Is that showing off, though? Some actors prefer that the placement of their Oscar statuette be a symbolic act of self-deprecation: meaning, they situate it in the bathroom. Kate Winslet told UK programme GMTV that she put her best actress Oscar for The Reader in the toilet so that her guests “can sneakily have a little [hold] and put it back down again…. Basically, everybody wants to touch it, everybody wants to hold it and go, ‘Oh, my gosh,’ and ‘How heavy is it?’ So I figured if I put it [in there], then people can avoid the whole, ‘Where’s your Oscar?’ thing.” According to The Guardian, Emma Thompson, Lionel Richie, Sean Connery, Susan Sarandon and Jodie Foster all keep theirs near the toilet, with Foster commenting, “They look good with the faucets.”

The price of gold

Only one actor sold their Academy Award: Harold Russell, a soldier who lost both his hands in World War Two, then was cast by William Wyler in his 1946 best picture-winning drama The Best Years of Our Lives. Russell had no previous acting experience, which meant he appeared in very few subsequent films, despite winning the best supporting actor prize for Wyler’s film, along with a second statuette, an honourary award for “bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans.” In the late 1980s, he sold one of his Oscars, ostensibly to pay his wife’s medical bills, a moving postscript to being the only performer ever to receive two Oscars for one performance. It turns out he may have sold the statuette so that he and his wife could take a vacation.