Going nude for the awards

Halle Berry starred in 'Monster's Ball'                       Photo: Courtesy

Winning an Academy Award (Oscar) is the dream of every actor and actress. It is no easy feat. For that matter, there are certain things that actors and actresses have done over the years,  that have consistently led to an Oscar win.

They range from playing a character with a disability, to extreme weight loss or gain, to playing a real person, to going gay or just being Meryl Streep, who has been nominated 17 times during her career, to an all-time Oscar panel favourite — going nude.

Going nude for an Oscar began in 1939, when Vivien Leigh won the Best Actress prize for Gone With the Wind, but it was in 1965 when Julie Christie won an Oscar for Best Actress for her role in Darling, after bearing her chest that the myth that if you disrobe on screen, you shall be rewarded with Oscar was solidified. 

Here are some actors and actresses who have gone nude and taken home an Oscar, proving the link between nudity and Oscar wins:

 

Charlize Theron, ‘Monster’ (Best Actress, 2003)

The gritty, often horrific 2003 drama Monster sets star Charlize Theron in a role that would win her Best Actress at the Academy Awards. Playing a tortured prostitute, she seeks bloody catharsis through a vicious killing spree. She is topless in a number of scenes.

Rachel Weisz in The Constant Gardener (Best Supporting Actress, 2005)

In the film Rachael plays the wife of British diplomat Justin Quayle — played by Ralph Fiennes. The film delves into an endless array of flashbacks, where Justin mulls over how he met his dead wife and the time they spent together and, of course, in Hollywood style he just had to remember her in her birthday suit.

Halle Berry, ‘Monster’s Ball’ (Best Actress, 2001)

Halle Berry became the first black woman to win the Best Actress Oscar in 2002, for a role in Monster’s Ball, which required her to play a very extreme and messy nude scene that she will probably never show her children.

Hilary Swank, ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ (Best Actress, 1999)

In portraying Brandon Teena, a real life transgendered man, Swank’s clothes are forced off in one scene revealing her fully exposed body. This is the only film with full frontal nudity that resulted in an Oscar win for Best Actress.

Cuba Gooding Jr, “Jerry Maguire” (Best Supporting Actor, 1996)

Cuba Gooding Jr famously cries, “Show me the money!” in 1996’s Jerry Maguire, the film that ensured that he walked home with the coveted award. 

 In the film Gooding shows us more than just his cash in a scene where he is in a locker room with co-star Tom Cruise who plays his agent, he also flashes his behind.

 

Gwyneth Paltrow, “Shakespeare in Love” (Best Actress, 1998) 

At the age of 26 when Gwyneth Paltrow was still a new comer in Hollywood, she took home the Oscar for Best actress in Shakespeare in Love. And like you may have guessed Paltrow’s has a number of topless scenes in the film.

Kate Winslet in ‘The Reader’ (Best Actress 2008)

In Titanic (1997), Kate Winslet’s poses nude for Leonardo DeCaprio to sketch her, an act that played out during their character’s forbidden romance on the fated cruise ship. 

That earned Kate the first of her four Best Actress Academy Award nominations for her role. After five unsuccessful nominations, Kate Winslet finally took home her Oscar in 2009 for The Reader. She played Hanna Schmitz who has a romance with the much younger Michael played by David Kross before being put on trial for war crimes she allegedly committed during World War II.  And yes, she is also nude in a good number of scenes!

 Kevin Spacey, ‘American Beauty’ (Best Actor, 1999)

Kevin Spacey won the coveted Best Actor statuette in 1999 for his role as a depressed father confined to suburbia in American Beauty. For the role Kevin Spacey exposes his behind.

Holly Hunter in ‘The Piano’ (Best Actress, 1993)

In this tragic tale of forbidden love, Holly Hunter’s plays a mute who has an affair with George Baines played by Harvey Keitel to disastrous ends. Hunter shows a lot of skin in the film.