a flight attendant caught in a complex heist was inspired by Tarantino’s love of classic crime novels, and Grier did the genre justice with her performance as the titular character. While Robert Forster did receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his work on the film, Grier was sadly snubbed in the Best Actress category.
5 Uma Thurman — Kill Bill Vol. 1
It’s unfortunate that the Academy Awards often overlook action films and performances, as they are no less demanding and require the same commitment as any of the more “serious” material that tends to earn Oscars. It’s impossible to look at performances like Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road, Keanu Reeves in John Wick, or Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Fallout and argue against their merit, but there are few action icons in cinema as memorable as Uma Thurman in the Kill Bill films. Thurman’s work in Kill Bill Vol. 1 was clearly worthy of a Best Actress nomination for establishing “The Bride” as the action icon of a generation.
4 Melanie Laurent — Inglourious Basterds
Inglourious Basterds marked Tarantino’s return to the Oscars for the first time in many years, as his films had failed to receive major nominations ever since Pulp Fiction. Considering that the film is a revenge epic about the destruction of the Nazi party at the end of World War II, it would have been great to see Melanie Laurent receive a Best Supporting Actress nomination for playing the orchestrator of the plot to kill Adolf Hitler. It also would have been a great way to honor film history, as Laurent’s character is the owner of a classic theater.
3 Leonardo DiCaprio — Django Unchained
Even though Christoph Waltz won his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Django Unchained, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t other performances in the film that were also worthy of recognition, including Jamie Foxx and Samuel L. Jackson.
However, Leonardo DiCaprio’s demented performance as the sadistic slave owner Calvin Candie may be the best villain that Tarantino has ever created. It does seem odd that DiCaprio was ignored, as the Oscars occasionally do nominate multiple supporting actors for the same film. It also would have fallen in line with the great villains that have taken home the Best Supporting Actor trophy, such as Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight and Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men.
2 Samuel L. Jackson — The Hateful Eight
Jackson has been one of Tarantino’s most important collaborators, and it’s frankly shocking to see that he has not received any recognition from the Academy Awards since his work on Pulp Fiction. When looking at the trajectory and density of Jackson’s movie career, it’s hard not to note the glaring oversight of not rewarding him for his work in films like Do The Right Thing, Changing Lanes, A Time To Kill, or Unbreakable.
Jackson’s work with Tarantino will always be what he’s best remembered for. Even though The Hateful Eightisn’t as good of a film as Pulp Fiction or Django Unchained, it may be Jackson’s greatest performance; his hilarious, yet chilling monologue delivered at the end of the film’s first act is perhaps the best thing that Tarantino has ever written.
1 Julia Butters — Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is a love letter to cinema, and there’s no scene that embodies that better than the conversation between Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) and a young actress (breakout star Julia Butters). While it’s a brief role, Butters is more memorable than most of the Best Supporting Actress winners in recent years.