Daniel Day-Lewis over Bradley Cooper?!: The 13 most confusing Oscar screw-ups of all time
The Oscars donât typically award bad acting performances. The worst of cinematic crime scenes feature talented stars trying to salvage what they can, from Viola Davis making the most out of The Help, to Colin Firth acting his royal socks off in The Kingâs Speech.
In truth, the Oscars tend to be more confusing than they are outright offensive. Many actors seem to win for the wrong performances (does anyone think Still Alice is Julianne Mooreâs best work?), while interesting performances in provocative movies tend to be overlooked in favour of awarding more traditional Oscar bait.
It means that itâs far easier to curate a list of the most âwhat the hell?â wins than it is the truly bad ones. These are times when the victor seemed much less deserving than their fellow nominees, or when a juicy Oscar narrative overpowered the performance itself: Who hadnât won in a while? Whoâd been snubbed too many times? Who risked their health the most through all that weight loss/weight gain/potential hypothermia, and so forth?
Ahead of this yearâs Oscars, which fall on 12 March, weâve gone through more than 30 years of ceremonies to find 13 of the most frustrating Academy Award screw-ups in the acting categories.
Daniel Day-Lewis in Lincoln
To say anything negative about Daniel Day-Lewis is tantamount to sacrilege â so I wonât. But Steven Spielbergâs Abraham Lincoln biopic is also among the actorâs most unexciting work. His performance as one of Americaâs greatest presidents is driven by stoicism and reserve â qualities that are basically the Oscarsâ kryptonite. With that in mind, itâs admirable that he triumphed in 2013. Yet you wish Oscar had ventured elsewhere that year based on Day-Lewisâs fellow nominees. Compared to an electric Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook, or Joaquin Phoenixâs strange and beguiling work in The Master, Day-Lewis felt (dare I say it?) a bit pedestrian.
Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady
Meryl Streep is the queen of technicality. Sheâs never been an especially naturalistic performer, but itâs still thrilling to watch her move and gesture and project. But in something like The Iron Lady, where she played Margaret Thatcher, itâs almost unbearable. Try as she might, she never seems to have a handle on the character, possibly because The Iron Lady isnât a very good movie, but itâs incredibly distracting. This Oscar year (2012) was also a great one for performances by women, most of whom didnât even get nominations â Charlize Theron in Young Adult, Tilda Swinton in We Need to Talk About Kevin, Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids, Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene. Streep sweeping the various Best Actress races, despite all of that strong competition, was particularly egregious.
Julianne Moore in Still Alice
This was an âitâs timeâ Oscar. Still Alice marked Julianne Mooreâs fifth Academy Award nomination, with the Academy deciding she finally deserved a spot at the podium. While sheâs very good as a woman experiencing early onset Alzheimerâs, the film itself is forgettable. An easy fix would have been to give Moore her much-deserved Oscar back in 1998, for her gorgeous work in Boogie Nights. Or in 2003 for Far from Heaven, where she embodied heartbreaking fragility as a tortured Fifties housewife. With such an âitâs timeâ narrative therefore unnecessary in 2015, that yearâs Best Actress Oscar could have gone to a terrifying Rosamund Pike in Gone Girl instead.
Martin Landau in Ed Wood
Everyone loves Martin Landau, so itâs difficult to begrudge this win too much. His work as Bela Lugosi in this underrated Tim Burton drama is also magnetic and poignant. But he was also up against Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction. A true cinema-shaking, star-making performance if there ever was one, Jacksonâs work in the Quentin Tarantino classic is funny, frightening and endlessly quotable. It seems bizarre that it wasnât an awards shoo-in at the time.
Christoph Waltz in Django Unchained
Or the second time Samuel L Jackson missed out on his Oscar. While you could excuse Landauâs win based on the quality of his performance in Ed Wood, it remains mystifying that the Academy Awards determined Waltz to be the standout of the Django Unchained ensemble â particularly when he had won for another Tarantino film, Inglourious Basterds, just three years earlier. Neither of Waltzâs Django co-stars â Jackson and a similarly terrifying Leonardo DiCaprio â earned Supporting Actor nominations, and he ultimately triumphed over The Masterâs Philip Seymour Hoffman, in what marked Hoffmanâs last great performance before his tragic death.
Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby
For someone who has won two Best Actress Oscars, Hilary Swank has had an odd career. Last seen as a psychotic policewoman in the lurid thriller Fatale, Swank probably didnât need a second Academy Award, for the maudlin Clint Eastwood weepie Million Dollar Baby. Awarding that yearâs Best Actress Oscar to Kate Winslet instead â for her show-stopping performance in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind â would have also freed her from an âitâs timeâ narrative four years later (when she won for her role in the stuffy courtroom drama The Reader). Oh, what could have been.
Michael Caine in The Cider House Rules
This is the epitome of a Harvey Weinstein Oscar, in that it happened courtesy of a treacly period drama he aggressively backed and then was quickly forgotten about. It was also a weird triumph â Michael Caine had won before, for 1986âs Hannah and Her Sisters, so he didnât have a particularly strong âitâs timeâ narrative around him, and he was also up against a quartet of genuinely brilliant and still talked-about performances (Tom Cruise in Magnolia, Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile, Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense and Jude Law in The Talented Mr Ripley).
Jim Broadbent in Iris
This was another win from the Harvey Weinstein factory. An Iris Murdoch biopic distributed by Weinsteinâs Miramax Films and starring both Judi Dench and Kate Winslet as the late journalist, it was practically made for Oscars. Broadbent is fine as Murdochâs caring husband, but nowhere near as memorable as his Supporting Actor competition that year, which included Ben Kingsleyâs hilariously volatile work in Sexy Beast, and Ian McKellen as Gandalf.
Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody
In this bungled Freddie Mercury biopic, Rami Malek gives less of a performance than a bizarre jumble of false teeth, bad wigs and strange vocal delivery. In fairness, most of Malekâs immediate competition in the Best Actor category in 2019 â which included Viggo Mortensen in Green Book and Christian Bale in Vice â were different shades of awful, but how Malek swept the awards season that year remains one of Hollywoodâs biggest modern mysteries. Bradley Cooperâs gruff and heartbreaking work in A Star Is Born was right there!
Jessica Tandy in Driving Miss Daisy
This is such a famous Oscar-winning performance that itâs easy to forget it almost didnât happen. In the run-up to the 1990 Academy Awards, Michelle Pfeiffer had won all the major precursors for The Fabulous Baker Boys â with her Oscar loss becoming one of the nightâs big surprises. It would have been a great win, though. Her role as a working-class lounge singer features one of cinemaâs most memorable moments â as she slides across a piano top to sing âMaking Whoopeeâ â and Pfeiffer, as of 2021, still hasnât won an Oscar despite so many awards-worthy performances. Plus, with all due respect to Tandy, Driving Miss Daisy has aged like milk.
Alicia Vikander in The Danish Girl
Speaking of âaged like milkâ: The Danish Girl! This aggressive misfire about a pioneering trans woman, played with almost surreal levels of badness by Eddie Redmayne, won its sole Oscar via Alicia Vikanderâs performance as Redmayneâs on-screen wife. Itâs a classic âBest Supporting Actressâ win, with Vikander cast as a long-suffering spouse who gets at least one juicy scene of abject rage. But what a snooze! Especially in comparison to her fellow nominees, which included Rooney Mara in Carol and Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hateful Eight â talk about a deserved âitâs timeâ Oscar. Alas.
Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour
This is a true case of impressive prosthetic makeup winning an actor an Oscar. Gary Oldman had deserved an Academy Award for decades by this point, but probably for something a bit more intriguing than a drab Winston Churchill biopic. That Oldman was up against a trio of incredible performances (Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread, Timothee Chalamet in Call Me by Your Name and Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out) only helped in making his work seem so uninspired in comparison. Even Denzel Washingtonâs wacky performance in the little-seen Roman J Israel, Esq would have been less baffling a win.
Mahershala Ali in Green Book
Mahershala Ali is a phenomenal actor, but there is something undeniably bleak about this win. Green Book was pummelled by critics who argued that it perpetuated white saviour tropes and bent the truth of Aliâs character â the real-life musician Don Shirley. Such an unwieldy and ill-judged venture tainted what should have been something worth celebrating. Mahershala Ali is great! It was his second Oscar in three years! But Green Book, unlike the haunting and beautiful Moonlight, really stunk! Even worse, it meant snubbing Richard E Grantâs wonderful work in Can You Ever Forgive Me?, which should have been a much bigger awards player than it was.