The Academy Awards are well known for honoring excellence in film, but did you know that there are close to 20 Best Picture Oscar winners that feature nudity?
Nudity in mainstream films is a fairly recent concept and has only really become a phenomenon in the last fifty years. Nevertheless, the very first Best Picture Oscar Winner Wings from 1927 featured the very first nude scene in an Oscar winning movie, courtesy of legendary beauty Clara Bow!
It would be forty years before another Best Picture winner would feature nudity, thanks in large part to the restrictive Hays Code that was in effect from 1930-1968. Things began to loosen the year prior when three of the 1967 Best Picture nomineesBonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, and eventual winner In the Heat of the Nightall featured nudity. Quentin Dean's brief topless scene (left) in the latter was scandalous at the time due to the context of the scene, but is honestly one of the least controversial things about the film in retrospect!
Two years later, the most sexually liberated mainstream American film to date, Midnight Cowboy, took home Best Picture honors. In addition to confronting a number of misconceptions regarding gays, prostitutes, and the homeless, the film also had some amazing nude scenes fromJennifer Salt(right),Sylvia Miles, andBrenda Vaccaro!
Things really loosened up in the 70s, where four films raked in the Oscar gold and managed to weave nudity into the narrative of the film in new and interesting ways. Kicking things off is 1971's The French Connection, which gave us a nice look at Maureen Mooney's full moon(ey) when she runs for cover after her dalliance with Gene Hackman is interrupted by Roy Scheider!
The following year, The Godfather gave us one of the most tender and beautiful nude scenes ever, when the gorgeous Simonetta Stefanelli, playing Michael's new wife Apollonia, lowers her nightgown on their wedding night and reveals her breasts to him for the first time! It's a short scene, but an incredibly memorable one!
1975's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest didn't feature many of female roles, the most memorable next to Louise Fletcher's Nurse Ratched has to be Mews Small (left), the woman who goes with Jack Nicholson's R.P. McMurphy and the other patients for a fishing trip. When she and McMurphy attempt a below deck rendezvous, the fighting between the other patients above deck causes her to scramble for her clothing, briefly showing off her breasts!
1979's Kramer vs. Kramer was a serious examination of divorce in the modern era, and earned both Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep Oscars for their impassioned work in the film. For many of us who first saw the film as impressionable young men, however, it's the skinsational scene with JoBeth Williams (right) being caught nude in the hallway by Hoffman's son that sticks with us to this very day!
Now into the 80s, the Oscar nominees began to get more and more serious, and many of them like Chariots of Fire and Out of Africa are just about unwatchable. One that is infinitely watchable, however, is James L. Brooks' Terms of Endearment from 1983, which deftly balances comedy and drama. What's more there's even a skinsational nipslip from Shirley MacLaine as she and Jack Nicholson wrestle on the beach!
The following year brought us Amadeus, a rock and roll biopic of the famous 18th Century composer, and though the theatrical version didn't have any nudity at all, the director's cut released in 2002 featured a long awaited look at the juggy Elizabeth Berridge's beautiful breasts!
The first PG-13 film to win Best Picture was 1987's The Last Emperor. This gorgeously filmed epic directed by Oscar winner Bernardo Bertolucciwho also brought us the Skin Classics Last Tango in Paris and The Dreamersis a bit too long and a bit too dry, but it does have some great and rare PG-13 nudity courtesy of Jade Go (left) as the titular ruler's breastfeeding mother!
The following year brought Dustin Hoffman another Oscar for Rain Man. The film is perhaps most notable for being the first time many people in America had ever heard of autism, but it's most memorable to us for featuring some amazing topless looks at the gorgeous Valeria Golino (right)!
The 90s proved to be the most fertile ground for on-screen nudity in Best Picture winners, with five of the decade's winners featuring nudity, and in fact, it was a running theme for the last five years of the decade, starting with 1995's Braveheart, which brought us an amazing topless scene from the seriously stacked Catherine McCormack!
1996's The English Patient is something of a terrible bore but both Best Actress nominee Kristin Scott Thomas and Oscar winner Juliette Binoche did multiple nude scenes, so how bad could it possibly be?
Perhaps the most famous nude scene in a Best Picture winner ever came to us in 1997's Titanic when Kate Winslet urged Leo to draw her like one of his French girls and then dropped her robe! Sure, our girlfriends may have dragged us to see the flick ten times, but Kate made the repeat viewings more than worthwhile!
1998's Shakespeare in Love remains one of the most controversial Best Picture winners of all time, thanks in no small part to the fact that it was up against Saving Private Ryan and won. This is hardly the time or place for a debate about which is the better film, so let's focus instead on this film's clear advantage: Naked Gwyneth Paltrow (left)! Score one for Shakespeare!
We close out the 90s on another high note with the sexually charged dramedy American Beauty. As the object of Oscar winner Kevin Spacey's affections, Mena Suvari (right) drove men everywhere nuts with her rose covered bod and her amazing topless scene at the end of the film. Sadly, Thora Birch was 16 when she filmed her topless scene, so we won't be taking a look at that, but it's pretty spectacular as well!
Far and away the most controversial Best Picture winner of all time, and not controversial due to its content but rather the films it beat, has got to be 2005's Crash. Again, putting the controversy aside, the skinsational sex scene where Jennifer Esposito made her nude debut, flashing her fun bags during a romp with Don Cheadle!
The longest nudity drought since the forty years between Wings and In the Heat of the Night came to an end when 12 Years a Slave took home the top prize 8 years later! Though the scene is hard to watch, Lupita Nyong'o earns every last bit of her Best Supporting Actress award by baring her breasts in the film!
Who knows what the next Best Picture winner with nudity will be, but you can bet Mr. Skin will be there to focus on the really important artistic statement the film is trying to make through nudity!
