Overlooked

15 donald_sutherland ORDINARY PEOPLE

(1980, Paramount) With Mary Tyler Moore playing so wildly against type, and Timothy Hutton hogging the psychiatric spotlight, Sutherland was People's only star ignored by the Oscars. Which is understandable: As the devoted husband and dad in Robert Redford's Best Picture winner, the actor exists in the movie's negative spaces -- the ultimate middleman, he's the glue that can't keep the Jarrett clan from coming apart. The thankless role asked Sutherland to pour his heart out as a man who finally dares to confront his unfeeling wife and mourn his cursed sons. The result was hardly ordinary.

16 rosalind_russell HIS GIRL FRIDAY

(1940, Columbia TriStar) Perhaps the speediest movie ever made, Howard Hawks' screwball newspaper comedy has dialogue that clocks in at 100 miles per hour. Russell says she wants out of the news game; her instincts and Cary Grant (her ex-boss and ex-husband) say she wants in. Sparring with Grant in close verbal knife fights, working two phones at once as if mechanized, nabbing a witness with a high-stepping stride and a headlong dive, she is the most quick-witted of all tough broads -- a queen among fast-talking dames.

17 malcolm_mcdowell A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

(1971, Warner) Who knew milk and Beethoven could be so downright disturbing? Throw in a bowler hat and cane, and you have one of cinema's most indelible images of apathetic evil -- an image brought to life by McDowell in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece of ultraviolence. But McDowell was more than simply a visual (and virulent) centerpiece. As ruthless hooligan-turned-aversion therapy patient Alex, he ran the emotional gamut -- delivering riveting portrayals of both sinister charm and helpless dread.

18 katharine_hepburn BRINGING UP BABY

(1938, Turner, not on DVD) You'd think an actress known for playing witty, strong-willed women might have been tragically miscast as what the movie's trailer described as ''a flutter-brained vixen.'' And you might think that a 12-time nominee and four-time winner could not possibly have been overlooked by Oscar. On both counts, you would be wrong. Hepburn fits snugly in Howard Hawks' farce as Susan Vance, an impulsive heiress who sets out to snare zoologist David Huxley (Cary Grant) with the help of her pet leopard, Baby. Like the spotted cat, Hepburn is beautiful, cunning, and damn near impossible to tame.

19 robert_de_niro MEAN STREETS

(1973, Warner) Pick any scene of Martin Scorsese's big Little Italy masterpiece: Johnny Boy tossing a bomb in the mailbox and grinning. Or walking into the bar with a hippie chick under each arm and ''Jumpin' Jack Flash'' on the soundtrack. Or doing an improvised duet with Harvey Keitel. Or swinging wild in a pool-hall brawl. Pick any scene and see De Niro raw, hardly seeming to act, just behaving with crazed charisma. The Godfather Part II would put him on the Oscar map a year later -- and a year late.