There has been some intense fallout to the announcement that Oprah Winfrey will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at this year’s Oscars®. INSIDE EDITION has the details.
Does Oprah Winfrey really deserve an honorary Oscar®?
The Academy Awards® is under fire after selecting Oprah to receive an Oscar® for her humanitarian work.
The headline on Nikki Finke's influential website deadline.com reads, "Oprah Oscar®? Film Academy's Lousy Choice."
Finke calls the award an "ego feed" and says, "Winfrey's career and contributions to the movie business are at best spotty and superficial, especially considering that 99% of her career has been in television."
Matt Belloni, from The Hollywood Reporter, told INSIDE EDITION, "All of the controversy is surrounding the fact that she's not necessarily a film person. But there are people who have gotten the award who have not been nominated for an Oscar®, and she's been nominated for an Oscar®."
A Los Angeles Times columnist calls the Oprah pick "a boneheaded move." Another says, "Winfrey has done good work in the world, but that's not enough to merit an Oscar®."
Now the President of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences, Tom Sherak, is firing back at critics, saying, "Oprah has given and given and given. She's a member of the Academy. She was nominated for an Academy Award® and she has produced movies. This is not about personality."
Past winners of the coveted award include Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, and the last recipient, Jerry Lewis.
