You Can Barely Appear On Screen and Still Win an Oscar

Longest Screen Times

Vivien Leigh, Gone With the Wind (1939)

Movie Length 3 hrs 58 mins 
Time Onscreen 2 hrs 23 mins
Percent of Run Time 60 Percent

Vivien Leigh holds the record for the longest performance to win an Oscar, though the work took a deep physical and mental toll on her. The film itself is also the longest to win best picture. At the 12th Academy Awards, Victor Fleming’s Gone With the Wind also won best supporting actress for Hattie McDaniel, who became the first African American to win an Oscar. Leigh was nominated alongside Bette Davis (Dark Victory), Irene Dunne (Love Affair), Greta Garbo (Ninotchka) and Greer Garson (Goodbye, Mr. Chips).

Charlton Heston, Ben-Hur (1959)

Movie Length 3 hrs 32 mins
Time Onscreen 2 hrs 1 min 
Percent of Run Time 57.1 Percent

Charlton Heston appeared in more than half of William Wyler’s religious epic, which also won best picture, best supporting actor (for Hugh Griffith) and best director, among others. While Ben-Hur is revered for its spectacular chariot race scene, Heston’s performance as the titular Judah Ben-Hur is also lauded as one of his best. He was nominated alongside Laurence Harvey (Room at the Top), Jack Lemmon (Some Like It Hot), Paul Muni (The Last Angry Man) and James Stewart (Anatomy of a Murder).

Barbra Streisand, Funny Girl (1968)

Movie Length 2 hrs 35 mins
Time Onscreen 2 hrs 1 min 
Percent of Run Time 78.1 Percent

Wyler’s film was adapted from Isobel Lennart’s book for the stage musical of the same name. Barbra Streisand, who played the iconic Fanny Brice here and on Broadway, held the screen for more than two hours in her film debut. She shared the Oscar prize with Katharine Hepburn of The Lion in Winter. (It’s the only time two people have tied for best actress.) Streisand and Hepburn beat out Patricia Neal (The Subject Was Roses), Vanessa Redgrave (Isadora) and Joanne Woodward (Rachel, Rachel).

Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood (2007)

Movie Length 2 hrs 38 mins 
Time Onscreen 1 hrs 57 mins 
Percent of Run Time 74.1 Percent

For Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, often regarded as one of the best films of the 21st century, Daniel Day-Lewis won the second of his three Oscars (after 1989’s My Left Foot and before 2012’s Lincoln). With There Will Be Blood, which received a total of eight nominations, Day-Lewis was nominated alongside George Clooney (Michael Clayton), Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street), Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises) and Tommy Lee Jones (In the Valley of Elah).

Shortest Screen Times

Louise Fletcher, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

Movie Length 2 hrs 13 mins
Time Onscreen 22 mins 
Percent of Run Time 16.5 Percent

Some think Louise Fletcher’s turn as Nurse Ratched should have been classified as supporting, even though she did portray one of the cruelest movie villains to ever grace the big screen. The psychological drama, which was directed by Milos Forman, starred Jack Nicholson and featured Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd in supporting turns, collected all five major Academy Awards (best picture, director, screenplay, actor and actress), the first film since 1934’s It Happened One Night to accomplish that feat.

Patricia Neal, Hud (1963)

Movie Length 1 hr 48 mins 
Time Onscreen 21 mins 
Percent of Run Time 19.4 Percent

Neal’s victory marks the shortest onscreen performance for a best actress. She won for playing Alma Brown, the victimized housekeeper in Martin Ritt’s morals-themed Western. She was nominated in the best actress category alongside Leslie Caron (The L-Shaped Room), Shirley MacLaine (Irma la Douce), Rachel Roberts (This Sporting Life) and Natalie Wood (Love With the Proper Stranger). Neal would get another best actress nomination for her riveting turn in 1968’s The Subject Was Roses.

Anthony Hopkins, The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Movie Length 1 hr 58 mins 
Time Onscreen 16 mins 
Percent of Run Time 13.5 Percent

This is another win that some think should have come in the supporting category, though Anthony Hopkins, as Hannibal Lecter, did clock additional minutes with his voice offscreen as he went on to beat out Robert De Niro (Cape Fear), Robin Williams (The Fisher King), Nick Nolte (The Prince of Tides) and Warren Beatty (Bugsy) on Oscar night. The Jonathan Demme filmalsoraked in all five of the major Oscars, including the one for best actress, with Jodie Foster putting in 56 minutes of screen time. 

David Niven, Separate Tables (1958)

Movie Length 1 hr 40 mins 
Time Onscreen 15 mins 
Percent of Run Time 15 Percent

David Niven received his lone Oscar for his turn as a secret-keeping war veteran in this Delbert Mann drama set at an English coastal hotel. Co-star Wendy Hiller won best supporting actress that year — and she appeared for less than 22 minutes. Niven is the only actor to win an Oscar in the same year that he served as the Academy Awards host. He was nominated alongside Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier (both of The Defiant Ones), Paul Newman (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and Spencer Tracy (The Old Man and the Sea). 

This story appeared in the Nov. 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.