8 Performances Better Than What The Actor Won An Oscar For

8. Colin Firth

Won For: The King's Speech, Best Actor in a Leading Role. Better In: A Single Man. Colin Firth's touching, understated performance in Tom Ford's A Single Man is far superior to his Oscar winning turn as the stuttering King George VI in Tom Hooper's Best Picture winning The King's Speech. It's not that Firth is bad in Speech, but it still remains a sore point for many that the film won the Academy's top prize, beating contemporary classics like The Social Network and The Fighter in the process. And at the centre of that is Firth's performance, which has to stand as the most Academy-friendly in recent years, in the Academy's ideal prestige picture: an iconic figure overcomes a struggle to do something great. Firth's turn a year earlier in A Single Man, however, is much more complex, the actor playing a gay professor, who, on the anniversary of his lover's sudden death, contemplates suicide. It's a stark role, and Firth is never less than compelling, playing the titular Single Man with a slight touch of sardonic wit to counterbalance the general melancholia of the film. Firth was again nominated for Best Actor for A Single Man, but lost out to Jeff Bridges and Crazy Heart (see next). It was a pretty weak Best Actor year (George Clooney for Up In The Air, Morgan Freeman for Invictus), and Firth should definitely have taken home the prize.