8. Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver
While it is hard to believe that Rocky beat out films like Network and Taxi Driver, it’s even harder to think that Robert De Niro was not honored for his incredibly unnerving performance as the disturbed titular taxi driver. The only saving grace of this loss is that the award went to Peter Finch for his incredible performance in Network. His “mad as hell” monologue is often still shown in schools as an astonishing piece of rhetoric and media criticism.