Here are the LGBTQ+ nominations that did NOT win at the 2024 Oscars

Big “losing” energy — and we hate to see it!

Apparently, the L in LGBTQ+ stands for losers??

In all seriousness, the vast majority of queer talent, characters, and projects nominated at the 96th Academy Awards lost in their categories… and we hate to see it.

Between performances that felt like shoo-ins to win the Oscar and movies that received tons of nominations at the ceremony, we really had high hopes that this was going to be a huge night for LGBTQ+ representation in cinema.

Nope!

Keep scrolling to find out which LGBTQ+ nominees lost at the 96th Academy Awards.

Colman Domingo

Colman Domingo played out, gay, civil rights legend Bayard Rustin in the Netflix biopic Rustin. Unfortunately, Domingo lost the Academy Award for Best Actor to Cillian Murphy’s role as J. Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer.

Jodie Foster

The legendary Jodie Foster lost the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Bonnie Stoll in Nyad. Da'Vine Joy Randolph won the award for playing Mary Land in The Holdovers — and that wasn’t much as a surprise, as we all expected Randolph would win in that category.

Lily Gladstone

All Hollywood insiders considered that Lily Gladstone was a shoo-in to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2024. But that is not what happened, which had attendees audibly gasping in the audience. The winner in this category was Emma Stone in Poor Things as Bella Baxter. Listen, we LOVE Stone, but this absolutely felt like Gladstone’s Oscar to win.

Sterling K. Brown (LGBTQ+ character)

Sterling K. Brown isn’t an LGBTQ+ actor, but he was nominated at the 2024 Oscars for his role as newly-out gay man Clifford “Cliff” Ellison in American Fiction. This was an uphill battle for Brown to win… and, as expected, Robert Downey Jr. won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Lewis Strauss in Oppenheimer.

‘Maestro’

Maestro — a biopic about bisexual conductor Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) that also featured out, gay, actor Matt Bomer in the cast — was nominated for as many as seven Oscars. Altogether, Maestro lost all seven of the Academy Awards that it was nominated for.

‘Nimona’

Though it was facing some tough competition, Nimona was another LGBTQ+ movie that fans had high expectations for. Ultimately, the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature went to Studios Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron instead.

‘Anatomy of a Fall’

Featuring a bisexual lead character named Sandra Voyter (played by Sandra Hüller), Anatomy of a Fall received five nominations at the 2024 Oscars. However, the movie lost four of them. The only trophy that Anatomy of a Fall took home was the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay received by writers Justine Triet and Arthur Harari.

‘The ABCs of Book Banning’

The hot-button issue of banning LGBTQ+ books was explored in the short documentary film The ABCs of Book Banning. While there was hope that this project could take home the gold, it ultimately lost the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film to fellow nominee The Last Repair Shop.