Less than impressed: Three Oscar-winning movies hated by their stars
For many actors and filmmakers, the greatest award they could ever receive is an Oscar. A symbol of ultimate success and critical respect, winning an Academy Award is one of the most significant achievements within the film industry. Since 1929, hundreds of stars have taken home golden statuettes proving their talent, allowing them to stand out above the rest as the true cream of the crop.
However, there are several actors who have starred in Oscar-winning movies – perhaps even winning an award for their performance – that they ended up disliking. Discovering that the movies they were a part of just didn’t live up to the script, several actors have spoken out about the films they appeared in, calling out cheesy scripts, problematic characters or tense working conditions, regardless of the fact that these projects ended up bagging highly prestigious Academy Awards.
Viola Davis garnered acclaim when she starred in The Help in 2011, directed by Tate Taylor. The movie featured an impressive cast, such as Emma Stone, Sissy Spacek and Octavia Spencer, and earned critical acclaim, racking up four Academy Award nominations. Davis won ‘Best Supporting Actress’, but she soon spoke out against the movie’s white saviour narrative.
Speaking to The New York Times, she revealed, “I just felt that at the end of the day, that it wasn’t the voices of the maids that were heard. I know Aibileen. I know Minny. They’re my grandma. They’re my mom.” She continued, expressing unhappiness with the way that the movie presented the black characters in comparison to the white characters.
“I know that if you do a movie where the whole premise is, I want to know what it feels like to work for white people and to bring up children in 1963, I want to hear how you really feel about it. I never heard that in the course of the movie,” Davis added.
On a less serious level, Christopher Plummer has previously spoken out against The Sound of Music, in which he played Captain von Trapp, mainly because he thinks it’s too “sentimental.” The musical won five Academy Awards, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ for Robert Wise, and remains a beloved classic.
Yet, Plummer was not impressed with the movie, which follows Julie Andrews’ character as she becomes a governess and cares for seven children, soon falling for their father. Plummer once told The Hollywood Reporter that the film was “awful,” calling it “sentimental and gooey.” He added, “ You had to work terribly hard to try and infuse some minuscule bit of humour into it.”
Another star who is not particularly keen on the legacy of one of his movies is Alec Guinness, who appeared in Star Wars as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Despite it becoming one of the most popular sci-fi films of all time, winning six Academy Awards, Guinness grew tired of hearing about the movie. He wrote in his memoir, Blessings in Disguise, “A refurbished Star Wars is on somewhere or everywhere, I have no intention of revisiting any galaxy.”
He continued, “Twenty years ago, when the film was first shown, it had a freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy at the influence it might be having.” That’s not the only time he’s spoken negatively about Star Wars; Guinness called it “fairytale rubbish” before he even accepted the role.