Here are five Oscar winners who also appeared in X-rated movies.
This isn’t a list of actors who made questionable decisions during their lean years. It’s more a collection of actors who made daring choices, and were ahead of the ratings board standards of their era.
With that said, here are the Oscar winners who also appeared in X-rated movies — one of which won an Oscar for Best Picture.
Robert De Niro in Greetings (1968)
The first American film to receive an “X” was Brian DePalma’s 1968 film Greetings, which starred a very young Robert De Niro and was deemed by the Motion Picture Association of America, which assigns film ratings, to be too explicit for an X rating.
The film, a very dark comedy about men going to extremes to avoid the Vietnam War draft, was later reassigned an R rating.
Of course, De Niro and DePalma went on to great respectability, while continuing to push plenty of boundaries throughout their careers. De Niro won Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather Part II (1974) and Best Actor for Raging Bull (1980.)
Dustin Hoffman in MIdnight Cowboy (1969)
There was a brief moment in the late ’60s and early ’70s when it looked like the X rating could represent sophistication, instead of sleaze.
That moment peaked when Midnight Cowboy won the Oscar for Best Picture despite an X rating.
United Artists released Midnight Cowboy with an X to avoid fighting with the MPAA (now called the MPA). But after its Oscar win — and after the MPAA revised its guidelines and raised the restricted age from 16 to 17 — the film was given an R rating.
Midnight Cowboy starred Dustin Hoffman, who later won Best Actor for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and again for Rain Man (1989).
He was nominated but didn’t win for Midnight Cowboy. He probably split the Oscar vote with…
Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Voight was nominated for Best Actor alongside Hoffman, and both were remarkable, but, as we mentioned, it’s likely that Midnight Cowboy fans among the Oscar voters were divided between the two excellent leads.
Voight would go on to win the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of a paraplegic veteran returning from Vietnam in Coming Home (1978) — the year before Hoffman won his first Best Actor Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer.
Voight also holds the dubious distinction of starring in what Rotten Tomatoes considers one of the worst films ever released, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2.
Do you see a pattern here? Actors who take big swings — and sometimes miss — are also sometimes richly rewarded.
Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris
Last Tango in Paris received an X rating upon its initial release, but was re-released with an R rating in 1981. Then, in 1997, the MPAA reclassified the original cut of the film with an NC-17 rating.
That gave Last Tango in Paris is the distinction of being the highest-grossing NC-17 movie domestically.
Today the film is often discussed for a scene involving butter that did not age well.
Brando, of course, is one of the greatest actors of all time, and won Best Actor twice: for On the Waterfront (1954), and again for The Godfather (1972). Both are considered by Rotten Tomatoes to be the best films ever made by their respective studios.
Brando was nominated for Best Actor for Last Tango in Paris, but didn’t win. His experience — and that of Hoffman and Voight — shows that there was once an era where respected actors could not only appear in films with an X, but potentially become Oscar winners for their performances.
Jack Nicholson in Carnal Knowledge (1971)
Let’s be upfront: We’re stretching a little on this one.
The film received an R from the MPAA in the United States, and an X from the British Board of Film Classification, which later revised that rating to say no one under 18 could see the film.
Nicholson went on to win three Oscars: for Best Actor in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and As Good as it Gets (1997) and for Best Supporting Actor for Terms of Endearment (1983).
Honorable Mention: Helen Mirren
One of the greatest actors of all, Helen Mirren just barely avoids a place on this list of Oscar winners who also appeared in X-rated movies.
She appeared in 1979’s Caligula (above), which almost received an X rating from the MPAA. But that so upset producer Bob Guccione that he opted to release the film without a rating, and even to rent out theaters to show it himself.
Mirren also starred in the critically acclaimed The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, which was released unrated to avoid an X rating. Soon after, the MPAA recognized the need for a rating that conveyed adult subject matter, but also recognized that a film had artistic merit, and the NC-17 rating was born. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover subsequently received an NC-17 rating.
Mirren, an actor who has never shied away from boundary-pushing films, went on to win
Best Actress for her role in 2006’s The Queen.
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Main image: Jack Nicholson and Ann-Margret in Carnal Knowledge. Avco Embassy Pictures
Editor’s Note: Corrects main image.
