As this year ends, and awards season begins, it’s worth noting one of the biggest truisms of Oscar-dom: people don’t usually win their Oscars for the movie they should have.Today we’ll just look at the Best Actor category and revisit this several more times in others, but before we get started, I’d just like to point out that-honorary or no-Peter O’Toole still has no Oscar, so having an Oscar is no real honest-to-God measure of anyone’s acting talent.
So here are the top 5 most recent egregious Academy goofs (well “goof” is not so much the right word as “guilt trophy awarding” but that’s not a word nor a particularly smooth phrase).
1. Sean Penn
Won for: Mystic River (later again for Milk)
Should have won for: Dead Man Walking
2. Denzel Washington
Won for: Training Day
Should have won for: The Hurricane or Courage Under Fire
3. Russell Crowe
Won for: Gladiator
Should have won for: The Insider (A Beautiful Mind came out the year after he won when Denzel won for Training Day. See how this gets all tangled up?
4. Al Pacino
Won for: Scent of a Woman
Should Have Won for: The Godfather Part II
5. Paul Newman
Won for: The Color of Money
Should Have Won for: Gaaaah, pick one – The Verdict, Hud, The Hustler, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Absence of Malice….ANYTHING ELSE
I’m a fan of earlier Denzel, so its Malcolm X or Cry Freedom for me.
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Valid, valid. It’s been more of a problem lately and Russell Crowe didn’t get the one he deserved for The Insider, so they gave it to him for Gladiator which meant the next year when he REALLY deserved it for A Beautiful Mind they weren’t going to give it to him two years in a row so they gave it to Denzel because he lost to Russell when they gave him the Gladiator trophy. Ugh.
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Yes, a cascade effect!
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Nice list. Funny how people so often win for roles they shouldn’t, usually because the Academy realizes that they “owe” that person…
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