Oscars 2015: 10 Outrageous Decisions That Are Completely Wrong

6. David Oyelowo - No Best Actor (Selma)

Given how highly thought of Selma is - enough to get it a Best Picture nod from the Academy in fact - it seems something of an oversight to ignore arguably its most profoundly important performance (and even more than that, its best one). Perhaps some might say that playing a character as historically weighted and romantic as Martin Luther King is a generous opportunity, but it's also one fraught with pit-falls - all of which Oyelowo avoided. And yet, his take on the iconic figure wasn't deemed to be one of the five best of the year. Cynics will probably suggest it was Oscar-bait too far, but that too would be a reductive assessment, and one that ignores the actor's subtle majesty. Why It Went Wrong... It is perhaps a little foolish to start calling conspiracy, but the Academy notoriously don't like to cannibalise their own decisions: they don't go back, in other words, and the acknowledgement for Oyelowo could have been construed as too similar as the 12 Years A Slave love, given the subject matter. Inevitably that may draw sneers - and rightly so since it reduces the strength of the performance - but that seems the only answer.