There are artists famous for all the prizes and acclaim that they had. There are also amazing artists that never win anything for one reason or another. And then there is sound engineer Kevin O'Connell. He holds the record for most Oscar nominations without a win in the history of the Academy Awards. So far, there are seventeen of them.

His career began in 1980 as a recording technician for Star Wars Episode V. Since then, he has been involved in the production of almost 150 movies including Top Gun, Pearl Harbor, Big Fish and The Passion of the Christ.
This year he received nomination number 18 of his career, for the sound editing of Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha.
The only prize he has ever won was an Emmy in 1989 for Lonesome Dove.
To top everything, O'Connell worked for many years and shared five Oscar nominees with mixer Donald Mitchell. The first year they worked on separate projects, Mitchell received an Oscar for Glory.

Nevertheless, O'Connell still gets excited every time he gets a nomination.
In an interview given recently to Sandy Cohen he declares: "There's 300 to 400 films every year. Five of them get that phone call, and I've gotten it 18 times, I really feel fortunate."