The “terrible” movie Michael Caine missed winning an Oscar for
Winning an Academy Award is the pinnacle of any actor’s career. However, Michael Caine missed out on one of his crowning achievements after finding himself side-lined by a movie he’s been happy to denigrate as one of the worst he’s ever appeared in.
Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters was released to great acclaim in February of 1986, recouping its budget almost seven times over at the box office in the process. When awards season rolled around, the dramatic comedy was well-placed to ride the momentum generated by its status as Allen’s biggest-ever commercial hit to snag its fair share of prizes.
Sure enough, the film notched seven Oscar nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, ultimately walking away with three trophies. In addition to Allen scooping ‘Best Original Screenplay’, Dianne Wiest was named as ‘Best Supporting Actress’, while Caine was celebrated as ‘Best Supporting Actor’.
Unfortunately, when the ceremony took place in March 1987, Caine was nowhere to be found. Instead, Sigourney Weaver accepted the trophy on his behalf, with the actor unable to show up in person to collect his very first Oscar because he was on the other side of the world shooting a diabolical sequel that would go down in the history books as one of the worst ever made.
Steven Spielberg’s Jaws may be one of the most important and industry-altering blockbusters there’s ever been, but there was absolutely no need for it to spawn a string of subpar sequels. It did, though, and being on location in the Bahamas filming Jaws: The Revenge robbed Caine of the opportunity to collect his Oscar in the flesh.
Caine was on set from February until May of 1987, and it’s crushingly ironic that he missed out on the chance to take the stage and claim his ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for the sake of a movie that would see him shortlisted for a Golden Raspberry Award as ‘Worst Supporting Actor’ the very next year, not that he minded too much.
By his own admission, Caine signed on for the fourth Jaws flick because he was offered an exceedingly large amount of money to do so, while the sun-kissed locations also held plenty of sway. Not only that, but he relocated his family for the duration of the shoot, too, so in a personal and financial sense, it was a no-brainer.
Of course, The Revenge was an irredeemably awful work of cinema, but Caine didn’t care in the slightest. In fact, it even gave rise to one of his most famous quotes after he acknowledged that the monetary gains were fair compensation for such an interminable feature.
“I have never seen it, but by all accounts, it is terrible,” was his legendary assessment. “However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.” It might be one of his career lows from a quality perspective, but Caine still did alright.
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