From Pamela Anderson to Daniel Craig, these are biggest Oscar snubs of 2025

It's the end of the road for many of this season's Academy Awards hopefuls.

After months of roundtables, red carpets and glad-handing at parties, plenty of expected names were missing from Thursday’s Oscar nominations. Hugh Grant (“Heretic”), Danielle Deadwyler (“The Piano Lesson”) and Clarence Maclin (“Sing Sing”) were among the most surprising actors snubbed for gold, while bubble contenders "A Real Pain," “Challengers,” “September 5" and “Nosferatu” were excluded from best picture.

The catastrophic Southern California wildfires, combined with winter storms and the presidential inauguration, have put an understandable damper on the latest leg of awards season, with most of this year’s Oscar contenders stepping back from the usual campaigning in recent weeks. Nevertheless, the ceremony is still scheduled to go on in Los Angeles on March 2, airing on ABC and streaming on Hulu (7 p.m. ET/4 PT).

Here are more of the most jaw-dropping actors and films that were left out of the 2025 Oscar nominations:

Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox.

Selena Gomez

The former Disney Channel star dutifully campaigned for her dramatic turn in “Emilia Pérez,” playing the jilted wife of an ex-drug kingpin. Despite mixed reactions to her speaking Spanish in the film, Gomez still picked up nods from the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards. But she ultimately couldn’t cross the finish line, although the Oscars did recognize her co-stars Karla Sofía Gascón and Zoe Saldana.

Pamela Anderson

Anderson is luminous in the gritty Las Vegas drama “The Last Showgirl,” playing an aging dancer fighting to prove she’s still relevant. The “Baywatch” bombshell has been a winning presence on the campaign trail, earning surprise nominations from the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards. But her comeback narrative is perhaps too similar to newly minted Oscar nominee Demi Moore (“The Substance”), and she couldn’t squeak into the ultra-competitive best actress field.

Margaret Qualley

Qualley is one of Hollywood's most in-demand rising stars, working with a stellar roster of directors that includes Ethan Coen ("Drive-Away Dolls"), Yorgos Lanthimos ("Poor Things") and Quentin Tarantino ("Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"). We figured her go-for-broke turn in "The Substance" would be the Academy's chance to anoint her with a best supporting actress nomination, given that they showered the body horror film with five nods including best picture. Alas, she was passed over in favor of fellow young actresses Ariana Grande ("Wicked") and Monica Barbaro ("A Complete Unknown").

Angelina Jolie

Long before awards season even began, many pundits predicted that Jolie could win her second Oscar for “Maria,” portraying the tragic opera soprano Maria Callas. The ultra-private A-lister put her best foot forward, doing numerous talk shows and Q&As, and scooping up Golden Globe and Critics Choice nods in the process. But the double whammy of SAG and BAFTA snubs showed a lack of excitement for the movie, and she was unable to rebound come Oscar nomination morning.

Daniel Craig

The former James Bond is incredible in one of this season’s most criminally underseen films: “Queer,” a hallucinogenic journey through lust and yearning, starring Craig as a drug-addled expat pining for a younger man (Drew Starkey). Despite divisive reactions from critics, Craig still scored best actor nods from the Golden Globe and SAG awards, as well as a win from the National Board of Review. But his successful streak stalled out with a shocking hometown snub from BAFTA, and the British megastar was woefully robbed of his first Oscar nomination.

Nicole Kidman

Like Jolie, Kidman was considered an early awards front-runner for “Babygirl,” after winning the prestigious best actress prize at last September’s Venice Film Festival, which has gone to eventual Oscar nominees Cate Blanchett (“Tár”) and Penelope Cruz (“Parallel Mothers”). But the Oscars have a habit of nominating Kidman for her safest performances (see: “Being the Ricardos”), and perhaps the sexually charged “Babygirl” was too audacious for more chaste voters.

Denzel Washington

After ecstatic early reactions to “Gladiator II,” multiple pundits predicted that Washington could win a third Oscar for his delicious turn as a Roman power player. But the hype quickly faded amid tepid critics’ reviews, and Washington was soon passed over by the SAG and BAFTA awards.

Jamie Lee Curtis

The former scream queen has had a late-in-life career makeover as a serious actress, winning an Oscar (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) and an Emmy (FX’s “The Bear”) for her scene-stealing roles the past two years. The afterglow seemed poised to continue with “The Last Showgirl,” with Curtis scoring late-breaking nods from SAG and BAFTA for her work as a leathery cocktail waitress. But her savvy campaigning wasn’t enough to clear a spot in the Oscars’ best supporting actress category.

‘Sing Sing’

After an anemic box-office haul last summer, we predicted that “Sing Sing” would have a “CODA”-like resurgence during awards season, winning over voters and audiences alike with an inspiring story that shines a light on underrepresented voices. But after a promising showing at last November’s Gotham Awards, the true-life prison drama struggled to gain traction. The cast of formerly incarcerated men was snubbed for SAG’s top prize, and the film conspicuously missed best picture and best supporting actor (Maclin) in Thursday’s Oscar nominations.

Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Like recent Oscar winners Da’Vine Joy Randolph (“The Holdovers”) and Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”), Jean-Baptiste swept all the major critics’ prizes for “Hard Truths,” which put her in a prime spot for her second Oscar nomination. But less charitable voters might have been turned off by her character’s surly exterior, which gradually melts over the course of the British dramedy. The film’s distributor, Bleecker Street, has also long struggled to mount robust awards campaigns, and likely failed to get enough eyes on “Hard Truths.”

‘All We Imagine As Light’

Although India didn’t submit it for best international feature film, “All We Imagine As Light” has had a much stronger-than-expected awards season, picking up dozens of nods from critics’ groups, as well as a Golden Globes best director nom for newcomer Payal Kapadia. But the understated, women-led drama sadly came up short in Thursday’s nominations, where many prognosticators had been hoping for some love in best picture or best original screenplay.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Oscar snubs: The biggest names that missed out on 2025 nominations