All 4 Brad Pitt Acting Oscar Nominations, Ranked

If you’ve watched even just a handful of Hollywood movies from the past few decades, there’s probably a pretty good chance that you’ve come across one that starred Brad Pitt. Put another way, he’s a difficult figure to introduce, just because he’s been around for ages and is about as big as they come, so far as movie stars of the last few decades are concerned (see also Tom Cruise, who’s a similarly hard-to-introduce legendary figure, and who happened to be born the year before Pitt… and, hey, what do you know: both were in Interview with the Vampire, for whatever that’s worth). Even without taking into account Oscar nominations, Pitt’s an undeniable star, thanks to roles in movies like Ocean’s Eleven, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Se7en, Fight Club, and Inglourious Basterds, to name just a few.

When it comes to his Academy Award nominations, though, there are four films he’s received acting nominations for, and all of them are outlined and ranked below. One of those movies had him getting a Best Picture nomination, too, while he’s also been nominated for a Best Picture for producing The Big Short, and was a Best Picture winner because he was a producer for 12 Years a Slave. But yeah, the following will focus on his acting, with all the movies below being good, and ranked based on how great Pitt is in them, and how good they are overall as movies.

4

‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ (2008)

Nominated for Best Actor for playing Benjamin Button

Image via Paramount Pictures

Se7en and Fight Club were mentioned a little earlier, as both starred Brad Pitt. The two of those movies also happened to be directed by David Fincher, who has a knack for making disquieting and intense movies, though The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (which also starred Pitt) was something of a change of pace for the director. It’s based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but is executed in a way that pretty much feels like an epic movie. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button clocks in at about 14 minutes shy of three hours, and justifies that length by being about the entire life of its titular character… a man who, unlike everyone else, ages in reverse, starting the film as an old man and ending it as an infant.

Image via Paramount Pictures

Brad Pitt plays Benjamin Button, but due to the decades-spanning nature of the story, a few other actors are also credited with playing Benjamin at various ages, and special effects are also utilized quite heavily because of the story at hand, and the way the character ages. It still feels like Pitt does enough to be considered for Best Actor, rather than Best Supporting Actor or anything, of course, but the way the film is executed, there’s a lot riding on people who, you know, aren’t Brad Pitt. That might sound like it’s diminishing his performance a little, but it should be stressed that he’s still very good, and adds a great deal to an overall impressive (if slightly flawed and overlong) movie, but that’s just the reason it’s in last place here. It’s still good. It’s just the other performances/movies that earned Pitt nominations were a little better.

3

‘Moneyball’ (2011)

Nominated for Best Actor for playing Billy Beane

Image via Sony Pictures Releasing

Since Brad Pitt was one of the producers of Moneyball, and the movie was nominated for Best Picture, he earned one nomination for producing here, and another for Best Actor, playing the central character in this sports film that’s based on a true story. Well, it’s sort of a sports movie. It’s not a sports movie the same way Rocky or A League of Their Own are sports movies, considering it’s more of a behind-the-scenes look at a particular realm of sports, rather than focusing on the sport itself at ground level. But it still manages to be surprisingly engaging, even if you’re not really a fan of baseball, and think yourself to be the sort of person who’d care even less about strategies used for scouting potential players.

It’s just a very well-made sports drama, not really reinventing the wheel the way Beane might’ve done, but being generally well-oiled, efficiently put together, and largely entertaining.

That’s what Moneyball focuses on: talent scouting, and how Pitt’s character, Billy Beane (a general manager), broke new ground in assembling the Oakland Athletics baseball team in 2002. The screenplay helps a good deal, considering it was credited to Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, and both are more than accomplished writers. Also, Moneyball has a pretty great supporting cast beyond a rock-solid Brad Pitt, as Philip Seymour Hoffman also shines in this, as do the likes of Jonah Hill, Robin Wright, and Chris Pratt. It’s just a very well-made sports drama, not really reinventing the wheel the way Beane might’ve done, but being generally well-oiled, efficiently put together, and largely entertaining.

Moneyball

Release Date

September 23, 2011

Runtime

133 minutes

2

’12 Monkeys’ (1995)

Nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing Jeffrey Goines

Image via Universal Studios

Before 1995, Brad Pitt had certainly turned some heads with certain roles of his (see the aforementioned Interview with the Vampire, and a small but memorable turn in Thelma & Louise), but 1995 was a big year for him, seeing as Se7en came out that year, and so did 12 Monkeys. Both had numbers in their titles, funnily enough, and both had Pitt delivering rather explosive and showy performances, but not in bad ways. He seemed keen to prove himself with this pair of fairly challenging roles, and he did so quite well in Se7en, and then extremely well in 12 Monkeys, enough so that the latter earned him his first acting nomination (this one for Best Supporting Actor).

Bruce Willis is the central character in 12 Monkeys, playing a prisoner who gets sent back in time to locate a virus, in turn contributing to preventing it from spreading the way it has in the present… or the future… it all gets a bit twisted around. As a work of science fiction, 12 Monkeys works extremely well, and makes for an effectively dizzying watch. Also, Willis and Pitt are both excellently cast, as Willis’s character is more restrained, while Pitt – who plays an eccentric patient at a psychiatric facility – is a great deal more animated. This was probably a key performance that made some naysayers take Pitt more seriously; one of those “Oh, he’s more than just a pretty face” kind of roles, like what Leonardo DiCaprio started trying to do in the 2000s with Martin Scorsese. Ah, and speaking of Leonardo DiCaprio…

12 Monkeys

Release Date

January 5, 1996

Runtime

129minutes

1

‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ (2019)

Won Best Supporting Actor for playing Cliff Booth

DiCaprio and Brad Pitt both starred in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is a relatively relaxed film by Quentin Tarantino‘s standards, only really exploding into violence at the very end. For the most part, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood can kind of be described as a hangout movie. DiCaprio is Rick Dalton, who’s an actor at a crossroads in his professional career, finding fewer roles than he had previously, while Pitt plays Cliff Booth, who’s Dalton’s closest friend and stuntman; someone who’s fiercely loyal, but also potentially unstable. The less implied about his past, the better, if one can put it that way.

But Booth’s a very interesting character, and Pitt just inhabits him perfectly, being intense, charming, frightening, funny, and imposing when needed. If anything, Brad Pitt probably deserved to be nominated for Best Actor here, rather than in the Supporting category, but DiCaprio’s character is technically the protagonist, and gone are the days of Amadeus when a movie could see two lead actors both get nominations. Anyway, the main thing is that Pitt’s great here, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is overall pretty awesome, and the actor in question did indeed deserve an Oscar for the work he did here.

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