Legendary stars such as Toshiro Mifune, Chisu Ryu and Tatsuya Nakadai had long, distinguished careers that have hardly been recognized by award shows. Maggie Cheung and Gong Li were arguably among the greatest actresses alive in the 80s and 90s and were consistently ignored by the Academy.
In recent years, Ziyi Zhang and Awkwafina almost broke through to nominations as Best Lead Actress. Zhang was nominated by the Golden Globes, SAG and BAFTA awards for her performance in 2005 s
Memoirs of a Geisha, while Awkwafina won Best Actress at the Globes for
The Farewell but came up short of an Oscar nod.