Oscars

Below are ten actors and actresses -- some more recognizable than others -- who represent the best and brightest currently working in film. Their differences are vast: they are men and women of various ages, representing many different backgrounds. So what do they all have in common? For starters, none of them have ever won an Academy Award, though several have been nominated at least once. Further, when it comes to the mainstream Hollywood career path, each one has diverged in slightly left-of-center directions.

“The Descendants” was a major player at the 2012 Oscars, as it was nominated in five categories, and won the award for best adapted screenplay. Co-written and directed by Alexander Payne (“Sideways,” “About Schmidt”), “The Descendants” is a profound and moving portrait of a family in crisis.

Director Martin Scorsese’s first stab at a family film couldn’t have gone better. “Hugo,” based on the 2007 picture book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret,” is a beautifully rendered work that’s appropriate for children, yet possesses more emotional and thematic depth than the majority of films for adults. In other words, “Hugo” may be marketed as a family drama, but it shouldn’t be pigeonholed.

Declaration of War” (La guerre est déclarée), France's foreign-language film submission for the Oscars, has the merits of lightness and inventiveness. The director, ValérieDonzelli, freely expresses herself through whichever tool she finds most useful in each particular moment, whether it is comedy in a tragic situation, magical realism, insertion of a song she wrote herself, or a cut to abstract images outside of the scene.

Michel Hazanavicius wrote and directed “The Artist.” He had been planning to make this film for more than 10 years, and producers refused to work with him because  Hazanavicius had his heart set on filming a silent, black-and-white movie. The idea sounded anachronistic and bizarre. Finally, Thomas Langmann took a risk and agreed to invest in the film, becoming its producer. To the fortune of audiences worldwide, “The Artist” was finally  released in late 2011. It is a project Hazanavicius loved and stayed devoted to for more than a decade, and in the end he created a work of exceptional beauty.