These are the 10 strongest performances by actors and actresses in 2014 that could have been deserving of Best Supporting Actor/Actress consideration if only their roles had been a little bit bigger:
Carrie Coon is excellent as the emotional and honest Margo Dunne, sister to Nick Dunne (played by Ben Affleck) in “Gone Girl”.
Viola Davis is prominent at the beginning of “Get On Up”, as James Brown’s mother, Susie. She doesn’t reappear until the third act, in a scene in which she reunites with, her now famous son (played by Chadwick Boseman). Davis is at the top of her game whenever she’s on screen.
Blink and you’ll miss him, Johnny Depp only appears for five minutes as The Wolf in “Into the Woods”. As you watch Depp sing “Hello, Little Girl” and interact with Red Riding Hood, you think that he’ll be sticking around for awhile (maybe end-up as the main villain). But then he’s gone, and his unique and sly take on the character is immediately missed.
In “Birdman”, Zach Galifianakis plays the manager and best friend of actor Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton). Galifianakis has some bold one-liners and electric exchanges with Keaton, but is practically out of the picture entirely by the halfway point of the film.
He’s really in only two scenes, but Stacy Keach is incredibly effective as the grandfather of Chloe Grace Moretz’s Mia in the romantic drama “If I Stay”. Keach is marvelous both, in a flashback, telling Mia how proud he is of her, and at the bedside of his dying granddaughter, delivering a heart-tugging speech.
You may think she was in enough of “X-Men: Days of Future Past”, but I thought Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique deserved much more of the spotlight in the complex time-travel story. A confrontation between her and Michael Fassbender’s Magneto is one of the film’s best scenes.
Chloe Grace Moretz gives a standout performance in “The Equalizer”. Her conversations with Denzel Washington’s character in the diner are first-rate. But then Washington moves-on, and Moretz is gone for nearly most of the rest of the film.
Chris O’Dowd is terrific in his first, quite funny scene in the Bill Murray/Melissa McCarthy comedy “St. Vincent”. Should he have been highlighted in several more? Absolutely.
Not playing Madea for a change, Tyler Perry does a nice job as defense lawyer Tanner Bolt (great name) in “Gone Girl”. And he delivers the film’s best line about representing “messed-up” people.
Finally, as the mother of millionaire wrestling coach John du Pont (Steve Carell) in “Foxcatcher”, Vanessa Redgrave was part of Carell’s two best scenes. One – a conversation between the two in which Mrs. du Pont re-iterates her disapproval of the sport to her son. The other – John attempting to prove to his mother (watching from her wheelchair) that he’s a real coach and the team members respect him. Both scenes are riveting.