How Heavy An Oscar Really Is

After receiving an Oscar at the 92nd Academy Awards, director Taika Waititi made a remark about the weight of an Oscar, causing some to wonder about the actual weight of the prestigious award. Officially named the Academy Award of Merit, the award is better known by the name “Oscar”. Modeled after a knight, the Oscar was designed by MGM art director Cedric Gibbons and created by sculptor George Stanley for the first Academy Award ceremony all the way back in 1929.

Presented by Natalie Portman and Timothée Chalamet, the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay was awarded to Taika Waititi for his film Jojo Rabbit, which he also directed. Waititi wrote the script from the book Caging Skies by Christine Leunen. The critically acclaimed comedy was nominated for six Academy Awards, but lost in all categories except for Best Adapted Screenplay, which was Waititi’s first-ever Oscar.

In his acceptance speech, Waititi joked, “This is really light. This one’s really light. It’s supposed to be heavy.” So how heavy is the Oscar? Standing at 13 and a half inches tall, the Academy Award weighs eight and a half pounds, which makes it similar to the weight of a gallon of milk. That makes the golden statuette heavier than other well-known awards in the entertainment industry, such as the Grammy Award (six pounds), the slightly larger Emmys Award (six pounds and 12 ounces), the Golden Globe (five and a half ounces), and the Tony Award (one pound and 10 ounces).

While some may believe it to be made of gold, the Oscar is actually made of bronze, but is plated in 24-karat gold. This is the way they were made in 1929, when the very first Oscar, the Academy Award for Best Actor, was awarded to German actor and silent movie star Emil Jannings for his work in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh.

The process for making them changed to painted plaster after World War II due to a metal shortage, but this only lasted for brief period. So while the ceremony and the list of awards given out annually have evolved over the decades, the Oscar itself hasn’t changed much, and just as it was in the earliest Academy Award ceremonies 90 years ago, the Oscar is still the most highly coveted award in Hollywood and the highest honor an actor or filmmaker can achieve for their work in the entertainment industry.

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