Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Starz
Some Oscar snubs linger long after the winner has been announced. It has been 15 years since Juno received four Academy Award nominations, with Diablo Cody taking home the Best Original Screenplay accolade. It has also been 15 years since Jennifer Garner should have been duking it out alongside eventual winner Tilda Swinton for the supporting actress statue. Her performance as hopeful adoptive mother Vanessa is an understated triumph.
Last year, Garner joined Juno co-stars Elliot Page and J.K. Simmons to present at the Academy Awards, serving as another reminder of this oversight. Garner’s Oscars have been memorable, including slipping on stage at her first telecast in 2006 (“I do my own stunts,” she quipped), becoming an instant meme 13 years later when she paused mid-applause as if she had just remembered something important. Not to mention the time then-husband Ben Affleck thanked her for “working on our marriage for 10 Christmases” when Argo won Best Picture in 2013. Garner has made plenty of award season headlines; it stings that it isn’t for her work.
Or, there is the year she was overlooked for an empathetic turn as Dr. Eve Saks in The Dallas Buyers Club, and her two co-stars both won Oscars? In a twist of fate, playing the supportive figure had become Garner’s on- and off-screen designated title (the latter was thanks to the tabloid frenzy swirling around her marriage at the time and the role she played after the divorce from Affleck). However, with Bennifer the revival in full swing, Garner is cultivating a return of sorts. Not that she ever truly went away.