Great Actresses Without an Oscar
by ser-pin | created - 24 Jan 2016 | updated - 25 Nov 2018 | Public
1. Glenn Close
Actress | Fatal Attraction
Eight time Academy Award-nominated actress Glenn Close was born and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. She is the daughter of Elizabeth Mary H. "Bettine" (Moore) and William Taliaferro Close (William Close), a prominent doctor. Both of her parents were from upper-class families.
Glenn was a noted ...
2. Naomi Watts
Actress | Mulholland Dr.
Naomi Ellen Watts was born on September 28, 1968 in Shoreham, England to Myfanwy Edwards "Miv" (Roberts), an antiques dealer and costume/set designer, and Peter Watts (Peter Anthony Watts), Pink Floyd's road manager. Her maternal grandfather was Welsh. Her father died when she was seven and she ...
3. Amy Adams
Actress | Arrival
Amy Lou Adams was born in Vicenza, Veneto, Italy, to American parents, Kathryn (Hicken) and Richard Kent Adams, a U.S. serviceman who was stationed at Caserma Ederle in Italy at the time. She was raised in a Mormon family of seven children in Castle Rock, Colorado, and has English, as well as ...
4. Annette Bening
Actress | American Beauty
Annette Bening was born on May 29, 1958 in Topeka, Kansas, the youngest of four children. Her family moved to California when she was young, and she grew up there. She graduated from San Francisco State University and began her acting career with the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, ...
5. Toni Collette
Actress | The Sixth Sense
Toni Collette is an Academy Award-nominated Australian actress, best known for her roles in The Sixth Sense (1999) and Little Miss Sunshine (2006).
Collette was born Toni Collett (she later added an "e") on November 1, 1972, in Blacktown, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. She is the first of three...
6. Samantha Morton
Actress | Minority Report
Samantha Morton has established herself as one of the finest actors of her generation, winning Oscar nominations for her turns in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown (1999) and Jim Sheridan's In America (2002). She has the talent to become one of the major performers in the cinema of this young century.
...
7. Helena Bonham Carter
Actress | Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Helena Bonham Carter is an actress of great versatility, one of the UK's finest and most successful.
Bonham Carter was born May 26, 1966 in Golders Green, London, England, the youngest of three children of Elena (née Propper de Callejón), a psychotherapist, and Raymond Bonham Carter, a merchant ...
8. Fernanda Montenegro
Actress | Central do Brasil
Arlette Pinheiro Esteves da Silva was born on 16th October 1929 in Rio de Janeiro. She adopted the name "Fernanda" because she thought it sounded good. "Montenegro" came after her family doctor.
In late 40s she was translating and adapting famous theater plays to radio. She begun her artistic life ...
9. Michelle Pfeiffer
Actress | The Fabulous Baker Boys
Michelle Pfeiffer was born in Santa Ana, California to Dick and Donna Pfeiffer. She has an older brother and two younger sisters - Dedee Pfeiffer, and Lori Pfeiffer, who both dabbled in acting and modeling but decided against making it their lives' work. She graduated from Fountain Valley High ...
10. Isabelle Adjani
Actress | Possession
Isabelle Yasmine Adjani was born in Gennevilliers, Hauts-de-Seine, a suburb of Paris, to Emma Augusta "Gusti" (Schweinberger) and Mohammed Adjani. Her father was a Kabyle Algerian, from Iferhounène, and her mother was a Bavarian German. She grew up speaking German fluently. After winning a school ...
11. Laura Linney
Actress | The Big C
Laura Leggett Linney was born in New York City on February 5, 1964, into a theatre family. Her father was prominent playwright Romulus Linney, whose own great-grandfather was a congressman from North Carolina. Her mother, Miriam Anderson (Leggett), is a nurse. Although she did not live in her ...
12. Catherine Deneuve
Actress | 8 femmes
Catherine Fabienne Deneuve was born October 22, 1943 in Paris, France, to actor parents Renée Simonot and Maurice Dorléac. She made her movie debut in 1957, when she was barely a teenager and continued with small parts in minor films, until Roger Vadim gave her a meatier role in Vice and Virtue (...
13. Judy Davis
Actress | Husbands and Wives
Davis was educated at Loreto Convent and the Western Institute of Technology and graduated from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in 1977. She found international success with the role of Adela Quested in A Passage to India (1984). Her performance was nominated an Academy Award for Best...
14. Emily Watson
Actress | Gosford Park
Emily Watson was born and raised in London, the daughter of Katharine (Venables), an English teacher, and Richard Watson, an architect. After a self-described sheltered upbringing, Watson attended university for three years in Bristol, studying English literature. She applied to drama school and ...
15. Lauren Bacall
Actress | To Have and Have Not
Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924, in New York City. She was the daughter of Natalie Weinstein-Bacal, a Romanian Jewish immigrant, and William Perske, who was born in New Jersey, to Polish Jewish parents. Her family was middle-class, with her father working as a ...
16. Joan Allen
Actress | Room
Joan Allen was born on August 20, 1956 in Rochelle, Illinois, the youngest of four children. She is the daughter of homemaker Dorothea Marie (Wirth) and gas station owner James Jefferson Allen. Her mother's family was German, and her father had English, Scots-Irish, and German ancestry. She ...
17. Barbara Hershey
Actress | Black Swan
Barbara Hershey was born Barbara Lynn Herzstein in Hollywood, California, to Melrose (Moore) and Arnold Nathan Herzstein, a horse racing columnist. Her father, born in Manhattan, was from a Jewish family (from Hungary and Russia), and her mother, originally from Arkansas, had English and ...
18. Gena Rowlands
Actress | The Notebook
Virginia Cathryn "Gena" Rowlands is an American film, stage, and television actress, whose career in the entertainment industry has spanned over six decades. A four-time Emmy and two-time Golden Globe winner, she is known for her collaborations with her late actor-director husband John Cassavetes ...
19. Sigourney Weaver
Actress | Alien Resurrection
Sigourney Weaver has created a host of memorable characters, both dramatic and comic, ranging from Ripley in Alien to Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist to Gwen/Tawny in Galaxy Quest and most recently, 14-year-old Kiri in Avatar: The Way of Water. With a career spanning over 50 years, Weaver has ...
20. Debra Winger
Actress | Terms of Endearment
Mary Debra Winger was born May 16, 1955 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ruth (Felder), an office manager, and Robert Jack Winger, a meat packer. She is from a Jewish family (originally from Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire). Her maternal grandparents called her Mary, while her parents called her Debra...
21. Deborah Kerr
Actress | The King and I
Deborah Jane Trimmer was born on 30 September 1921 in Glasgow, Scotland, the daughter of Captain Arthur Kerr Trimmer. She was educated at Northumberland House, Clifton, Bristol. She first performed at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, London. She subsequently performed with the Oxford ...
22. Norma Aleandro
Actress | La historia oficial
Norma Aleandro is the Grande Dame of Argentine theater and cinema not only because she was not content to have trodden the stage as early as the the age of nine, she is still active in theater and cinema in 2011. Her last film to date, Daniel Burman's La suerte en tus manos (2012) is in ...
23. Miranda Richardson
Actress | The Crying Game
Miranda Richardson was born in Southport, Lancashire, England on March 3, 1958, to Marian Georgina (Townsend) and William Alan Richardson, a marketing executive. She has one sister, eight years her senior. Her parents and sister are not involved in the performing arts. At an early age she performed...
24. Bette Midler
Soundtrack | Beaches
Multi Grammy Award-winning singer/comedienne/author Bette Midler has also proven herself to be a very capable actress in a string of both dramatic and comedic roles. Midler was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on December 1, 1945. She is the daughter of Ruth (Schindel), a seamstress, and Fred Midler, a ...
25. Doris Day
Soundtrack | Love Me or Leave Me
One of America's most loved actresses was born Doris Mary Kappelhoff on April 3, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Alma Sophia (Welz), a housewife, and William Joseph Kappelhoff, a music teacher and choir master. Her grandparents were all German immigrants. She had two brothers, Richard, who died ...
26. Leslie Caron
Actress | Gigi
French ballet dancer Leslie Caron was discovered by the legendary MGM star Gene Kelly during his search for a co-star in one of the finest musicals ever filmed, the Oscar-winning An American in Paris (1951), which was inspired by and based on the music of George Gershwin. Leslie's gamine looks and ...
27. Natalie Wood
Actress | Rebel Without a Cause
Natalie Wood was an American actress of Russian and Ukrainian descent. She started her career as a child actress and eventually transitioned into teenage roles, young adult roles, and middle-aged roles. She drowned off Catalina Island on November 29, 1981 at age 43.
Wood was born July 20, 1938 in ...
28. Isabelle Huppert
Actress | Elle
Isabelle Huppert was born March 16, 1953, in Paris, France, but spent her childhood in Ville d'Avray. Encouraged by her mother Annick Huppert (who was a teacher of English), she followed the Conservatory of Versailles and won an acting prize for her work in Alfred de Musset's "Un caprice". She then...
29. Keira Knightley
Actress | Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Keira Christina Knightley was born March 26, 1985 in the South West Greater London suburb of Richmond. She is the daughter of actor Will Knightley and actress turned playwright Sharman Macdonald. An older brother, Caleb Knightley, was born in 1979. Her father is English, while her Scottish-born ...
30. Lilli Palmer
Actress | Anastasia - Die letzte Zarentochter
A charming, elegant, and exceedingly popular international film star with a gentle, understated beauty, actress Lilli Palmer was born as Lilli Marie Peiser on May 24, 1914, in Posen, Prussia. She was the daughter of Rose Lissman, an Austrian Jewish actress, and Alfred Peiser, a German Jewish ...
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