Comedic Performances That Were So Good They Even Won an Oscar

Diane Keaton not only won an Academy Award in her first nomination (she’s been nominated four times thus far), she became a fashion icon through her eccentric character’s menswear-inspired apparel. Keaton starred in the titular role as the girlfriend of Woody Allen’s character Alvy Singer.

From vaudeville to radio to television to motion pictures, there wasn’t one entertainment medium where George Burns wasn’t successful. The venerable comedian and singer won an Academy Award as one half of a vaudeville act trying to reunite for a television special even though they dislike each other. Walter Matthau played Burns’ erstwhile partner and Neil Simon wrote the screenplay.

Tatum O’Neal was the youngest person to win a competitive Academy Award as Addie Loggins, a pre-teen swindler trying to survive during the Great Depression in the film “Paper Moon.” She appeared in the movie with her father, Ryan O’Neal. To date, it is the only Oscar nomination and win for Tatum O’Neal.

Goldie Hawn burst onto the entertainment scene as a member of the television ensemble comedy “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” in the late 1960s. She turned to the big screen and won her lone Oscar thus far for Best Actress in the comedy “Cactus Flower,” which also starred Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman. Hawn, who would be nominated for a second Academy Award in 1981 for her role in “Private Benjamin,” has proven to be a bankable actor throughout her career.

Walter Matthau crafted a memorable career as a grouchy middle-aged man put upon by the aggravation of modern urban life. He was nominated for three Academy Awards and won his lone Oscar for “The Fortune Cookie” in which he played an unscrupulous lawyer urging his brother-in -law (Jack Lemmon) to fake an injury. Directed by the great Billy Wilder, “The Fortune Cookie” was the first of 10 film pairings of Matthau and Lemmon.