10 Actors Who Won Oscars For The Wrong Film

We like to pretend they don't mean anything, but at the end of the day, critics always find reason to pick holes in the annual Oscar results. Forrest Gump taking Best Picture, over Pulp Fiction? No way. Best Director for Robert Redford, not Scorsese? Insanity. Crash winning Best Picture, over Brokeback Mountain? Complete and utter bullshit. Seemingly nothing bothers a critic more, however, than when the Academy gets it wrong on actors. One argument has for the last couple of years been that Leonardo DiCaprio should have won an Oscar a long time ago, perhaps for What's Eating Gilbert Grape, or Catch Me If You Can, or The Wolf of Wall Street. Another thing critics generally agree on regarding DiCaprio and the Oscars is that Leo won the award for the wrong film. While extreme survival jaunt The Revenant has already seemingly taken on modern classic status, few critics will tell you that DiCaprio delivers his finest work in it. So, on that note, join us as we take a look back at ten other actors that won their Academy Awards for the wrong movie. 10) Alan Arkin Won For: Little Miss Sunshine Should Have Won For: Wait Until Dark It's no secret that the Academy oftentimes doles out acting Oscars like they're lifetime achievement awards, long after the actor in question ideally should have won something. Alan Arkin, for example, got his first Oscar aged 72, decades after he'd started in the business, for a role that hardly featured him at his best. Arkin's Best Supporting Actor Oscar was awarded for his turn as generic 'grumpy grampa' in Little Miss Sunshine. But by rights the Academy should have given him something in his peak 60s period, most probably for his nasal, profoundly menacing villain in Wait Until Dark. It's Arkin at his weirdest, most frightening and most charismatic all at once. 9) Sean Connery Won For: The Untouchables Should Have Won For: The Hill Forget James Bond - the best series of performances Sean Connery ever gave were for his regular 60s/70s collaborator, director Sidney Lumet. AMPAS, however, thought otherwise. They waited until 1988 to give Connery his first Oscar, as Best Supporting Actor in Brian De Palma's blood-drenched gangster saga The Untouchables. It's difficult to argue that Connery's broad, Oirish-accented take on The Untouchables' good cop Malone comes close to topping his performances in Lumet's The Offence or, in particular, his classic war drama The Hill. In The Hill, Connery's startlingly powerful and intense; in The Untouchables, he's as hammy as they come. 8) Kate Winslet Won For: The Reader Should Have Won For: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind How ironic that Kate Winslet would win her long-delayed Oscar for her performance in a Holocaust drama, just two years after Ricky Gervais' Extras had Winslet - playing an exaggerated version of herself - declaring that starring in Holocaust-set films "guaranteed" actors a win. The Reader's fine, as is Winslet in it (though her German accent is a little strangulated). Really she should have bagged the gold for Eternal Sunshine, though, and her colorful portrayal of a manic-depressive perpetually lost in the world and self-sabotaging. 12 years on, it still resonates, and it's still her one to beat. 7) Morgan Freeman Won For: Million Dollar Baby Should Have Won For: The Shawshank Redemption The Shawshank Redemption's wise old sage 'Red' Redding is such a defining performance for Morgan Freeman that he's been playing a variation on the role ever since. It's such a great performance, the real highlight of Frank Darabont's film in fact, that Freeman probably should have taken home the Best Actor Oscar that year. It was another decade before Freeman won his Academy Award, for playing a new take on the Red character in Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby. Tough, yet sensitive, rough, yet street-smart, Eddie Dupris was pretty much Freeman's imitation of his own best-loved role. The Academy should have rewarded him for the real thing. 6) Christian Bale Won For: The Fighter Should Have Won For: Harsh Times Often it's Christian Bale's dedication to putting his body through sheer torture, and not his bona fide acting talent, that wins him the attention. So it's no real surprise that his shedding about a third of his body weight for The Fighter got people talking, put Hollywood in awe of his commitment, and eventually won him his first Best Supporting Actor Oscar. The Fighter is far from Bale's best work, though. He delivered his best, in fact, for a little-known character piece from 2005: David Ayer's Harsh Times, in which Bale plays a PTSD-afflicted ex-soldier going off the rails. There's no actorly embellishment as in The Fighter, no weight was gained or lost - this is just Bale at his most deeply felt and affecting. 5) George Clooney Won For: Syriana Should Have Won For: Michael Clayton Like Bale, George Clooney seemingly took home his Best Supporting Actor Oscar largely because voters sympathized with the physical agony he had to go through for the part. And sure, Clooney probably did deserve something for Syriana, having piled on the pounds so hard he had to undergo surgery when his nose started leaking spinal fluid. Clooney's greatest performance, however, came not in Syriana, but in Michael Clayton. It's a once-in-a-lifetime turn from the King of Hollywood, one that feels lived rather than performed. It's Clooney dampening down his star quality to give a portrait of a man whose spark has long since been extinguished, after years of being corrupted by the system in which he finds himself trapped. 4) Colin Firth Won For: The King's Speech Should Have Won For: A Single Man The King's Speech is one of those Oscar success stories that critics like to turn their noses up at these days. The truth is, the film holds up pretty well, and Best Actor Oscar winner Colin Firth is fine in it as the stammering King George - fine, if not great. Really, it's Firth playing Firth with a rather obviously affected speech impediment. Tom Ford's A Single Man shows off a different side of Firth, one that reveals a shocking vulnerability beneath the often cold, steely facade. He was nominated for Best Actor for Ford's film the year before he won for The King's Speech. If only the Academy had been just one year earlier in their generosity. 3) Marisa Tomei Won For: My Cousin Vinny Should Have Won For: The Wrestler Marisa Tomei's Best Supporting Actress win for My Cousin Vinny in 1993 came as such a shock that a long-circulating urban legend went that the wrong name had accidentally been read out. It's not that Tomei's particularly bad in the film - she's just not particularly Oscar-worthy, either. In the time since she won her Academy Award, Tomei hasn't rested on her laurels: she's actually only gotten better as an actress. Ideally, her Oscar would've come in her peak later period, for her turn as an ageing stripper in The Wrestler. Anyone who holds their own against a Mickey Rourke in his prime and still wows at least deserves something for the trouble. 2) Jeff Bridges Won For: Crazy Heart Should Have Won For: The Big Lebowski Hands up - who actually saw Crazy Heart? More pertinently, hands up who saw it and thought to themselves that Jeff Bridges gave his definitive performance in it? Of course, that's not going to be the one Bridges movie that people remember years from now. The one they'll remember is the one which Bridges took his enduring nickname from: The Big Lebowski. Bridges doesn't just make an iconic character wholesale of Jeff 'The Dude' Lebowski. His is a quirky comedic performance that confidently goes big and yet always retains its sense of realism. FYI, Academy voters didn't even nominate Bridges for The Big Lebowski. Maybe the weirdly sexualized, bowling-based dream sequence put them off. 1) Al Pacino Won For: Scent of a Woman Should Have Won For: The Godfather Part II In Scent of a Woman, Al Pacino is everything he tragically came to be in the 90s and beyond: a shouty, scenery-chewing shell of his former self. He's big where he used to be subtle, crazed and apparently trying to out-act everyone in his vicinity. It was for this he won his first and only Best Actor Oscar. In The Godfather Part II, Al Pacino is quite simply one of the two greatest actors that ever lived (the other one being De Niro, of course). The tiniest flickers on his face tell a haunting, terrifying story. He should have been crowned Best Actor for this, nay for any performance he gave in his 70s period, but unfortunately that's just how rarely justice is served at the Oscars.