Before I make my comment, you have to understand that Oscars are not always entirely given by the academy for one specific performance. There are political reasons why someone may win and in some occasions the academy will vote to give an Oscar for an actor as a body of work as opposed to one specific role.
Firstly, Nicole Kidman really should not have won best actress for this picture. Her performance is good, I don't personally think it's Oscar worthy - however she was on screen for 28 minutes! Julianne Moore had more screen time and was relegated to best supporting actress? How can that work? However, Moore was also nominated for best actress for 'Far From Heaven' so something had clearly been agreed as to how this would all work.
There is always a huge misconception in what makes something 'Oscar worthy'. The Oscars are meant for exceptional performance in film. Nowhere does it say 'dramatic performance'. However, people feel that unless a role is full of drama, tears, screaming, high emotion it is simply not Oscar worthy. In reality the two female roles who should have won awards at the 2003 Oscars were Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta Jones for 'Chicago'. Jones won an Oscar, but Renee Zellweger lost out to Nicole Kidman. Both Zellweger and Jones had to really perform to bring an entirely dead medium back to life. Book musicals had been long finished and both those actresses put in incredible performances. Just because they weren't wailing, crying and having dramatic things happen to them, it doesn't mean their performances were any less worthy than the other actresses in their categories. Interestingly, Queen Latifa was also nominated for best Supporting Actress for Chicago and Kathy Bates for a comedic role in 'About Schmid' so that year really did have a mixed bag. Adrian Broody also won for the Pianist.
In truth, the reason Nicole Kidman actually won Best Actress that year was due to Hollywood unanimously supporting Kidman against Cruise and his absolutely terrible treatment of her in the previous year. I knew the Oscar was in support of Kidman (from Hollywood) but (of course) we only found out recently what Cruise's treatment of her had been. Hollywood knew she had lost custody of her kids and had the whole scientology mafia after her. Cruise meanwhile ring fenced himself and let Kidman deal with the media fall out from it alone.
In cases where a 'political' Oscar is given and a rightful winner loses out, you can always notice it - because that rightful winner will often be compensated the following year. This happened with Renee Zellweger and Cold Mountain in 2004.
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