Op-Ed
By Maggie Van Ostrand
The Naked Oscar

The Oscars will be telecast March 7th, and I wonder if anyone will finally be the first to walk the red carpet naked instead of just being naked on film. That way, they won’t have to stop and talk about who designed their clothes. And it would be much more interesting. Naked is in.

“It was just fast and furious,” said Marisa Tomei, of the pretty-much-in-your-face naked cavorting scene in last year’s The Wrestler. “… there was no room for being shy…” Tomei told the L.A.Times in an interview about her Supporting Actress nominated role. And she’s not the only nominee who went to the flesh academy.

If Kate Winslet had lost again last year, she would have tied with Thelma Ritter and Deborah Kerr for Oscar’s losingest nominee. Instead, she played the skin game, too, and got Best Actress for her role in The Reader. “It wasn’t calculated! I swear! You must believe me!” said Kate to Gold Derby regarding her hot babe photo shoot for Vanity Fair. She knows what fanboys want.

Actors who’ve won Oscars for films in which they’ve done the Monty aren’t as few as you’d think.

Charlize Theron did a mean shower scene as man killer Ailene Wuornos in Monster, and had the guts to let the necessary 30-pound weight gain all hang out.

Halle Berry humped Billy Bob Thornton’s brains out in Monster’s Ball showing more skin than a thousand footballs.

Rachel Weisz, was half in bath suds and half not in suds for her role in The Constant Gardener, wearing only a fake baby belly (though she had a real baby belly when she received the Oscar).

As Bree Daniels, a New York hooker in Klute, Jane Fonda won Best Actress when she went topless with Kiefer Sutherland’s father. She did it again in Coming Home with Angelina Jolie’s father, and was nominated for Best Actress. They said she had a breast double, but I think it was a misprint; they meant she had double breasts.

Hillary Swank exposed her upper half in Boys Don’t Cry, for which she received Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of a trans-gender man. But real men have exposed themselves in movies (no, not like PeeWee Herman) and received Oscars.

Geoffrey Rush got Best Actor when he hung out in Shine, playing real-life pianist David Helfgott who did a long stint in the Rubber Ramada. But it was only a half monty that won him the Oscar. For a full monty, he was only nominated, when he played the Marquis de Sade in Quills.

Kevin Spacey took a shower in American Beauty and won Best Actor. His monty might’ve been lower than the camera shot, but calling him a tightass wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

Naked Oscar Trivia: One of the most interesting and little-known incidents in the history of the Academy Awards is Oscar’s connection to a star of the 30s and 40s, Dolores del Rio (the only woman Marlene Dietrich ever said was more beautiful than she was). Multi-Oscar-winning designer, Cedric Gibbons, was married to del Rio and, when the Academy assigned him to design their new statuette, she suggested Mexican actor Emilio (“El Indio”) Fernández as the model. Gibbons agreed that Fernández would indeed be perfect and had him pose for the nude Oscar statuette so zealously sought.