Oscar Nominees' Past TV Roles
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Tom Hanks
Is it fair to say that without Bosom Buddies, we'd never even know who Tom Hanks was? Probably not, but we'll say it anyway: Hanks first broke out alongside Peter Scolari on the ABC sitcom (pictured) that aired from 1980 to 1982. He also had early guest spots on The Love Boat and Happy Days, along with a memorable turn as Alex's drunk uncle Ned on Family Ties.
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Laura Dern
Dern is poised to win her first Oscar this weekend for Marriage Story, but she already has an Emmy on her shelf for her turn as stressed-out mom Renata Klein on HBO's Big Little Lies. She actually has a whopping seven Emmy nominations in total, including a well-deserved nod for her lead role as Amy Jellicoe in the tragically short-lived HBO dramedy Enlightened (pictured).
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Leonardo DiCaprio
The future heartthrob hit the small screen at a very young age, logging appearances on Roseanne, Santa Barbara and NBC's short-lived Parenthood that debuted in 1990. He went on to play homeless orphan Luke Brower on the ABC hit Growing Pains (pictured), recurring throughout Season 7. His blockbuster film career, though, has prevented him from appearing on TV since, outside of talk show interviews.
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Al Pacino
The acting great's very first screen credit is a 1968 guest spot on the ABC cop drama N.Y.P.D., but he's never had a regular TV role — that is, until his new Amazon drama Hunters debuts later this month. He has worked with HBO on a number of miniseries and TV movies, though, including an Emmy-winning turn as infamous attorney Roy Cohn in Angels in America (pictured).
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Jonathan Pryce
The British veteran of stage and screen has plenty of TV credits to his name, including the PBS miniseries Wolf Hall and FX's Taboo. But TV fans know him best as the deeply religious High Sparrow on Game of Thrones (pictured), playing a prominent role in Seasons 5 and 6 of the HBO fantasy epic.
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Florence Pugh
TV fans can claim they saw Pugh first before she blew up this year with Little Women and Midsommar: She played a webcam girl on the UK detective series Marcella before stealing scenes from Alexander Skarsgard and Michael Shannon in the 2018 AMC spy thriller The Little Drummer Girl (pictured).
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Charlize Theron
Theron had already claimed an Oscar for her harrowing role in 2003's Monster when she lightened things up with an extended guest spot on the Fox comedy Arrested Development (pictured), as Michael Bluth's kooky (or mentally impaired?) girlfriend Rita. She also recently reunited with A Million Ways to Die in the West co-star Seth MacFarlane in a 2017 episode of The Orville.
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Saoirse Ronan
The Little Women star has been nominated for Oscars since she was 13 years old (!), starting off with 2007's Atonement. (This year's nod marks Ronan's fourth overall.) But prior to that, the Dublin-raised actress made her screen debut on the Irish TV medical drama The Clinic, followed by the miniseries Proof (pictured).
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Adam Driver
TV fans first met the Marriage Story star as Hannah's volatile boyfriend Adam on Lena Dunham's HBO comedy Girls. (He punched some walls back then, too!) Being a New York actor — Driver graduated from Juilliard — he also did the requisite guest spots on Law & Order (pictured) and Law & Order: SVU. Recently, he's become one of SNL's most reliable hosts, headlining the show three times.
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Cynthia Erivo
The English actress already has an Emmy on her shelf — a Daytime Emmy for her live performance on NBC's Today with the Broadway cast of The Color Purple — and following appearances on Broad City and Mr. Selfridge, she's currently starring alongside Ben Mendelsohn on the HBO murder-mystery The Outsider (pictured). This May, she'll star as Aretha Franklin in the next season of the NatGeo anthology Genius.
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Kathy Bates
The Oscar winner is well known for film roles like Misery and Titanic, but she's spent lots of time on the small screen, too. (Look, she played a frustrated newlywed on The Love Boat back in 1978!) Even after achieving big-screen stardom, Bates took on regular roles on Six Feet Under, The Office and American Horror Story and starred in the NBC legal dramedy Harry's Law.
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Scarlett Johansson
The double nominee's TV résumé is quite bare, actually: Aside from a preteen guest spot in the 1995 CBS pilot The Client, Johansson's only TV credits have been animated voice work, on Adult Swim's Robot Chicken and the Nathan Fillion-led web series Assassin Banana. Her most prominent small-screen role might be on Saturday Night Live (pictured), where she's hosted six times and cameo-ed several more times as First Daughter Ivanka Trump.
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Anthony Hopkins
Before scaring the bejeezus out of us as Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, Hopkins had piled up dozens of TV credits, including a starring role as Pierre in the 1972 BBC adaptation of War and Peace (pictured). He also played Quasimodo in a 1982 TV movie of The Hunchback of Notre Dame that aired here on CBS. Recently, he played inventor Dr. Robert Ford on the freshman season of HBO's Westworld.
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Joaquin Phoenix
As an adult, the Joker star and Oscar frontrunner has steered clear of the small screen — but as a kid, when he was still billed as "Leaf Phoenix," he was a frequent guest star on shows like The Fall Guy, Hill Street Blues and Murder, She Wrote. (That's him with Angela Lansbury's maternal hands resting on his shoulders.)
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Brad Pitt
Long before they teamed up in Quentin Tarantino's latest opus, Pitt and his co-star Leonardo DiCaprio both met the Seaver family. Pitt appeared in a pair of episodes of ABC's Growing Pains, first as a handsome guy (duh) who turns Carol's head, and then as a rock star who turns out to be a jerk. (His time on the show didn't overlap with DiCaprio's, though.) He also played Charlie's boyfriend Randy on Dallas and co-starred in the Fox drama Glory Days, which sadly lasted just six episodes in the summer of 1990. If only they knew what they had!
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Margot Robbie
After a lengthy stint on the Aussie soap opera Neighbors, Robbie landed her first big Hollywood role in 2011 — and it was on TV. She co-starred with Christina Ricci and Mike Vogel as a 1960s stewardess on ABC's glossy period drama Pan Am. The series was grounded, though, after just one season.
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Joe Pesci
The Goodfellas veteran has been hard to find even on the big screen lately: The Irishman is only his third on-screen appearance this century. But he does have one big skeleton in his TV closet: a starring role as former cop-slash-aspiring actor Rocky Nelson in the forgettable 1985 NBC dramedy Half Nelson. Pesci starred alongside SNL alum Victoria Jackson, former pro football star Fred Williamson... and a Spuds MacKenzie-esque dog.
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Antonio Banderas
Before hitting it big, Banderas appeared in a number of TV shows in his native Spain, including playing an auto mechanic on the telenovela La mujer de tu vida. He also played a young Benito Mussolini in a 1993 miniseries (pictured) and later earned an Emmy nod as Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa in the 2004 HBO movie And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself. He landed a second Emmy nod in 2018 for playing iconic artist Pablo Picasso on NatGeo's Genius.
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Renée Zellweger
Before she swept awards season with her performance as legendary entertainer Judy Garland in Judy, we were already lauding another Zellweger performance from last year: her delicious turn as ultra-rich master manipulator Anne Montgomery in the Netflix soap What/If. (Zellweger's TV credits are otherwise sparse, apart from a guest voice role on King of the Hill.)