Academy Awards: 11 Stars Who Lost Their Oscars

Back in 2018, one of the biggest stories to emerge from the Academy Awards was Best Supporting Actress winner Frances McDormand having her trophy stolen. Notably, she was not the first Oscar-winner to have bad luck with their trophy. It turns out a lot of other Oscar winners have either lost or had their award taken.

While attending the Governor’s Ball Oscar afterparty, McDormand had her Academy Award taken. The suspect, a man named Terry Bryant, reportedly picked up the statue and walked off with it, pretended it was his. Eventually, authorities caught up with Bryant and he was arrested and charged with grand theft. Simon Halls, McDormand’s representative, cautiously acknowledged the incident, by telling journalists, “After a brief time apart, Frances and her Oscar were happily reunited. They celebrated the reunion with a double cheeseburger from In and Out.”

In a past Page Six article, the outlet reported that it has actually happened many times over the years. In fact, some well-known A-Listers have been impacted by misplaced or stolen Oscars. Scroll down to see a list of other Academy Award winners who lost their grip on Oscar!

Angelina Jolie

Angelina Jolie won her Oscar back in 2000. She took home the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role in Girl, Interrupted. She gave the statue to her mother, Marcheline Bertland, who passed away in 2007 after a battle with cancer.

Following Bertland’s death, Jolie’s Oscar wound up… misplaced. The actress once responded to inquires about the whereabouts of the award by saying, “I didn’t actually lose it, but nobody knows where it is at the moment.”

Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando infamously lost, not just one, but TWO separate Academy Awards. Regarding the one he received in 1954, Brando once said, “I don’t know what happened to the Oscar they gave me for On the Waterfront. Somewhere in the passage of time it disappeared.”

Brando won again in 1972 for his role as Vito Corleone in The Godfather. he had Sacheen Littlefeather accept it for him but apparently he never got it. “The Motion Picture Academy may have sent it to me, but if it did, I don’t know where it is now,” Brando revealed.

Jeff Bridges

Jeff Bridges won a Best Actor Oscar in 2010 for his role in Crazy Heart. Less than a year later it was gone. “It’s been in a few places since last year, but I haven’t seen it for a while now,” Bridges said. Ironically, Bridges later lost out on the same award to Colin Firth, but hoped the Britsh actor would take better care of his…

Colin Firth

…But he didn’t. The year after Bridges’ win, Firth won for his role in The King’s Speech. While a rep for Firth has denied the story, it was said that the actor lost track of his Oscar for a short while almost immediately after receiving it.

Reportedly, Firth set the trophy down while he was using the restroom at an Oscar afterparty and then walked off, leaving it behind. This prompted the attendant to track him down and return it.

Whoopi Goldberg

Whoopi Goldberg is one of only a dozen EGOT recipients. That means she has won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony. To clarify, she has two Emmys, as well as multiple Golden Globes.

She won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in the film Ghost. At one point, Goldberg shipped off the award to be shined and polished but the package arrived at its destination without the Oscar inside. It was eventually recovered from a trash can in an airport and returned.

Olympia Dukakis

Olympia Dukakis won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in the 1987 film Moonstruck. Unfortunately, only a couple of years later, the Oscar was stolen from her home. The situation turned around for her, however, as she was able to get it replaced for only $78.

Bing Crosby

Bing Crosby won the Best Actor in a Leading Role Academy Award in 1945 for Going My Way. He gave the award to his alma mater Gonzaga University, to be displayed. Hilariously, someone stole the award and replaced it with a small Mickey Mouse figurine. It was discovered several days later in the university’s chapel, seeming to have been a harmless prank.

Margaret O’Brien

Many people do not know this, but the Academy used to give out a “Juvenile Oscar.” From 1934 to 1960, the infrequently awarded honor was bestowed upon only 12 recipients, which included Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Hayley Mills, and Margaret O’Brien.

The story of O’Brien losing hers goes like this: her maid was given the award to clean, but she took off and never returned to work. The Academy provided O’Brien with another Oscar when it became clear that the maid had disappeared and was never returning the award. Decades later, the award turned up in a memorabilia auction and was returned to O’Brien when it was discovered to had been stolen many years earlier.

Matt Damon

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award for Good Will Hunting. While Affleck has reportedly been able to hang on to his trophy, Damon outright admitted that he has no idea what happened to it.

“I know it ended up at my apartment in New York, but unfortunately, we had a flood when one of the sprinklers went off when my wife and I were out of town and that was the last I saw of it,” he revealed back in 2007.

Hattie McDaniel

In 1940, Hattie McDaniel earned the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in Gone with the Wind. She was the first African-American to win an Oscar. McDaniel donated her Academy Award to Howard University, but it eventually went missing. Rumors suggest that it was stolen and thrown into the Potomac River by students of the school who may have felt that she won the award for playing a character of racial stereotype.