12 Actors Who Scored an Oscar Nomination After Being on Screen For 30 Minutes or Less

Nicole Kidman (and her prosthetic nose) stunned as Virginia Woolf in the 2002 film The Hours and took home an award for best actress at the Academy Awards. She was on screen for only 28 minutes, but her performance was enough to outshine costars Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore.

British actor David Niven won his first (and only) best actor Oscar for his role in the 1958 drama Separate Tables. He was in the film for just under 16 minutes as Major David Angus Pollock, a veteran staying at a seaside hotel in the UK.

The iconic British actress floored everyone with her regally icy performance as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love. Although her screen time clocks in at only eight minutes, Dench took home a best supporting actress trophy at the Oscars in 1999.

In Room at the Top, a 1959 movie about an ambitious accountant scheming to raise his rank through marriage, Hermione Baddeley's 2 minute and 20 seconds-long performance got her the best supporting actress nod.

Viola Davis totally stole the show from Meryl Streep in Doubt, which ended up nabbing her a best supporting actress nomination at the 2009 Oscars. She didn't end up taking home the award, but Davis's role as Mrs. Miller had her on screen for only eight minutes, and there's no question that she made them count.

In the 1976 drama Network, about a TV network taking advantage of the ratings boosts from a lunatic anchor, Beatrice Straight plays a woman who discovers her husband has been cheating on her, and life as she knows it is now over. She's only in the movie for a grand total of five minutes, but the brutal, heart-wrenching scene earned her an Oscar for best supporting actress.

Silence of the Lambs killed at the 1992 Academy Awards, with wins for best picture, best adapted screenplay, best director, best actress, and best actor for the film's creepy lead, Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins brought the brilliant, cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter — one of cinema's most notorious villains — to life and did it all in only 15 minutes.

Love her or hate her, Anne Hathaway took home an Academy Award for best supporting actress in 2013 thanks to her jaw-dropping, 15-minute-long performance as Fantine in Les Misérables.

Gloria Grahame's appearance in The Bad and the Beautiful lasts for a mere 9 minutes, but it was enough to convince the Academy that she deserved the Oscar for best supporting actress in 1953.

Beatrice Straight might have taken home the big win for Network, but she wasn't the only one to get award-season attention for the film. Ned Beatty's 6-minute-long cameo as corporate chairman Arthur Jensen was spectacular enough to get him a nod for best supporting actor.

Longtime Hollywood actress Ruby Dee picked up her first Oscar nomination (for best supporting actress) in 2007 for playing Denzel Washington's mother in American Gangster for an excellent 10 minutes.

Jared Leto won the Oscar for best supporting actor for his performance in Dallas Buyers Club in 2014, where he played Rayon, an HIV-positive transgender woman. Leto appeared for only 21 minutes of screen time (roughly about 19 percent of the movie), but his role stuck with viewers long after the credits rolled.