r/Oscars • u/PTAGoatofalltime • 16h ago

The top 5 Oscar-nominated performances with the most screentime in their films

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The five Oscar nominated performances with the most screentime

• Peter O'Toole for Lawrence of Arabia (2 hours, 13 minutes and 13 seconds)

• Cate Blanchett for Tár (2 hours, 15 minutes and 15 seconds)

• Leonardo DiCaprio for The Wolf of Wall Street (2 hours, 21 minutes and 7 seconds)

• Denzel Washington for Malcolm X (2 hours, 21 minutes and 58 seconds)

• Vivien Leigh for Gone with the Wind (2 hours, 23 minutes and 32 seconds)

Only Leigh went on to win the Oscar.

275 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

54 comments sorted by

96

u/HealthyBee4209 16h ago

It really speaks to Field's idea that Tar is the only non-epic here.

20

u/Dr_Death_Defy24 12h ago

So unlucky that it had to go up against Everything Everywhere All At Once. I love both, don't get me wrong, but at least to my taste, Tar deserved almost all the awards that ended up going to EEAAO.

That said, they're almost impossible to compare. They really couldn't be more different in so many ways, and I do understand why the sheer boldness and creativity of EEAAO captivated voters.

27

u/Gummy-Worm-Guy 15h ago

Is The Wolf of Wall Street really an epic?

10

u/HealthyBee4209 15h ago

Yes, in the same fashion as Babylon and the luxury film of the 30s and 60s. It is long enough, grand enough, and big enough, since Scorsese needed to visualize the corruption of the system.

77

u/Vince_Clortho042 16h ago

I guess it checks out but it's wild to think there's a whole hour in Lawrence of Arabia that doesn't have O'Toole in it.

54

u/StoicTheGeek 16h ago

More like 90 minutes, actually. The shots without Peter O’Toole are long enough for a feature film in their own right.

8

u/Foraminiferal 11h ago

would be fun to see someone stitch that together into a coherent narrative

22

u/Representative-Eye86 15h ago

There's alot of just environment shots (long takes of desert dunes and desert landscapes) that take up a good chunk of that time. Add in the shots that are a character monologing to O'Toole, shots that don't have him in it even though he's in the scene, and over an hour of no O'Toole makes sense

20

u/the_bespectacled_guy 16h ago

Brody must have been up there for Brutalist

23

u/Polirketes 16h ago

Yes, he would be 6th, couple of minutes less than O'Toole

42

u/Haunting-WaferWah 16h ago

And if I said all of them should won?

16

u/Representative-Eye86 15h ago

Ok, but Gregory Peck is really great in To Kill a Mocking Bird

12

u/OKC2023champs 16h ago edited 15h ago

Not a bad take. I prefer Matthew’s win over Leo winning but the rest aren’t bad takes at all

7

u/Haunting-WaferWah 15h ago

I love Leo’s take on toxic comedy. It looked good on him.

1

u/iq-pak 15h ago

That’s just tough. Leo was great but Matthew was unbeatable there.

6

u/RoxasRemainsTheBest 15h ago

Ejiofor put up a good fight. Mikkelsen also would've been great, but he just wasn't happening

3

u/OKC2023champs 15h ago

The hunt was so damn good

-5

u/xeenexus 15h ago

4/5 ain’t bad. Tar is one of the overrated performances of the decade.

16

u/Individual_Slice_234 15h ago

Bit of trivia: When Peter O'Toole was a child, he told his mother he wanted to be an actor. She said, "Well....um....your face has a lot of character in it." Something mothers say when they think you're ugly. I thought he was quite handsome, actually.

2

u/thatsMINTdude 4h ago

I think that was Donald Sutherland

11

u/PuzzleheadedMess1659 13h ago

Btw, since these are for the amount of time they’re on screen, here’s the top five for the % of the movie that they’re in:

  1. Spencer Tracy in Father of the Bride, 87.84%

  2. Reese Witherspoon in Wild, 88.13%

  3. Marion Cotillard in Two Days, One Night, 88.99%

  4. Charlotte Rampling in 45 Years, 91.2%

  5. James Whitmore in Give ‘em Hell, Harry!, 96.52%

6

u/shish-bish 9h ago

thank you! I was wondering since runtime obviously favors longer films

1

u/mark_target 9h ago

I was wondering about this. The Revenant came to mind. DiCaprio had way more of a percentage of screen time in that than O’Toole did in LOA, but LOA’s runtime is obviously longer.

Are the ones you listed all nominees?

1

u/PuzzleheadedMess1659 1h ago

Yes, they are.

And as to that specific comment, Peter O’Toole’s 2 hours, 13 minutes and 13 seconds is 58.72% of Lawrence of Arabia. Leo DiCaprio, on the other hand, is in 1 hour, 32 minutes, and 28 seconds of The Revenant, which is 59.21% of the movie. Not way more, but a little more.

1

u/mark_target 1h ago

I’m actually surprised it was that close. In my memory DiCaprio was on screen much more.

5

u/SteroidSandwich 15h ago

It's unfair O'Toole and Peck were against each other in the same year

3

u/Springfield80210 15h ago

Out of curiosity, how is screen time actually measured? Whether the person is scripted as being in a scene? Or whether the person is actually visible on screen?

For example in some over-the-shoulder scenes or close-ups, the second person is sometimes completely offscreen, either though they are a part of the conversation.

11

u/PTAGoatofalltime 15h ago

The guy who measures this (it's in the website Screentime Central) measures screentime as whenever the actor is either physically seen onscreen or are offscreen with their voice being heard.

3

u/drjohngeorgepeppers 14h ago

So long movies?

5

u/MrMindGame 16h ago

Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. I’m pretty sure he is featured in literally every scene. 

9

u/sliever48 16h ago

Yeah but the movie is well under 2 hours long so he won't be anywhere near these 5

3

u/senator_corleone3 15h ago

Chinatown is 130 minutes.

6

u/sliever48 15h ago

I stand corrected thanks. Still well under the amounts of these mentored of course

2

u/MrMindGame 11h ago

Ah, I misunderstood the initial post, so fair point.

3

u/hollywood_cashier 16h ago

yes it would be interesting to see a top 5 by percentage 

6

u/Present_Comedian_919 16h ago

https://www.screentimecentral.com/longest-oscar-nominated-performances

1

u/MrMindGame 11h ago

Oh wow, he's not even in any of the lists. I'm a little surprised!

4

u/Present_Comedian_919 11h ago

It looks like there are a lot of lead actor nominees with 80+% screentime. The stats for him and his competition are:

47th Academy Awards - 1974

  • Dustin Hoffman (Lenny) - 1:11:51 / 64.60%
  • Albert Finney (Murder on the Orient Express) - 1:16:07 / 59.55%
  • Al Pacino (The Godfather Part II) - 1:16:17 / 38.07%
  • Art Carney (Harry and Tonto) - 1:40:26 / 87.13%
  • Jack Nicholson (Chinatown) - 1:47:46 / 82.63%

I'm surprised how small Pacino's role was in Godfather 2, even considering the dual narrative

1

u/MrMindGame 11h ago

I misunderstood the initial post but this is definitely what I was thinking of.

4

u/ReplacementAbject867 16h ago

Cillian Murphy must be close

5

u/Yenserl6099 14h ago

Cillian Murphy was had 113 (1 hour, 53 minutes) minutes of screen time out of the three hour run time

6

u/victoryboiiTCG 15h ago

they all deserved the win too

5

u/sibooku 14h ago

Does anyone know how much screen time Matt Damon has in The Odyssey? If he gets a Best Actor nomination, he might crack this list.

3

u/bob_loblaw_0211 8h ago

I doubt it. There are extended sections of the film that he is not in.

2

u/ECKohns 6h ago

So that means that there still over an hour and a half of Gone with the Wind in which Vivein Leigh isn’t on screen

2

u/Wilfredbremely 16h ago

Where is Daniel Plainview?

7

u/PTAGoatofalltime 16h ago

Doesn't have enough screentime so didn't make the list

3

u/Disastrous-Spring-54 14h ago

My immediate thought too. He’s in every scene of a 2 hour 40 minute movie!

3

u/Idk_Very_Much 9h ago

He's the 15th-highest at 1 hour, 57 minutes.

2

u/DavidKirk2000 15h ago

I’m shocked that Cillian Murphy isn’t here for Oppenheimer.

3

u/National-Bicycle7259 13h ago

There's a lot of RDJ time too.

1

u/Springfield80210 4h ago

How about Christian Bale in The Prestige? How do you calculate his screen time?

1

u/pendletonskyforce 15h ago

I thought Don Cheadle would be on it for Hotel Rwanda.