Unsatisfying Oscar Winners: Who Was The Biggest Upset? (PHOTOS)

You voted on the most undeserving Best Picture winners, and now take a look at some specific performances that may or may not have deserved to win an Oscar.

Did Gwyneth Paltrow deserve Best Actress over Meryl Streep for 'Shakespeare in Love'? Should Cuba Gooding Jr. have won? Did Whoopi Goldberg win for the wrong role?

Have more suggestions? Leave them in the comments and we'll add a few more.

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Judi Dench in 'Shakespeare in Love,' 1998

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Her performance was great, but Oscar-worthy at only 8 minutes? She beat out Kathy Bates who played salty political veteran Libby Holden in 'Primary Colors.'

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Her performance was great, but Oscar-worthy at only 8 minutes? She beat out Kathy Bates who played salty political veteran Libby Holden in 'Primary Colors.'

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Comments

[juancapez]

03:12 PM on 04/06/2010

I absolutely adore Sandra Bullock...always have.
Watched "The Blind Side" and came away from it thinking that was NOT and Academy Award winning performance.

[vermont57]

02:57 PM on 03/27/2010

Nicole Kidman in The Hours was a big surprise to me that she was even nominated in the lead category. That film had more of an ensemble cast in my opinion. There was no clear lead but if I had to choose, I would say that the Meryl Streep character was more the lead. Anyway, that year Julliane Moore shoudl have won for Far from Heaven!!

[SKOC211]

04:01 PM on 03/09/2010

I'll never get over Crash winning Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain.

[vermont57]

02:43 PM on 03/27/2010

Nor will I...

Also, in terms of more recent years, Ellen Burstyn should have won for Requiem for a Dream instead of Julia Roberts for Erin Brokovitch and Brenda Blethyn should have won for Secrets and Lies over Gwynneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love.

[juancapez]

03:09 PM on 04/06/2010

the AMPAS is like a superlatives vote in high school.

[Worrierking]

12:42 PM on 03/09/2010

I'm not going to sit here and debate.

"ya, no.. I'm kinda busy here" but William H. Macy should have received the award instead of Cuba Gooding jr.

[DirectProf]

10:44 AM on 03/09/2010

Cate was *ROBBED* this year. Totally robbed. :)

[KathleenW2]

08:39 PM on 03/08/2010

Did Julie Christie deserve an Oscar for "Darling" over Julie Andrews for "The Sound of Music"?

[Eric8869]

10:25 AM on 03/09/2010

NO

[rzan1]

06:01 PM on 03/09/2010

You mean for The Sound of Mucous? I hated Julie Andrews in that role. You can't imagine how popular Julie Christie was at the time. She was considered a great beauty and a talented actress. I remember how courageous I thought she was at the time to say she would never marry (and I do believe she has stuck by that statement. In fact, many famous actresses haven't married Diane Keaton and Jacqueline Bisset come to mind).

[Sir Leicester Dedlock]

06:39 AM on 04/07/2010

And Katherine Hepburn.

[KathleenW2]

08:07 PM on 03/08/2010

Imagine the year 1939, when there was a plethora of great movies up for an Oscar, including the winner, Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights and Goodbye, Mr. Chips.

To think, also, that Robert Donat beat out Clark Gable for Best Actor. RD was wonderful, of course, but Clark was Rhett Butler!

[sexyrexy]

11:58 PM on 03/08/2010

ah..Robert Donat was so moving in that. did you see the remake with Petula Clark with Peter O'Toole?

[NickJones]

07:26 PM on 03/08/2010

Beatrice Straight, Best Supporting Actress, for five minutes in "Network" (1976).

[Donald]

08:39 PM on 03/08/2010

True, it was a small but pivotal role in "Network" that Beatrice Straight played. The veteran Broadway actress was purportedly cast by the director and the producers at the last minute as William Holden's unknowing and blindsided wife, and she was so professional that she and Holden nailed their scene in only one take.

But her devastating on-screen confrontation with Holden, in which she's visibly trying to grasp the realization that her husband of 25 years is now in love with another woman, resonated so powerfully that her emotional off-screen presence serves to haunt Holden's character for the rest of the film. Ms. Straight deserved that Oscar.

For that matter, I'd offer that Anthony Hopkin's Oscar-winning turn as Hannibal Lecter was so overpowering that most people don't realize that he was on-screen for only 25 minutes in "Silence of the Lambs."

Sometimes, it's not the quantifiable size of the role that counts, but the memory of its lingering sting.

[sexyrexy]

12:00 AM on 03/09/2010

the Academy has it's rules.. how much screen time one has to appear in any category for nominations. 5 mins is good enough. for a pivotal role for best support.

[muscleboundH]

06:31 PM on 03/08/2010

I'll never forgive the Academy for allowing Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich to win over Ellen Burstyn in Requiem For a Dream. Julia Roberts basically played Pretty Woman as a sassy law assistant. Ellen Burstyn BECAME her character and transformed herself to such tragic detail that her character is disturbing even after having seen the movie repeatedly.

[mag68]

06:51 PM on 03/08/2010

I couldn't agree more. This is the example that I always use when describing my distaste with the academy awards. Ellen Burstyn's performance was transcendental. Julia Roberts performance was real cute and entertaining, her character had such spunky attitude! Yawn......

[The-JuRK]

08:40 PM on 03/08/2010

Absolutely.

[mitzvah]

08:21 AM on 03/08/2010

While I appreciate Alan Arkin's body of work very much, I thought that Eddie Murphy was ROBBED the year that Alan Arkin won Best Supporting Actor for "Little Miss Sunshine" (a movie that I loved, just the same). Murphy's character portrayal in "Dream Girls" was amazing in its breadth and depth. I still can't wrap my head around how E.M. was denied the honor that year.

[Eric8869]

10:27 AM on 03/09/2010

agreed

[The-JuRK]

04:56 AM on 03/08/2010

Anthony Hopkins wasn't even nominated for his brilliant performance of C.S. Lewis in SHADOWLANDS (although Debra Winger was nominated for Best Actress for that film). Watching a man who had guarded his feelings for his entire life fall in love and then fall apart was the most heart-wrenching thing I've ever seen on film.

He'll always be associated with the psychotic Hannibal Lector but he brought more skill and humanity to playing C.S. Lewis.

[Weathermaker]

01:11 AM on 03/08/2010

Tom Hanks in Philadelphia over Daniel Day-Lewis in In the Name of the Father, a movie too political for the Academy.

[sexyrexy]

02:58 AM on 03/08/2010

I love Day-Lewis in that film,as well as the film! I was already living in London when they were released and didn't understand then what all the commontion was about until this film..

[GAPeach99]

12:32 AM on 03/08/2010

Actually I had Pacquin's competition wrong -- Thompson for In the Name of the Father and Rosie Perez for Fearless

[GAPeach99]

12:29 AM on 03/08/2010

I will never understand how they gave a 12-yr old Anna Pacquin an Oscar in 1994 for playing a brat (that was a stretch?) over Angela Bassett as Tina Turner in What's Love Got to Do with It or Emma Thompson in The Remains of the Day. What were they thinking?

[seachild]

04:49 AM on 03/08/2010

I think Anna was in the SUPPORTING actress category (Holly Hunter was in the LEAD ACTRESS category for that year)...so it was HOLLY who one over the two.

[GAPeach99]

04:50 PM on 03/08/2010

Yep, you're right. Corrected myself above. But I still thought it was a travesty that a 12-yr old won for basically playing a brat and, frankly, not even a very memorable brat. What a slap in the face to the other actresses in that category.

[kalapa]

02:53 AM on 03/09/2010

Paquin was cute, ugh! Yes, I think Emma Thompson should have got it that year.

[ladyvader]

06:36 PM on 03/07/2010

When movies like Juno get nominated for Oscars, that tells me a lot. It says Hollywood is out of ideas and have no idea what makes a great picture.

[TrueBud]

07:26 PM on 03/07/2010

Obviously, you haven't seen the tripe that won, even during the "Golden Era" of Hollywood. All your comment shows is the attitude of an old fuddy-duddy.

[Eric8869]

10:28 AM on 03/09/2010

Juno was great