Awards shows are occasions for celebrities to bask in the glow of adoration from their
peers.
Unfortunately, they can also present opportunities for embarrassment on the world stage.
These are the celebrities who made fools of themselves at award shows.
When actors win awards, it's appropriate for them to reflect on how those winning roles
changed their lives.
To talk about how it affected other people's lives is to make oneself look like an arrogant
buffoon.
Tom Hiddleston ran right over that fine line at the 2017 Golden Globes.
Winning the Globe for best performance by an actor in a miniseries or television film
for the arms-trade thriller The Night Manager, Hiddleston first thanked the people that made
the show with him.
Then he oh-so-casually brought up the fact that he does a little charity work with UNICEF
in the developing nation of South Sudan.
And then he bragged about something the doctors and nurses had told him.
"And they wanted to say hello because, during the shelling of the previous month, they had
binge watched The Night Manager."
Not long after, Hiddleston posted an apology on Facebook,
"I completely agree that my speech at the Golden Globes last night was inelegantly expressed.
In truth, I was very nervous, and my words came out wrong."
Singer/songwriter Fiona Apple secured the MTV Video Music Award for best new artist
in 1997, thanks to the controversial video for her hit song "Criminal."
For her acceptance speech, she declined to thank the usual round of family, friends,
fans, and management teams.
Instead, she let the rowdy audience know that she was about to drop a truth bomb that was
going to blow their little sheep brains right out of their ears.
"This world is bulls---, and you shouldn't model your life… wait a second… you shouldn't
model your life about what we think is cool and what we're wearing and what we're saying
and everything."
Apple eventually managed to throw some thanks in there, while still keeping it real.
"And it's just stupid that I'm in this world, but you're all very cool to me, so thank you
very much, and I'm sorry for all the people that I didn't thank but… man, it's good.
Bye."
Apple was basically trying to tell the audience that the entertainment industry is a well-constructed
fraud.
That may be an amazing and super punk-rock thing to hear for viewers under 18, but any
adults who were watching likely rolled their eyes all the way back into their skulls.
Shortly after she appeared in Kanye West's video for "The New Workout Plan," model and
actress Anna Nicole Smith was asked to introduce the rapper at the 2004 American Music Awards.
She hit the stage in a slinky black dress, and things quickly got off to a weird start.
"Like my body?"
Then it got even weirder, as Smith slowly slurred her way through her speech.
"I want this guy to produce my… make me beautiful duets."
Less than three years later, Smith died of what a coroner attributed to an accidental
drug overdose.
Around the tenth anniversary of her death, Smith's partner, Larry Birkhead, unpacked
her AMA speech on The Wendy Williams Show.
He explained that her breast enhancement surgery had left her prone to seizures.
"And the night before she did that award show, she had actually suffered, like, two seizures.
And I had tried to get her to not to do that show.
Um, when she went out there, people were saying, 'You need to pitch this product when you're
out there, and say…'
So she's, like, 'Like my body?' and she's pointing to her necklace that was a diet pill."
In addition to all the spooky-scary monster fun and endless '80s references, one of the
best parts of Stranger Things is the way it's become a comeback vehicle for Winona Ryder.
Thanks in no small part her role as freaked-out mom Joyce Byers, the show took home one of
the biggest prizes at the 2017 Screen Actors Guild Awards: outstanding performance by an
ensemble in a drama series.
The entire cast took the stage to accept, while David Harbour gave a rousing speech
about how art can change the world.
It inspired and galvanized many people, perhaps none more so Ryder.
"Now, as we act in the continuing narrative of Stranger Things, we 1983 Midwesterners
will repel bullies."
For better or for worse, Ryder's wild and emphatic facial expressions will live on forever.
Phil Collins was so happy he earned a best original song Oscar nomination for "Against
All Odds" that he contacted the Academy to volunteer to sing the tune at the 1985 ceremony.
The organization said "thanks, but no thanks," because it had already enlisted Ann Reinking
to perform it instead.
In other words, the Academy didn't want a professional musician who was the original
singer of the song to perform it.
Instead, it hired a dancer and actress who was extremely talented, but she was decidedly
not a singer.
Collins ended up attending those Oscars, where he witnessed Reinking lip-sync to a specially-made
recording of herself flatly singing "Against All Odds."
When she stopped singing, the backing track continued as she transitioned into an expressionist
dance set.
Collins later told Playboy,
"She was awful.
I felt sorry for her."
Adding insult to injury, Collins lost the Oscar to Stevie Wonder for "I Just Called
to Say I Love You" from The Woman in Red.
Reality TV was firmly entrenched in the culture by 2008, the year the Emmys introduced a category
for outstanding reality show host.
Organizers came up with a novel way to commemorate the event: They got all five of the inaugural
nominees to host the show together.
That meant Heidi Klum, Jeff Probst, Ryan Seacrest, Howie Mandel, and Tom Bergeron were all chaotically
jockeying for attention and participating in awkward, unrehearsed bits.
Ironically, since all five hosts were nominated for the aforementioned prize, one of them
had to take home an Emmy that night, while the rest left empty-handed.
It went to Probst, who was probably glad to go back to hanging out on mosquito-infested
remote islands.
The Academy Awards often open with a big musical number.
Some of them have actually been enjoyable, while the worst are usually just merely forgettable.
That wasn't quite the case for the song-and-dance that opened the 1989 Oscars telecast, which
The Hollywood Reporter dubbed a "nightmare."
What should have been a career-making moment for unknown actress Eileen Bowman turned into
the exact opposite when she was cast as Snow White for the routine.
In a squeaky voice, she first accosted actors in their seats with a rendition of "I Only
Have Eyes for You," with the lyrics changed to the movie-centric "We Only Have Stars for
You."
"And we only have stars for you!"
Next, veteran game show producer Merv Griffin sang his 1950 hit, "I've Got a Lovely Bunch
of Coconuts" while Bowman danced wildly nearby.
Then Griffin had a surprise for Snow White: her "Prince Charming," in the form of Rob
Lowe.
The two proceeded to launch into an off-key parody of "Proud Mary."
Bowman literally left Hollywood the next morning to never return.
She claimed she had to sign a "gag order" about the show and summed up her experience
by saying simply, "It was awful."
Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift wasn't the first time an outspoken rapper stormed
the stage at a major music awards show to protest a win by an innocuous female singer.
At the 1998 Grammys, Shawn Colvin won Song of the Year for her hit "Sunny Came Home,"
a folk-inspired soft rocker about arson.
Before Colvin could thank the music industry, rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard of the Wu-Tang Clan
stormed the stage and took the mic.
"I don't know how y'all see it, but when it comes to the children, Wu-Tang is for the
children.
We teach the children, you know what I mean?
Puffy is good, but Wu-Tang is the best."
Curiously, Wu-Tang Clan weren't even nominated for Song of the Year.
Earlier in the night, though, they lost best rap album to Puff Daddy.
So why did O.D.B. pick that moment to express his displeasure?
After the show, he told MTV News,
"Something just jumped into my blood.
I think it was her speech that really attracted me up to the stage at that point in time to
do that.
So, no disrespect at all.
Thank you."
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Milton Berle became one of TV's first stars with
his comedy and variety show, Texaco Star Theater.
In 1993, MTV paid homage to the elderly TV pioneer by asking him to present at the Video
Music Awards.
Producers paired him up with RuPaul, who was then an emerging superstar.
It was a clever idea: RuPaul is a drag queen, and Berle had made a name for himself acting
in sketches while dressed in women's clothing.
But the two were decidedly not kindred spirits.
Berle endlessly mugged and called out hecklers with jokes older than he was, then mentioned
that he used to wear gowns like RuPaul.
"Is that right?
You used to wear gowns and, that's funny, now you wear diapers."
"Yeah.
If you want to ad-lib, I'll check my brains.
We'll start even."
After more banter and an introduction of the nominees, Berle handed RuPaul the envelope
and affected a lisp.
Then things got even uglier.
"Shut up!
Let him, her read it.
She-he.
Go ahead."