Top 10 WORST Acting Oscar Wins of ALL TIME

all right so I'm usually pretty positive on my YouTube channel if you've been following me for a short while or a long time I mean sometimes I will be mad about like oh crash one best picture or something like that but usually I'm positive so this is going to be a different kind of video for me I'm happy to report that this was a difficult list to put together there weren't like 30 performances that I was like oh well obviously that was not worthy of a win I mean there's some acting Oscar wins I like better than others but it was tricky to nail down 10 that I thought were really astonishingly awful I actually don't think many of these performances I'm going to talk about are necessarily awful but they are the main wins that don't sit well with me now full disclosure there are lots of oscar-winning performances especially from the 30s 40s and 50s that I've never seen that I still don't know much about so this is not a comprehensive list I have not seen everything but here based on everything I've seen based on all the lists that I read here are the top 10 worst acting Oscar wins of all time number 10 Sandra Bullock The Blind Side you're right excuse me you're right now those words starts coming out of your mouth like vinegar I want to get this one out of the way first it does pain me to have her here because Sandra Bullock is my favorite actress but that is not an oscar-winning performance I still think that to this day it still surprises me that she not only won but that she mostly swept the season for that role and that performance I think that one was a career win for Sandra Bullock someone who audiences had loved for many years The Blind Side was such a huge hit she had also had a hit the previous Summer with the proposal and there really wasn't another performance that year that was necessarily the winner for best actress in a leading role the number one reason I include her on the list is that walking into the Blind Side in November 2009 with my friend Katie I was like you know I'm hearing Oscar buzz for Sandra like maybe she could get into the race we'll see I watched the film I walked out and I was like like she was fine in that movie she's not gonna get an Oscar nomination for that performance and so Color Me surprised over the next few months watching her win Awards left and right and then win the Oscar I just couldn't believe it I think looking back the rightful winner here the best win would have been Gabourey Sidibe for precious that is an incredible dramatic performance that should have won over Sandra Bullock but nobody really knew who Sita Bay was yet and Sandra Bullock was of course and still is a big movie star and I still to this day believe that her Oscar win should have been for Gravity which is a much better film and a much deeper resonant character number nine mahershala Ali green book and I just put the Attorney General of the United States in an incredibly awkward position so what one of my favorite acting Oscar wins of the 2010s was mahershala Ali for moonlight that movie is extraordinary and he is great in it but I wasn't a huge fan of green book I didn't find it that interesting like it was okay I think I gave it like a six out of ten I didn't hate the movie but I just didn't understand why mahershala Ali won best supporting actor that year like it's a very big character in the movie it's not really a supporting performance and I actually much preferred Viggo Mortensen in that movie morgenson has been nominated for lots of oscars but he's never won I would have rather Mortensen won something for that movie than Ali like I'm not even sure mahershala Ali himself thought he deserved that Oscar he doesn't look very excited on the stage and I do think in this category that year Richard E Grant for can you ever forgive me should have won in a landslide that is a spectacular performance the Oscar trophy for best supporting actor that year should have gone to Richard E Grant number eight Joan Fontaine suspicion [Music] Johnny I have never understood this Oscar win it's very weird to me I'm a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan he is my favorite director I love many of his movies one of his weaker films I think is suspicion from 1941 especially coming right after Rebecca also starring Joan Fontaine it doesn't feel like a Hitchcock movie the way that his later films in the 50s and early 60s would but Rebecca is just one of my comfort films I love that movie if Joan Fontaine had won best actress for Rebecca that would have been an old-timer win but I've always found her performance in suspicion kind of awkward like it doesn't really work for me it feels kind of flat I think Cary Grant is much better in that movie it's not a terrible film I watch it here and there I have the DVD of it and I'll throw it on sometimes but the Joan Fontaine performance in that movie is not great and for it to win best actress at the Oscars is baffling to me I mean I guess not that baffle because the reason she won was to make up for her not winning the year before for Rebecca that's what makes sense to me it happens all the time somebody wins for a performance it's not great but the academy is like making up for past wrongs I think that's what happened with Fontaine now I can't necessarily give you what I would have preferred when here because the only other film nominated in the best actress category that I've seen is the little foxes Betty Davis's performance is great but Betty Davis has a lot of Oscar wins I haven't seen the other three performances but what the hey I'm just gonna go with Barbara Stanwick in ball of fire because Stan Wick never won an Oscar and she should have number seven Helen Hayes airport your English aren't you I knew it the moment you started to talk I don't know why airport got a Best Picture Oscar nomination and I will never understand why Helen Hayes won the best supporting actress Oscar for airport she does not give a performance in that movie that should come anywhere near the Oscars she did not deserve a nomination for that and she definitely does not deserve to win I think that was just one of those cases where there was a Prestige actress in the category who had done lots of great work over many decades and the academy thought well let's give her another one because Helen Hayes actually did win an Oscar in the 30s for best actress her supporting actress win for airport was her second Oscar trophy I just think airport is one of the clunkiest movies of the early 1970s and I think easily the winner here should have been Karen Black for Five Easy Pieces that's a much better film that's a much more original interesting live performance Helen Hayes honestly shouldn't have even been nominated her number six Louise Reiner The Good Earth when did you see Lee's my mother gave them to me this one I put in here for a couple reasons one Louise Reiner had just won a Best Actress Oscar the year before for the great Ziegfeld she didn't need to win two Oscars two years in a row and for her to get her second Oscar for a movie where she's playing an Asian woman just is not a good look in the history of the Academy Awards that is a role that should have gone to an Asian performer and then for Reiner to basically abandon Hollywood I think two years after that like 39.40 she left Hollywood and never really acted in movies again I think you have much better choices here Janet gainer in A Star is Born would have been a cool win and Irene Dunn for The Awful Truth a very very funny comedy my choice here would be Irene Dunn number five John Mills Ryan's daughter so I had a podcast for three years called film at 50 where we looked at movies released 50 years ago and one of the First episodes I did back in 2020 was for the 1970 Epic film by David lean called Ryan's daughter and while I was watching the movie I was vaguely aware that one of the actors in it had won the Oscar for best supporting actor and when the movie ended I was like oh that performance that was really good I like that and then I looked it up and the person that I had thought was probably the winner for best supporting actor was wrong it was someone else in the movie and I was like whoa whoa whoa whoa wait John Mills the mute the actor who never says anything who doesn't get a whole lot to do in the film and he doesn't really add much like he won the best supporting actor Oscar I think he got it because he was a very well respected actor and he'd never won before but boy that is a weird one I mean Ryan's daughter did not do well critically with audio chances for that performance in that movie to win the best supporting actor Oscar is very strange to me funny enough that's the same year that Helen Hayes wins her Oscar for best supporting actors for airport so the supporting acting categories of the Academy Awards in early 1971 are way off I would have much rather seen Chief Dan George win here for little big man the Dustin Hoffman film number four Elizabeth Taylor Butterfield 8. well I started with Amherst and I worked my way through the alphabet to Yale and stuck there my favorite acting Oscar win of the 1960s is Elizabeth Taylor for who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and probably the worst one of the entire decade is Elizabeth Taylor for Butterfield 8. now I don't hate Butterfield 8 as much as others do but it's not a good movie it's very tacky lots of melodrama it's not anything to write home about and if you're not aware of the story basically Elizabeth Taylor was on her umpteenth nomination she'd never won she'd been nominated a few times in the 50s and while on location shooting Cleopatra she got very sick and almost died and I believe she almost died while they were in the midst of voting for best actress that year at the Academy Awards in early 1961 I mean I'm not even sure how she got the nomination to begin with because it's a so-so performance it's okay it's fine but it's not oscar-worthy by any means so this was a weird case where probably got like the fifth slot based mostly on her name and her previous Oscar nominations but then she ends up winning because while everybody's voting there is news from overseas that Elizabeth Taylor might be on her deathbed that she might be dead in a matter of hours or days and so she basically got the sympathy vote and by the night of the awards I think Elizabeth Taylor herself even admitted that like she admitted like well I won this because I almost died and so yeah that one doesn't sit well it's especially annoying because there are some really great performances in that category I think Shirley McLean in the apartment and Deborah Carr for the Sundowners would have been much better choices than Elizabeth Taylor for Butterfield 8. Deborah Carr famously was nominated for an Oscar six times and never won this could have been her moment Elizabeth Taylor would win six years later for who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf this Oscar victory for best actress should have gone to Deborah Carr number three Rami Malek Bohemian Rhapsody I think it's beautiful it's almost perfect almost yes give it more rock and roll so like Butterfield 8 actually I didn't hate Bohemian Rhapsody as much as other people did it was perfectly fine it was entertaining but I wasn't very impressed by the Rami Malik performance a lot of it felt overdone I thought he was trying too hard and the Prosthetics and the makeup effects didn't help and so then to just watch him sweep the season I think he won pretty much everywhere was weird to me I mean give him the nomination fine I can live with that but to win best actor for Bohemian Rhapsody I just especially Five Years on four years on it's like it's definitely one of the worst acting Oscar wins we've had especially in the last couple decades I mean I don't know how many people are revisiting that movie revisiting that performance like it's just not great I think the much better winner that Year and best actor someone who has still never won an Academy Award would have been Bradley Cooper for A Star is Born I wonder if because Bradley Cooper directed that movie that's what made it difficult for Academy members to vote for him same thing with Denzel Washington for fences a few years before that when an actor directs himself in a movie it can be difficult to win the best actor Oscar but Bradley Cooper in A Star is Born gives a much more memorable performance Rami Malek for me most of that performance was just on the surface I think Taryn Edgerton a year later in Rocket Man was better and he did not even get the nomination number two Mary Pickford Coquette I wish I'd never seen them no oh no I hate him now I will be honest and saying I did not watch this whole movie but I did watch part of it when I was researching a video I made last year about the second academy awards ceremony I talked about the controversy at the time when Mary Pickford at the second Academy Awards won best actress for Coquette it kind of felt like an award that she bought for herself that wasn't really based on quality of the performance because she's not great in this movie it's a very shrieky annoying performance at the very beginning of the sound era of Cinema like it's a tough watch the few clips that I looked at I was like no this is pretty pretty bad I mean she was one of the founding members of The Academy she had a lot of clout in the industry I do not think this win was based on everybody saying wow Mary Pickford giving the best performance of the year in Coquette I think there was some Shenanigans going on behind the scenes and she kind of bought this award for herself at the very beginning of the account Academy Awards so yeah I mean I don't know how many people are looking at this film now but it's it's not a great performance and is definitely one of the worst to ever win the Oscar and now finally we have arrived to my number one choice what do I think is the worst performance to ever win an Oscar to be perfectly honest I don't think there's one oscar-winning performance that is just outlandishly awful I don't think that exists but if I had to pick the worst the one I do not like the one that felt icky at the time and just should have gone to literally anyone else in the category my number one choice for the worst performance to win an Oscar is Renee Zellweger in Cold Mountain this is man's they call this war a cloud over the land but they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say it's raining I have seen that movie twice it's not one of my favorites I do think Jude Law is pretty good in it and there's an extraordinary ensemble cast but the film overall just doesn't work for me and the part of the movie I like least the performance in it that just grates on me that I hate is that Renee Zellweger supporting performance she just kind of Stomps in there with some sort of crazy accent and she's just filling up the frame with all this nuttiness this craziness and it doesn't fit the movie very well she's very much out of place I do not like her performance in this movie and for her to get the nomination was really weird to me for her to win the Academy Award was crazy and for her to basically sweep that category the whole season in early 2004 just absolutely got on my nerves I mean I get it Renee Zellweger won because she had been nominated for best actress the past two years the first time for Bridget Jones's Diary and the second time for Chicago she got very close to winning the Oscar for best actress for Chicago she barely lost to Nicole Kidman for the hours I would say that race probably came down to like a few hundred votes Renee Zellweger won lots of precursor prizes for Chicago and that is a dazzling performance I do think her Oscar win for Cold Mountain was mostly for Chicago like because it was just one year later if Cold Mountain had opened in like 2007 I don't think she wins for that I don't think she gets nominated for that I think because it was Miramax the Harvey Weinstein Awards machine I think the narrative got out there very quickly that Renee Zellweger was overdue she almost won for Chicago let's give her a consolation prize for Cold Mountain I get it but it's just like I do not like it when a mediocre performance gets all these accolades it's like we're just giving her all these prizes because she was much better in a movie that came out last year I would have easily preferred any of these other nominated actresses to win Holly Hunter in 13. she's fantastic Patricia Clarkson had an amazing 2003 I think she was in four films that year so that would have been a good win the best performance in the category easy is cheray agoshlu for House of sand and fog that is the person who should have won the best supporting actress Oscar for her emotionally devastating performance Renee Zellweger in Cold Mountain no it is in my eyes the worst acting Oscar win of all time [Music] [Music] thank you

Channel: The Awards Contender

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Length: 18min 37sec (1117 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2023