A few ground rules and a few apologies. First, this is a list of the most unlikely Academy Award results on the evening, not a compilation of the most inexcusable decisions.
So you won’t see mention of, say, the sappy Forrest Gump, a considerable favourite, beating the ground-breaking Pulp Fiction to the best-picture Oscar in 1995. Nor will you see an entry for Shakespeare in Love walloping Saving Private Ryan or How Green Was My Valley outpacing Citizen Kane.
Neither was quite as surprising as people now want to believe. Shakespeare in Love had more Oscar nominations and more precursor wins than any other title. Citizen Kane won just one award on the night.
We see a bias towards best picture and acting as those awards are the ones that generate most prognostication (though we can’t explain why best supporting actress threw up so many shockers).
The recency bias is down to the fact that there was, during the early years, not nearly so much debate over who was winning what. In the current century. whole libraries could be filled with one year’s content from Oscar bloggers.
If, say, Kieran Culkin loses best supporting actor next week then he goes straight into the amended top five.
25. Pesky foreigner Hamlet takes best picture (1949)
British coproductions had triumphed before, but Laurence Olivier’s take on Shakespeare’s longest play was the first film financed entirely outside the United States to win best picture. It got past the American classic The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
24. Geena Davis wins for The Accidental Tourist (1989)
A decade after breaking through with Alien, Sigourney Weaver was up in best actress for Gorillas in the Mist and best supporting actress for Working Girl. She lost the former to Jodie Foster for The Accused and the latter to Davis for a charmingly eccentric turn in Lawrence Kasdan’s Anne Tyler adaptation.
23. Tilda Swinton stands tall for Michael Clayton (2008)
They were never going to give best supporting actress to a 13-year-old Saoirse Ronan, up for Atonement. But Amy Ryan for Gone Baby Gone, Cate Blanchett for I’m Not There and Ruby Dee for American Gangster all seemed better bets than Swinton.
22. Adrien Brody gets a bit too familiar (2003)
His smooch with Halle Berry now feels deeply inappropriate. Brody was (and still is) the youngest best-actor winner, at 29. What else? Well, Harvey Weinstein, then at the height of his malign powers, thought he had sewn the win up for Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York.
21. Spotlight eats The Revenant’s bear (2016)
This wasn’t an absolute jaw-dropper in best picture. The Revenant had its detractors. Spotlight had wide (if shallow) support. But the stats were overwhelmingly in the former’s favour, with Directors Guild of America, Golden Globes and Bafta wins.
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20. Driving Miss Daisy wins best picture without a director nomination (1990)
Bruce Beresford’s sentimental drama passed out its fellow nominees Born on the Fourth of July, My Left Foot, Dead Poets Society and Field of Dreams to join a select club. No film repeated this feat until Ben Affleck’s Argo, 23 years later.
19. Richard Dreyfuss beats long-time loser Richard Burton (1978)
Few people remember Equus with great affection, but Burton, then on his seventh nomination with no wins, was expected to triumph for that turgid adaptation of a Peter Shaffer play. The younger Richard won for The Goodbye Girl. Burton was never again nominated.
18. Loretta Young beats Rosalind Russell to best actress (1948)
Russell, Hollywood royalty nominated for Dudley Nichols’s dusty adaptation of Mourning Becomes Electra, rose to her feet in anticipation as the envelope was being torn open. Young won for the so-so comedy The Farmer’s Daughter – and the defeated pro made as if she was merely beginning the standing ovation.
17. Braveheart condemns Ron Howard to the ‘wrong win’ (1996)
Ron Howard should have won best picture with the thrilling Apollo 13 that year, but the rush of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart secured a shock upset. Howard went on to win five years later for the useless A Beautiful Mind.
16. Juliette Binoche spoils a fairy story (1997)
It was already written. After a half-century of never even being nominated, Lauren Bacall was surely going to win best supporting actress for The Mirror Has Two Faces. The voters didn’t agree. Binoche was swept in on The English Patient’s wave.
15. The Greatest Show on Earth becomes the ‘worst ever best picture winner’ (1953)
It probably wasn’t that even then. It is certainly not that now. But it seemed a bit that way when, to everyone’s surprise, Cecil B DeMille’s circus drama got past High Noon and The Quiet Man.
14. Grace Kelly embarrasses a legend (1955)
The TV network sent a camera crew to record Judy Garland, in hospital after giving birth, delivering an acceptance speech after a surely inevitable win for A Star Is Born. Kelly, at the height of her fame, snuck past for the little celebrated The Country Girl.
13. Anna Paquin is as stunned as anyone (1994)
The abiding image was that of Anna Paquin, 11-year-old best-supporting-actress winner for The Piano, speechless and aghast on stage with her award. Winona Ryder, presumed favourite for The Age of Innocence, did a good job of looking happy for her.
12. Mark Rylance knocks out Rocky (2016)
This writer was at the Oscars to hear the sharp intake of breath when Rylance, up for Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies, got the best-supporting-actor prize over Sylvester Stallone, who looked to have it in the bag for Creed.
11. Marcia Gay Harden wins out of nowhere (2001)
Prepare for a nerd fact. The respected American actor, who triumphed in best supporting actress for Pollock, is the only actor to win an Oscar without a prize at the Golden Globe, Bafta, Screen Actors Guild or Critics Choice awards.
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10. Chariots of Fire comes from behind to break the tape (1982)
Film fans in Britain and Ireland think of Hugh Hudson’s athletics drama as an obvious best-picture winner. But even now American observers can’t quite believe that it beat Warren Beatty’s more fancied Reds.
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9. Yes, Marisa Tomei did win (1993)
To this day a myth survives that a confused Jack Palance read out the wrong name, but that is, of course, nonsense. Tomei got past Vanessa Redgrave and Judy Davis to win best supporting actress for her comic turn in My Cousin Vinny. And she deserved it.
8. Alan Arkin profits from Norbit? (2007)
Did Eddie Murphy, up in best supporting actor for Dreamgirls, really lose to Arkin, amusingly grumpy in Little Miss Sunshine, after voters recoiled from Murphy’s turn in the same year’s ghastly Norbit? We will never know.
7. An American in Paris wins in a stellar year (1952)
Vincente Minnelli’s sparkling musical is now rightly seen as a classic, but observers were stunned when it got past A Streetcar Named Desire and A Place in the Sun to take best picture. Streetcar won three of the four acting awards.
6. Robert Donat beats lead of the most financially successful film ever (1940)
This writer would argue that the sweet-voiced Donat, honoured for the hugely moving Goodbye Mr Chips, is, indeed, better than was Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind. But, given that last film’s sweep, one can appreciate contemporary observers’ astonishment.
5. Olivia Colman takes out Glenn Close (2019)
Fascinating how many of these entries feature a younger actor beating a veteran inked in for a “career win”. Demi Moore should, perhaps, watch out next week. Colman won best actress for the splendid The Favourite. Close lost for the ho-hum The Wife.
4. Anthony Hopkins closes out the pandemic Oscars with a shocker (2021)
This beats Colman’s upset because of the bizarre decision, made in the expectation of a win for the recently deceased Chadwick Boseman, to move best actor to the end of the show. Hopkins triumphing for The Father ensured they’d never try that again.
3. ‘It’s a tie!’ (1969)
So said Ingrid Bergman when she opened the best-actress envelope. Barbra Streisand was a predictable winner for Funny Girl, Katharine Hepburn less so for The Lion in Winter. But the real upset was the tie itself, the only time this has happened in an acting race.
2. Crash beats Brokeback Mountain (2006)
“Was it the best film of the year? I don’t think so.” Don’t listen to us. That was Paul Haggis, director of the soapy Crash, in 2015. There have always been suspicions that conservative voters winced at the gay content in Ang Lee’s far superior Brokeback Mountain.
1. Moonlight (eventually) beats La La Land in Envelopegate (2017)
The raw stats from precursor awards suggest Crash is just ahead of Moonlight as the biggest ever upset in best picture, but that hardly mattered in the two minutes and 23 seconds that elapsed between Faye Dunaway announcing La La Land the winner and that film’s producers discovering the error. An extraordinary confluence of unlikeliness.
