2) Jeff Bridges
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Won For: Crazy Heart
Should Have Won For: The Big Lebowski
Hands up – who actually saw Crazy Heart? More pertinently, hands up who saw it and thought to themselves that Jeff Bridges gave his definitive performance in it? Of course, that’s not going to be the one Bridges movie that people remember years from now. The one they’ll remember is the one which Bridges took his enduring nickname from: The Big Lebowski.
Bridges doesn’t just make an iconic character wholesale of Jeff ‘The Dude’ Lebowski. His is a quirky comedic performance that confidently goes big and yet always retains its sense of realism. FYI, Academy voters didn’t even nominate Bridges for The Big Lebowski. Maybe the weirdly sexualized, bowling-based dream sequence put them off.