20 Most Disliked Oscar Wins Ever, Ranked

Since 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been giving out the Oscars. Today, these awards have become the most prestigious honor in the film industry, and winning one can potentially alter the actor's career for good. However, every now and then—in fact, one might even say often—general audiences universally agree that the Academy got something wrong.

Whether it's a bad movie winning Best Picture, an actor winning an acting award over a much more deserving peer, or the trashiest film winning a random Best Makeup Oscar, there have been plenty of occasions over the years when people have agreed that the Academy messed up. These are the most unpopular Oscar wins (including some of the most hated Oscar winners), ranked from "some people might defend this" to what is nothing short of a stain on the Academy's reputation.

20 'The Cider House Rules' (1999)

Award: Best Supporting Actor for Michael Caine

The Cider House Rules is a solid enough drama with a strong emotional core and a stack of wonderful performances, and the Academy absolutely fell in love with it when it came out. It's an old-school kind of drama that ultimately just seeks to emotionally satisfy the audience, and at that it definitely succeeds. From Charlize Theron to Tobey Maguire, it's full of acting capable of tenderizing even the coldest heart.

Michael Caine is in the movie, and he, too, delivers a really strong performance. However, it's not one that screams Oscar gold. However, by this point in his career, Caine was already a legendary actor who many saw as overdue for an Oscar. Career wins are something that no one loves, and in Caine's case, that's precisely how his victory was sadly seen.

19 'The Iron Lady' (2011)

Award: Best Leading Actress for Meryl Streep

Saying that Meryl Streep has done some incredible work would be an understatement. After all, many would reasonably call her the greatest actress of the modern age. However, not even the greats are without fault, and Streep is no exception. And as far as misguided Streep performances go, her take on Margaret Thatcher for The Iron Lady is definitely up there. That makes it even more iconic that this was the performance that turned her into a three-time Oscar-winning actress.

The film is already pretty mediocre to begin with (thankfully, it wasn't part of what's already one of the worst Best Picture lineups in Oscar history). You can't set aside the quality of the movie itself when talking about Streep's transformation into Thatcher, as the script is so convoluted and so reluctant to engage deeply with its subject's politics that Streep's performance is left without an anchor to guide it. This is a perfect example of the Academy awarding the most acting, not necessarily the best acting.

18 'Spectre' (2015)

Award: Best Original Song for "Writing's on the Wall"

Daniel Craig's run as James Bond was absolutely exceptional, but it wasn't without its hiccups. One such hiccup is Spectre. It's not a bad movie by any means, but it sure is one of the least memorable 007 adventures of the modern age. Coincidentally, it's paired with one of the least remarkable 007 songs of all time, that being Sam Smith's "Writing's on the Wall."

It's one of the most-streamed James Bond songs on Spotify, but it feels like that comes more from Sam Smith's pedigree than it does because the song itself is actually fresh or creative in any way. Viewers in 2016 felt that the movie won just because a James Bond song win felt like "the default," and matters were only made worse after Smith wrongly claimed during their acceptance speech that they were the first openly gay man to win an Oscar.

17 'Brave' (2012)

Award: Best Animated Feature

Since Toy Story revolutionized the film industry in 1995, Pixar has been putting out some of the best and most iconic animated films in history. This probably doesn't include Brave. Some people's least favorite Pixar effort, this family fantasy is by no means a bad film, but it also doesn't really have much to make it stand out. Even then, it won an Oscar.

There's a long and infamous history of the Academy dismissing the Best Animated Feature category as a category for children's films, and that has historically led to Disney and Pixar dominating the category even when audiences don't deem them particularly worthy. But not only was Brave not the best animated film of 2012, but it also wasn't even the best animated film under the Disney umbrella, with Wreck-It Ralph still being seen as a worthier underdog all these years later.

16 'How Green Was My Valley' (1941)

Award: Best Picture

It goes without saying that Citizen Kane is a film without equal, referred to by many as the single greatest movie of Hollywood's Golden Age. As such, some might be surprised when they first learn that it didn't win the Best Picture Oscar, primarily due to a powerful smear campaign by William Randolph Hearst, the publishing tycoon who inspired the movie's protagonist. Instead, the Big Oscar that year went to John Ford's How Green Was My Valley.

This is actually an absolutely phenomenal film—one of the best of the '40s, even—, but better than Citizen Kane? Definitely not. As such, How Green Was My Valley's reputation has historically been tarnished through no fault of its own, even though, when it comes to controversial awards, this Oscar win's actually pretty great.

15 'The King's Speech' (2010)

Award: Best Picture

It's only occasionally that the film that the public consensus agrees is the best among the Best Picture nominees actually goes on to win Best Picture. In a year as stacked with exceptional nominees as 2010—like The Social Network, Black Swan, and Inception, to mention but a few—it came as all the more of a disappointment when The King's Speech was the film that took home the big award of the night.

It's a fine period drama with some excellent performances and solid production qualities. It's not because it's a bad film that its Oscar win has aged poorly, but rather because it's such a tonally dull and artistically flat movie that beat out such adventurous, ambitious films. People sometimes give it more hate than it deserves, but it's nevertheless undeniable: This is one of the most unpopular Best Picture wins of the 21st century.

14 'Emilia Pérez' (2024)

Award: Best Original Song for "El Mal"

Widely considered one of the worst Oscar-nominated movies of all time, Emilia Pérez's 13 record nominations (which made it tied as the 2nd most nominated film in the awards' history) were touted as one of the biggest fiascos in recent Oscars memory. It was inevitable that it would win something. Indeed, it won two awards.

One of those awards was a Best Original Song victory that went to Clémont Ducol, Camille, and director-screenwriter Jacques Audiard for "El Mal," one of the least catchy, most nonsensical, most poorly sung tracks that have ever won the award. It was very evident that voters just went with the momentum that the song had garnered throughout awards season; because, had they actually listened closely (and read the bizarre lyrics on Google Translate, perhaps), they would have noticed that "El Mal" is a song that makes next to zero sense. Needless to say, the public wasn't happy.

13 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' (2022)

Award: Best Supporting Actress for Jamie Lee Curtis

More often than one might like, Oscar voters grant an actor an award not really because they delivered the best performance of the year in their respective category, but rather as a celebration of their career and trajectory. Such wins are typically monikered "legacy Oscars" or "career wins," and Jamie Lee Curtis' victory for Everything Everywhere All at Once undeniably fits the bill.

Everything Everywhere is one of the greatest Best Picture winners of the 21st century, but Curtis isn't even the best supporting actress of the film itself—that title would have to go to Stephanie Hsu, who was also nominated for her work. The public consensus on her victory immediately after he won seemed to be that her peers had just decided to reward her for her lifetime achievements, rather than praise the actual performance itself. Just a few years after the event, Academy voters are reportedly already regretting their decision, apparently mocking each other with "remember how you voted for Jamie Lee Curtis?"

12 'Harry and Tonto' (1974)

Award: Best Leading Actor for Art Carney

Art Carney was a phenomenal star, but speaking of legacy Oscars, there are very few more noteworthy or infamous than Carney's victory for Harry and Tonto on the same year that Jack Nicholson and Al Pacino were nominated for Chinatown and The Godfather Part II, respectively.

Although it's sometimes unjustly maligned, since it's undoubtedly a phenomenally powerful performance full of subtle emotion, it also can't be denied that Nicholson or Pacino would have been far more deserving and timeless wins. It's true that Carney's victory should perhaps not be as unpopular as it is, but it's also true that saying he shouldn't have won that year isn't exactly an unfair sentiment.

11 'King Richard' (2021)

Award: Best Leading Actor for Will Smith

Every year, more than a few movies come out that are very obvious Oscar bait; sometimes, they are actually pretty good. Such is the case of King Richard, a biopic about Richard Williams, who coached his daughters Venus and Serena into tennis superstardom. From the get-go, it was clear that this was an Oscar vehicle for Will Smith, who had been trying to get on that Dolby Theatre stage for years.

Unfortunately, the first time that Smith did step on that stage was when he infamously slapped Chris Rock for having told a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith. Later in the night, he won that coveted Oscar and even got a standing ovation, but a moment that should have felt triumphant and cathartic instead felt all too sour. King Richard is one of the best sports movies of the 2020s, and Smith's performance in it is admittedly phenomenal, but because his win will forever be tied with his baffling public display of violence, it's a victory that immediately became one of the most unpopular in the Academy's history.