10 Actors Who Won Oscars For The Wrong Movie

3. Judi Dench - Shakespeare In Love

Denzel Washington
Miramax Films

Fun fact: Dame Judi Dench is in Shakespeare In Love for eight minutes. Outside of Beatrice Straight's six-minute role in Network, it is the shortest performance to ever secure an Oscar.

Now, Shakespeare In Love hasn't aged particularly well, no thanks to the vicious Oscar campaign Harvey Weinstein put in place to secure the film's Best Picture win over Saving Private Ryan and Gwenyth Paltrow's Best Actress win over the likes of Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett.

But looking back, it really isn't too strong a movie anyway; historically inaccurate, self-indulgent and unsubtle Oscar-bait at its finest, the most exciting aspect of it is the controversial wins it secured in 1999.

Dame Judi plays Queen Elizabeth I, and though she does a decent job considering the screentime she received, whether it was a performance deserving of an Oscar or not remains a fairly cut-and-dry argument.

Her roles in Iris, Notes on a Scandal and Philomena were all much more effective, and it's a bit of letdown that someone with such an illustrious career and defining performances won for her most lacklustre and underdeveloped role.

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