Many believe Leonardo DiCaprio filmed The Revenant as Oscars-bait.
It was his thespian equivalent of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here as it seemed designed to show the Academy’s voting panel he was willing to rack up as many gruelling challenges as possible to finally get his hands on that elusive little golden man.
He wasn’t always so heavily-tipped to finally get the trophy.
It’s become a joke how many times the 41-year-old actor has been snubbed at the ceremony.
Gifs have been constructed of his five Oscars losing faces and hysterical fan forums are filled with the question: ‘Why won’t they let Leo win?’
His 20-year fight for an Oscar has also provoked memes and a video game and his quest to win seems to have been as arduous a journey as that endured by his fur trapper character Hugh Glass in The Revenant.
The video game is called Leo’s Red Carpet Rampage and allows players to help DiCaprio “win the award this time” by racing his 2016 rivals: Matt Damon (for The Martian), Michael Fassbender (Steve Jobs), Eddie Redmayne (The Danish Girl) and Bryan Cranston (Trumbo), across a red carpet.
His Oscars losses so far include: three for best actor, one for best supporting actor and one for best picture as producer.
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Across the board, DiCaprio has been nominated by various awards shows 138 times and out of those nominations only won 34 times.
The last trophy he picked up was a best actor award at this month’s Baftas for his role in The Revenant, which he celebrated with a week-long bender in London during which he partied very hard with a string of blondes including presenter Laura Whitmore.
DiCaprio is this year the biggest bookies’ favourite for Best Actor in Oscar betting history, with odds of 1/100.
The Revenant was a seven-month shoot in sub-zero temperatures and leads the Oscars contenders with 12 nominations including best picture and best director.
It shows his 19 Century hunter character left for dead, watching his son murdered after being mauled by a bear, trekking through miles of icy mountains and kipping inside the disembowelled carcass of a horse.
All Tom Hanks had to do to win his best actor for Forrest Gump was get a square haircut, grow a beard and put on a funny voice.
To mark DiCaprio’s epic awards voyage we dissect each of the box office titan’s losing Oscars mugs.
Watch our video above of all of his reactions to spot the pattern we did.
LOSING FACE ONE
Year 1994
Nomination Best Supporting Actor
Lost To Tommy Lee Jones
Reaction No smile, claps, turns his curtains-topped head to the left
Aged 20, DiCaprio was nominated for playing Arnie, the mentally disabled brother of Johnny Depp’s Gilbert Grape.
Despite the Academy having a traditional fondness for giving gongs to actors skilled enough to realistically portray the handicapped (think Daniel Day-Lewis getting best actor for playing cerebral palsy sufferer Christy Brown in My Left Foot and Robert DeNiro’s nomination for Awakenings) DiCaprio missed this one to veteran Lee Jones for his role as a cop in The Fugitive.
LOSING FACE TWO
Year 2005
Nomination Best Actor
Lost To Jamie Foxx
Reaction No smile, claps, turns head to right
After more than a decade of graft DiCaprio found himself cast by long-time collaborator, director Martin Scorsese, as reclusive OCD-plagued tycoon Howard Hughes in The Aviator.
Reliving Hughes’ epic life took a lot out of DiCaprio but the Academy went for a disability portrayal this year, honouring Jamie Foxx for his role as blind music icon Ray Charles.
LOSING FACE THREE
Year 2007
Nomination Best Actor
Lost To Forest Whitaker
Reaction No smile, claps, turns head to left
Two years after his Aviator defeat DiCaprio was back in the hotseat again, hoping he wouldn’t have to display gracious non-emotion when his face was featured in a little box on TV when the winner was announced.
Unfortunately he was forced to sit and applaud Forest Whitaker when he picked up best actor for playing dictator brute Idi Amin in The Last King Of Scotland.
LOSING FACE FOUR
Year 2014
Double-Nominated For Best Actor and Best Picture as a Producer
Lost To Matthew McConaughey and Steve McQueen
Reactions Best Actor Loss: No smile, opens mouth, claps and speaks to his neighbour on the right
Best Picture Loss: Forced to join standing ovation for 12 Years A Slave’s victory
Not only was DiCaprio nominated as best actor for putting Duracell bunny energy into his performance as crooked broker Jordan Belfort (and one of the best drugs spasms in cinema history) in The Wolf Of Wall Street, he was also nominated for best picture as producer for the Scorsese film.
Yet DiCaprio was not all right, all right, all right when Matthew McConaughey won best actor for his role in Dallas Buyers’ Club and director Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave got best picture.