The five worst performances to ever win an Oscar
The Oscars. A celebration of the cream of the filmmaking crop, a night to commemorate the best pictures, performances, and technical achievements of the year in a fair and honest contest that has nothing to do with politics or money. Right?
As most people know by now, the Academy Awards don’t always reflect the best of cinema. Non-English language films are regularly overlooked, people of colour are criminally underrepresented, and the same names tend to win and get nominated over and over again. Even something as simple as who wins ‘Best Actor’ or ‘Best Actress’ of the year can generate massive controversy, as these five victories prove.
Really bad acting performances don’t get nominated for Oscars, so all of these are at least passable, but in the grand scheme of things, they really didn’t deserve to win. A lot of the time, more sinister forces were at play, such as backstage string-pulling or the Academy trying to cosy up to certain legendary performances.
It’s sad that we can’t just enjoy the Oscars as a salute to the films we love, but as long as they keep handing out awards like these, the headlines and opinion pieces will continue to get published.
The worst Oscar-winning performances:
John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn (True Grit, Henry Hathaway, 1969)
There’s going to be a lot of discussion about ‘career Oscars’ on this list – awards that were given to people because of who they were rather than what they had done. The Academy loves to honour big names and enshrine them in their history books, even if the performances involved didn’t actually warrant an award. For example, take John Wayne’s iconic role as the one-eyed U.S. Marshall, Rooster Cogburn, in the classic Western True Grit.
Whilst the character of Cogburn has gone down in history – especially after the Jeff Bridges portrayal in the Coen brothers remake – Wayne’s performance is fine. The actor was getting on in years and had just had major lung surgery, so it’s understandable why he gives such a half-hearted turn. Still, there is no way he should have won that year, especially as he was up against such esteemed competition as Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight, Richard Burton, and Peter O’Toole. ‘The Duke’ had been passed over for ‘Best Actor’ 20 years earlier for Sands of Iwo Jima, so this very much felt like the Oscars realising they had one last chance to get him in their good books.
Luise Rainer as O-Lan (The Good Earth, Sidney Franklin, 1937)
There’s a very obvious reason to hate this performance by German-born actor Luise Rainer. The Good Earth is a story about two Chinese farmers struggling to get by in the early 20th Century. Neither Rainer or Paul Muni, who played her husband, are of Asian descent, and heavy ‘Yellowface’ make-up was used to make them look more convincing. This is clearly an outdated practice that has no place in modern filmmaking, but that’s not the reason why Rainer’s name is on this list.
The truth is that Rainer doesn’t really do much in The Good Earth. Her character, O-Lan, plays very much second fiddle to Muni’s character, Wang Lung, and most of her scenes consist of her just standing around looking sad. The awards, in just their tenth year, gave her the nod over the likes of Greta Garbo in Camille, Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas, and Janet Gaynor in the original A Star is Born. This made Rainer the first person in Oscar history to win two acting awards, and she did it in consecutive years, having previously won for her role in The Great Ziegfeld. Sadly, her record is tainted by the fact that, in all honesty, she didn’t deserve it.
Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill (Darkest Hour, Joe Wright, 2017)
One way an actor can aid their quest for an Oscar is to play a significant figure from history. In terms of British history, few people are as significant as Prime Minister Winston Churchill, so when Gary Oldman was announced to be starring as him in a new biopic, the award-giving world began to salivate. Oldman portrayed the controversial wartime leader in Darkest Hour, which chronicled the early days of Britain in World War II. This was the shape-shifting actor’s second nomination in the ‘Best Actor’ category and he overcame names like Timothée Chalamet, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Denzel Washington to win. However, it felt like something of a hollow victory.
Oldman does a decent job as Churchill but doesn’t bring anything new to the role. A character as big and recognisable as the cigar-chomping politician doesn’t leave much room for nuance, and Darkest Hour did little to add to the story everybody already knew, playing on outdated ideas of patriotism and nostalgia to curry favour. Perhaps the greatest injustice of all is that Daniel Kaluuya didn’t win for Get Out. His performance was game-changing, and it’s amazing that it even got nominated at all, given the Academy’s aversion to genre movies. Oldman felt like the safe bet, which is more than he deserved.
Jack Palance as Curly Washburn (City Slickers, Ron Underwood, 1991)
Comedic performances very rarely get nominated for Oscars, and it’s even rarer that they actually win. One of the few to break this rule was Jack Palance in City Slickers, a comedy western with Billy Crystal in the lead. Palance played Curly Washburn, a hard-nosed trail boss with a secret heart of gold. It’s an alright performance, sure, but nothing special, which is why it was such a shock when his name was read out. It wasn’t a particularly strong field for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ that year – he was up against Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley (both for Bugsy), Tommy Lee Jones in JFK, and Michael Lerner in Barton Fink – but those in the know realised exactly what had happened.
Palance had first been nominated all the way back in 1953 for Sudden Fear, then again the next year for Shane. The veteran actor was in his early 70s, and his eventual win reeked of ‘better get this guy in while we still can’. It speaks volumes that City Slickers received no other nominations that night. The Academy clearly saw that Palance had been in a successful movie and decided to give him a gong to make up for blowing him off 40 years earlier.
Gwyneth Paltrow as Viola de Lesseps (Shakespeare in Love, John Madden, 1998)
One of the most despised Oscar movies of all time, Shakespeare in Love has long been the focus of criticism. Rumours have swirled for years that disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein bullied Academy voters into picking his movie over Saving Private Ryan, which had been the forerunner for ‘Best Picture’. Equally, most people believed that Cate Blanchett deserved the statuette for her performance as the titular English queen in Elizabeth, so many were surprised when a young Gwyneth Paltrow claimed ‘Best Actress instead.
Paltrow plays Viola de Lesseps, an aspiring actor who disguises herself as a man and eventually wins the favour of the famous playwright. It’s a decent performance but not one with much substance. Paltrow isn’t given anything near the meatiness of Blanchett’s Elizabeth scenes, which she pulls off with aplomb, which makes her eventual victory even more baffling. The controversy surrounding Shakespeare in Love continues to rage on to this day, not helped by the sharp decline in Weinstein’s reputation and public opinion souring on Paltrow, too, albeit for very different reasons. You have to feel a bit sorry for the star, as she was just doing her job, but the events of the 71st Academy Awards mean she will live on in Oscar infamy forever.
