20 of the worst Oscar winners in history

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Tom Huddleston sorts the least deserving Academy Award winners

It’s Oscar season once again – and while Academy members scratch their heads trying to decide which of this year’s crop of worthy titles deserves to take home the big prize, we trawl the archives to uncover the worst Oscar offences of all time. From the film that beat ‘Citizen Kane’ to Best Picture to the time ‘Harry and the Hendersons’ walked away with a handful of gold, here are all the Academy’s biggest blunders in one handy list.

This is by no means a definitive rundown of all of Oscar’s shoddy decisions – we didn’t even have room to mention Celine Dion or ’Chicago’ – so if you really, really hate ‘Titanic’ or really, really love ‘Forrest Gump’, tell us about it in the comments box below.

10. ‘Out of Africa’ (1986)

Best Picture, 58th Academy Awards, 1986

In the mid-'80s, the Academy suddenly became obsessed with dishing out heaps of awards to grandiose, sweeping tales of life in foreign lands: see ‘Gandhi’, ‘Platoon’, and ‘The Last Emperor’. While each of those films is defensible, the same can’t really be said of this tiresome, glacially-paced colonial romance.

It could’ve been: ‘Witness’, ‘Ran’ (not nominated), ‘Prizzi’s Honor’.




Browse through our list of Oscar blunders

Victor Fleming for 'Gone with the Wind' (1939) 'How Green was My Valley' (1941) 'The Greatest Show on Earth' (1952) 'Around the World in 80 Days' (1956) Leon Shamroy for 'Cleopatra' (1963) 'The Sound of Music' (1965) 'Une Homme et une Femme' (1966) John G Avildsen for 'Rocky' (1977) 'I Just Called to Say I Love You' by Stevie Wonder (1985) 'Out of Africa' (1986) Rick Baker for 'Harry and the Hendersons' (1988) 'Driving Miss Daisy' (1990) Anthony Hopkins for ‘The Silence of the Lambs’, Al Pacino for ‘Scent of a Woman’ Three drippy ballads from Disney 'Forrest Gump' (1994) 'A Beautiful Mind' (2002) Renee Zellweger for ‘Cold Mountain’ (2003) 'Crash' (2006) 'The Secret in Their Eyes' (2010) Mauro Fiore for 'Avatar' (2010)

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  • I stopped reading when you said anything by Randy Newman

    Rob Fri Jan 13 2012
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  • I find it odd that with all the Best Original Song winners of the past decade, many of which appear in the credits of their respective films and are never heard from again, you choose to lambast three Disney songs from the '90s which are well-integrated their movies, are beautifully animated, and mean a lot to the fans of those movies. As a child of the 90s, I can tell you that "A Whole New World" and the others mean a lot more to me and my friends than something like "I Need to Wake Up" means to anyone other than Al Gore and Melissa Etheridge.

    Evan Fri Jan 13 2012
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  • Worst over PULP since ROCKY over TAXI DRIVER....no debate, thankyou.

    scrumpyjack Fri Jan 13 2012
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  • nice list, can't believe driving miss daisy beat my left foot. and taxi driver wasn't nominated? always thought the oscars were a load of crap but this really confirms it

    Paul Fri Jan 13 2012
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