The 10 most overrated Oscar-winning performances
There are only four Academy Awards for acting handed out every year, but that doesn’t necessarily guarantee the best performance is always going to end up as an Oscar-winning one.
Promotional campaigns have become an increasingly important part of deciding which name gets read aloud on stage, to the extent that having a sizeable marketing budget has become a clear advantage the closer the Oscars becomes on the calendar.
That’s not to say the decisions aren’t still largely driven by merit above all else, but every now and then, an Oscar-winning performance comes along that doesn’t hold up all too well. Plenty of actors have won trophies for turns that were nowhere near their best, and in some cases, history hasn’t been too kind to their work.
The following ten can’t have their accolades taken away from them, but the lingering belief remains that they were all overrated by peers, colleagues, and industry professionals alike in their own way.
10 overrated Oscar-winning performances:
10. Catherine Zeta-Jones as Velma Kelly (Chicago, Rob Marshall, 2002)
There’s nothing wrong with Catherine Zeta-Jones’ dynamic performance in Rob Marshall’s song-and-dance spectacular, but neither is there anything about it that makes it stand out as a turn that simply couldn’t be ignored when handing out Oscars.
Landing the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ trophy for her efforts, the performance marks the one and only time Zeta-Jones has ever been nominated. Chicago is often denigrated as one of the least-deserving ‘Best Picture’ winners of the modern era, and while the actor is excellent in the role of Velma Kelly, rewatching the film doesn’t see it stand out as an Oscar-winning tour-de-force.
Zeta-Jones defeated co-star Queen Latifah, About Schmidt‘s Kathy Bates, After Hours‘ Julianne Moore, and Adaptation‘s Meryl Streep to emerge victorious, and a strong argument can be made that at least two of those performances are better than the one that took home the prize.
9. Sean Penn as Jimmy Markum (Mystic River, Clint Eastwood, 2003)
Clint Eastwood’s literary adaptation was superbly acted across the board, but Sean Penn‘s Oscar-winning work as Jimmy Markum had a habit of devolving into scenery-chewing and borderline hammy histrionics, which stood ill-at-ease with the sombre and introspective work of his castmates.
He may have benefited from a ‘Best Actor’ field that wasn’t particularly strong – seeing as that was the year Johnny Depp was recognised for playing Jack Sparrow – but Bill Murray’s melancholic Lost in Translation performance would have been a worthier winner than Mystic River‘s Penn.
In an effort to convey his anguish, Penn decided that dialling his more emotional moments up way past 11 was the right way to go, creating a jarring tonal imbalance that doesn’t exactly compliment the subtleties of Eastwood’s often harrowing drama.
8. Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy (The Blind Side, John Lee Hancock, 2009)
Recently stricken by renewed controversies after subject Michael Oher filed a lawsuit against the Tuohy family claiming they’d never legally adopted him and monetised his situation for personal gain, social media campaigners began demanding Sandra Bullock return the Oscar she won for The Blind Side.
While that’s a ridiculous thing to even contemplate, considering all she did was play a role in a movie that was based on real-life events, the precision-engineered Oscar bait that was John Lee Hancock’s biographical drama hardly endures as one of the most memorable prestige pictures of the 21st century.
Bullock seems to tick off all of the boxes that come with being guaranteed Oscars glory, layering her performance with an artificial sheen as a result, although she’s comfortably the best thing by far in a film that managed to surprise even its own producers when it made the ‘Best Picture’ shortlist.
7. Gwyneth Paltrow as Viola de Lesseps (Shakespeare in Love, John Madden, 1998)
Shakespeare in Love was a truly bizarre awards season phenomenon, one that’s seen its lasting legacy inextricably tied to the period-set revisionist romantic comedy inexplicably winning ‘Best Picture’ ahead of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan.
That sentiment even extends to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Oscar-winning performance, which secured a place in the history books for her teary acceptance speech rather than anything she’d done on-screen. That might sound harsh, but Shakespeare in Love‘s story and characters have hardly served as the bedrock for its lasting reputation in the annals of cinema history.
The fingerprints of Harvey Weinstein’s relentless campaigning were all over it, with the industry left shocked when Paltrow’s solid but entirely unspectacular turn as Viola de Lesseps was somehow deemed a worthier winner than Elizabeth‘s formidable Cate Blanchett.
6. Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury (Bohemian Rhapsody, Bryan Singer, 2018)
Another real-life figure serving as the backdrop for a performance that had Oscar bait written all over it, Rami Malek’s Freddie Mercury was much more of an impression than an embodiment.
It’s an important distinction to make relative to the splashy Hollywood biopic, and as much as he looked the part and held up his end of the bargain in Bohemian Rhapsody‘s dramatic exchanges, not once did he convince as the iconic Queen frontman.
Mercury oozed charm, charisma, presence, and personality whether he was onstage or going about his daily business, leaving Malek to try his best to recreate that generational magic to no avail. Sure, he won ‘Best Actor’, but the best performance among the contenders was Bradley Cooper’s nuanced, complex Jackson Maine in A Star Was Born.
5. Renée Zellweger as Ruby Thewes (Cold Mountain, Anthony Minghella, 2003)
Entirely unconvincing as mysterious drifter Ruby Thewes in the film, Renée Zellweger still managed to walk away with an Oscar for ‘Best Supporting Actress’ under her arm as the sole victor among Cold Mountain‘s seven nominations.
It’s not that she’s outright terrible in it, but she constantly feels miscast as Ruby, particularly when her line delivery and physicality is played as being noticeably broader than the rest of the subdued principal cast.
As a sweeping historical epic hailing from an acclaimed filmmaker, though, Cold Mountain was always going to pique the interest of the Academy. It’s nowhere close to being the best performance in the movie, never mind one that deserved to win an Oscar.
4. Robert Benigni as Guido Orefice (Life is Beautiful, Roberto Benigni, 1997)
Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful came out of nowhere to become a major Oscar player, winning three trophies from seven nominations, including additional nods for the leading man in the ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Original Screenplay’ categories.
In a similar vein to Paltrow’s Shakespeare in Love speech, Benigni’s reaction to winning the first of those aforementioned trio of Oscars is infinitely more memorable than the work he delivered on camera. That’s not to say he didn’t do a strong job, but it wasn’t blow-away brilliant, either.
American History X‘s Edward Norton and Saving Private Ryan‘s Tom Hanks certainly were, but they were left out in the cold. Life is Beautiful was an Oscars anomaly, something that extends to its strong central performance, beating out superior competition to stage an all-timer of an upset.
3. Al Pacino as Frank Slade (Scent of a Woman, Martin Brest, 1992)
Al Pacino has been responsible for several of the greatest performances in the history of cinema, but the one that finally secured him that elusive Oscar wasn’t one of them.
The Godfather and its sequel, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, and Glengarry Glen Ross were all Oscar-worthy in their own right, but Martin Brest’s Scent of a Woman wasn’t even the best work Pacino had given that year. It was a stacked field for ‘Best Actor’ at the 1993 ceremony, but it always felt as though it was more of a career achievement award for the star rather than the best acting the last 12 months had ever seen.
After all, Unforgiven‘s Clint Eastwood, Chaplin‘s Robert Downey Jr, The Crying Game‘s Stephen Rea, and Malcolm X‘s Denzel Washington made up the list of contenders, but it was Pacino’s exaggerated and overwrought antics that came out on top.
2. Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher (The Iron Lady, Phyllida Lloyd, 2011)
Meryl Streep is one of the all-time acting greats, and when it was first announced she’d be playing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, it would have saved a lot of time were the Academy to simply engrave her name on the ‘Best Actress’ trophy there and then.
Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened in the end, even if the film itself was hardly rapturously received. For a performer as talented as Streep, her performance devolves into cartoonish caricature far too often, and while the physical similarities and mannerisms are there, the immersion is almost entirely absent.
There weren’t a lot of top-tier contenders the year Streep snatched her third Oscar, which effectively made it hers by default. Just because everyone knew the outcome, though, it doesn’t mean The Iron Lady is remembered as a top-tier showstopping, dynamic, and all-conquering turn from one of the best to ever do it. In fact, it’s closer to Spitting Image than cinematic greatness.
1. Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill (Darkest Hour, Joe Wright, 2017)
Playing a real-life figure, telling their story during a pivotal moment in history, and being buried under a mountain of prosthetics are three of the easiest methods of Oscars glory, with Gary Oldman weaponising all three to take home the gold for Darkest Hour.
And yet, the film never offers the impression that audiences are watching anything other than Oldman playing Winston Churchill. While that’s obviously the entire point of cinema, the star never truly disappears into the role to the extent expected of a stirring biopic, with the ‘Best Actor’ trophy virtually glinting in the reflection of the subject’s thick spectacles.
Oldman is one of the best actors of his generation, without a doubt, but Darkest Hour‘s protagonist never shakes the thinly-veiled cynicism of being a vehicle crafted with the express intention of propelling its star to awards season glory.
