The Golden Globes serve up such an enviable platform for celebrating humor (and not just at the expense of The Tourist) that you couldn’t blame some Oscar voters for wanting comedies to loom larger in their annual voting landscape.
But how can the Academy compete with a voting body that devotes entire categories to feting comedic performances and films?
Pretty well, it turns out: While the majority of Oscar’s acting nominations and wins have been for dramatic narratives, there is a robust record of voters lauding actors for delivering very funny turns across a myriad comedy categories — from satire to rom-coms, slapstick to navel-gazing indie heroes.
In this year’s Best Actress race, three of the year’s five leading contenders delivered their very distinct brand of funny: The Debut’s Julianne Moore; The Invite’s Olivia Wilde; and Obsession breakout Inde Navarrette — with Moore leading the pack for her turn as a New Jersey housewife-turned-unhinged-method-theater-actor in Jesse Eisenberg’s second directorial effort.
What follows below is a breakdown of three dozen or so comedic performances throughout Oscar history that earned nominations or wins. They are broken down by the unique brand of comedy highlighted in each role and include mentions of any standout 2027 contenders who may be poised to follow in their footsteps.
Harmlessly Eccentric or Downright Freaky
Two singular and hotly debated filmmakers — Woody Allen and Yorgos Lanthimos — have shepherded indelibly funny and Oscar-winning work from their female actors: Diane Keaton of course made history with her iconic Best Actress win for Allen’s Annie Hall in 1978; Dianne Wiest won Best Supporting Actress for Allen’s period-theater-romp Bullets Over Broadway in 1995; and Mira Sorvino took home the Best Supporting Actress for her brilliant ditz in Mighty Aphrodite in 1996.
More recently, Lanthimos has seen his leading female actors also strike gold, starting with Olivia Colman as a deranged, sex-addicted queen in her Best Actress-winning role in The Favourite in 2019; and Emma Stone’s truly genre-defying victory for Best Actress in Poor Things in 2024.
Let’s also not forget to mention Ruth Gordon’s devilishly funny Best Supporting Actress victory for Rosemary’s Baby in 1969 and Amy Madigan’s wild win last year in the same category for Weapons, both of which offer up a nice precedent for a certain upstart contender below.
2027 Hopeful: Obsession’s Navarrette
Satire or Spoof
Tom Cruise can point to Peter Sellars’ nomination for Best Actor in 1964’s brilliant satire Dr. Strangelove as a hopeful precedent for the work Cruise delivered in the season’s most polarizing film, Digger. Other nominated talent who delighted while spoofing include a pair of Mel Brooks favorites: Gene Wilder for Best Supporting Actor in 1967’s The Producers; and Madeline Kahn for Best Supporting Actress in 1974’s Blazing Saddles.
2027 Hopefuls: Cruise in Digger, Robert Pattinson in Primetime
Dustin Hoffman earned a nomination for Best Actor for 1982’s Tootsie, whose romance between a straight woman and a cross-dressing man turned the rom-com on its head. After the world recovered from the shock of an American actor daring to do a British accent, Renée Zellweger earned a Best Actress nom for her charming turn in 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary. Soon after, Diane Keaton scored a nom, this time for Nancy Meyers’ mature love story, 2003 Something’s Gotta Give.
But it was Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert — who won for Best Actor and Best Actress for It Happened One Night in 1935 — who proved that a romantic comedy can also be artful. They paved the way for future winners Richard Dreyfuss, Best Actor in The Goodbye Girl in 1977; Goldie Hawn’s breakout Best Supporting Actress win in 1970 for Cactus Flower; and Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt’s dual victories for Best Actor and Best Actress in James L. Brooks’ Best Picture winner As Good as It Gets in 1998.
2027 Hopefuls: The entire cast of The Invite: Olivia Wilde, Penélope Cruz, Seth Rogen, and Edward Norton
Slapstick, Totally Over-the-Top — or Both
A few years after her win, Hawn made the Oscar race more welcoming to goofballs with her Best Actress nomination for 1980’s military farce Private Benjamin. Speaking of military gigs: His tour-de-blackface didn’t age well, but Robert Downey Jr. also earned enough laughs to score a Best Supporting Actor bid for 2008’s Tropic Thunder. Melissa McCarthy shocked everyone (including herself) with a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her antics in 2011’s Bridesmaids; and Jonah Hill — sporting cartoonish chompers — went full-druggie-nutso and earned a Best Supporting Actor nom for Martin Scorsese’s 2013 bio-comedy The Wolf of Wall Street.
As for winners here, Jack Lemmon scored a Best Supporting Actor trophy in 1960 for the drag comedy Some Like It Hot and 30 years later, Kevin Kline turned armpit-smelling into performance art with his winning Best Supporting Actor role in 1989 for A Fish Called Wanda. Hollywood vet Jack Palance scored a memorable win at age 73 in 1992 for Best Supporting Actor for his menacing City Slickers rancher Curly. (Who could forget the one-armed pushups he did onstage?) And one year later, Marisa Tomei’s gangster-princess Mona Lisa Vito stole the show from her male co-stars and won Best Supporting Actress for My Cousin Vinny in 1993.
2027 Hopeful: The Debut’s Moore
Comic Relief
For playing the real-life (and very animated) Air Force radio host Adrian Cronauer, Robin Williams earned a nom — his first — for Best Actor in Barry Levinson’s gripping 1987 war drama Good Morning, Vietnam. Soon after, comic relief in otherwise serious or sad stories would see two winners in Whoopi Goldberg for Best Supporting Actress in 1991 for the supernatural love story Ghost; and in the Italian writer-actor-director Roberto Benigni, who memorably crowd-surfed after his Best Actor win for his harrowing Holocaust drama Life is Beautiful in 1999.
2027 Hopefuls: Wild Horse Nine’s John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell
Indie-Funny-Sad
Two decades before Sean Baker’s low-budget phenom Anora swept the Oscars, a slew of funny indie talent quietly earned nominations for less-flashy work. Two in fact played down-and-out actors: Bill Murray earned a nom for Best Actor in Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film Lost in Translation; and Thomas Haden Church for Best Supporting Actor in Alexander Payne’s 2004 indie Sideways.
Elliot Page (then Ellen Page) earned a nomination for Best Actress in 2007’s teen-pregnancy dramedy Juno; and speaking of Payne, Paul Giamatti earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for the director’s 2023 film The Holdovers (though nothing could make up for Giamatti’s egregious snub for Sideways).
Fans enjoyed two deserving indie winners in Alan Arkin’s long-awaited Oscar win for Best Supporting Actor in 2007 for Little Miss Sunshine (his foul-mouthed, heroin-shooting grandpa died halfway through the film); and Kieran Culkin, who delivered a master class in indie-funny-sad with his Best Supporting Actor role in Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut A Real Pain in 2025.
2027 Hopefuls: Club Kid‘s Jordan Firstman, Tender Loving Care‘s Kate O’Flynn
