The 10 Best Oscars Hosts Of All Time, Ranked

It is often said that hosting the Oscars is the toughest, most thankless gig in the entertainment industry. You have to keep tabs on a three-plus-hour show. Your jokes have to please hundreds of millions of viewers while alienating none. Everyone will be tired of your face by the halfway point, and your crowd is the most antsy and self-conscious bunch of people in the world. The reviews will be bad no matter what, and even if you manage do a good job, your career basically stays the same. If you enrage the wrong audience member, your career could be over. Come to think of it, it’s something of a miracle that anyone manages to do a good job hosting the Oscars — let alone a great one.

Sure enough, though, there have been some great Oscars ceremony hosts. Out of the Academy Awards’ 96 ceremonies presented since the first-ever Oscars in 1929, a total of 72 have been broadcast on TV, and out of those, a total of 66 have had at least one host. The masters of ceremonies have ranged from actors to filmmakers to singers to comedians, and several across the decades have managed to put their particular talents — whether for joke delivery, improv, singing and dancing, smooth talk, or performance art — in service of entertaining, glamorous, even breezy shows, figuring out shrewd ways to chill stars out, keep laughs coming, put on the ritz, address public relations elephants in the room, and make cases for the fun and the importance of cinema. 

So who are the most impressive Oscars hosts? Ranked by talent, consistency, and understanding of the assignment, here are the 10 best Oscar hosts of all time.

Jack Lemmon is a unique, fascinating quantity in Hollywood history: A performer remembered primarily for his comedic work, who, despite the goofiness of his persona in “Some Like It Hot” (for which he wasn’t the first choice, incidentally) and the lack of prestige normally afforded to funny actors, stands easily as one of the most revered thespians in the history of screen acting. As comfortable with a pratfall as he was with an intense dramatic scene, Lemmon brought that dual talent to his four stints as Oscar host, and more specifically to the two — in 1964 and 1985 — that he tackled solo.

On both of those occasions, Lemmon offered some counter-programming to the snarky stylings of Bob Hope and Johnny Carson (respectfully) in the form of a sincere, good-natured, reverential tone that brought seated stars and home viewers together into an affably cheerful celebration. Lemmon was so charismatic, and his manner of speaking was so inherently amusing and evocative of rousing laughs, that he could basically get away with making no jokes at all, as he did in the 1985 ceremony, which positioned him as a soothing museum guide walking viewers through a litany of legends and historical moments (complete with getting visibly choked up when introducing Laurence Olivier). The 1964 ceremony, meanwhile, did have Lemmon make jokes — and, while those jokes were generally pretty lightweight, he delivered them with enough gusto to induce giggle fits, effortlessly slipping into his classic nervous everyman persona and making it make perfect sense on the world’s biggest stage.

Bob Hope was the person who, for all intents and purposes, codified the public perception of what an Oscar host is. A nimble, efficient, unflaggingly crowd-conscious classic comic, he was about as dependable and professional as any entertainer of his era. Hope became one of the defining faces of Hollywood through his repeated manning of what was then a tricky, tentative proposition: Turning a lengthy, inside-baseball-laden industry award into a TV spectacle that could be enjoyed by millions of viewers around the globe. The key to Hope’s success was understanding that the Oscars, in addition to being grand and luxurious, were also kind of silly.

Hope is the celebrity who has hosted the Academy Awards the most times, with 19 total gigs, including the very first televised Oscar broadcast in 1953. Each time over, he held down the fort effortlessly by ribbing Hollywood self-importance to the exact right degree: enough to make people laugh but not so much as to dilute the Oscars’ TV-assisted building of prestige as a worldwide brand. He was a master of deadpan joke-after-joke sequencing, always punctuated by a tongue-in-cheek scowl that became iconic, and, on the Oscars stage, his jokes were topical. Through precise-strike one-liners that reliably drew guffaws and even occasional gasps, he skewered the industry, the year’s movies, and the very absurdity of a competition between actors, constantly poking fun at the nominees for being desperate to win — while also implicating himself with a decades-long running gag about yearning for an Oscar himself.

Jon Stewart was considered by many to be an unorthodox pick to host the Oscars when he was called in for the first time ahead of the 2006 ceremony. His mainstream career, after all, largely consisted of incisive, compromise-free political humor, as practiced hosting Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” As it turned out, fitting Stewart’s comedy style to the Oscars was just a matter of small adaptations in subject matter — after all, Los Angeles was, in its own way, as ripe for mockery and as representative of the absurdity of contemporary American culture as Washington D.C.

To be sure, Stewart’s jokes at the 2006 and 2008 functions weren’t quite as brazen as his “Daily Show” material. But he still made expert use of his only-sane-man persona and his status as a Hollywood outsider (referring to himself as “the fourth male lead from ‘Death to Smoochy,'” among other amusing what-am-I-doing-here bits) to gape in a mixture of awe and bafflement at the Oscars’ pomp and circumstance, adroitly capturing the mood of an audience that, by then, shared a similar mixture of reverence and skepticism towards the whole enterprise. His jokes about the movies themselves were razor-sharp and clearly informed by genuine enthusiasm for cinema, his political material (e.g. calling “Away from Her” Hillary Clinton’s favorite movie of the year, because it was about a woman forgetting her husband) was punchy without overstepping the bounds of the assignment, and the trademark cartoon goofiness that tempered the seriousness of “The Daily Show” showed up in delectable spades.

Jerry Lewis had such an explosive, high-wire, almost avant-garde energy as a comedian and film actor that you’d think he might be less than ideally-suited for a gig as dependent on stringent discipline and common-denominator calculation as the Oscars. But before anything else, Jerry Lewis was just an incredibly funny and charming showman, and rather than rein him in or clash with his strengths, his three stints as host of Hollywood’s biggest night serve as a showcase of his indefatigable versatility.

For starters, Lewis fit like a glove into the standard “succession of witty quips” format of the opening monologues and interstitials, landing tart industry jokes with a particular, arch tone that was all his own and made everything extra funny — as if he were playing a Jerry Lewis character who somehow wound up in a tux on the Pantages stage. On top of that, breaking from the mold created by Bob Hope and his bone-dry deadpan, Lewis exhibited a consistently earnest and playful energy that effortlessly roped viewers into the glamour and excitement of it all.

Additionally, Lewis deserves credit for maybe the most extraordinary feat in all Oscar hosting history: At the 1959 awards, when the ceremony’s programme ran its course 20 minutes too early, he stepped up and spent the entirety of those 20 minutes fearlessly ad-libbing to fill time, complete with bringing the evening’s winners back on stage and leading them on an improvised performance of “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” Indeed, there was nobody in show business like Jerry Lewis.

If Bob Hope was the man who inaugurated the audiovisual cultural concept of an Academy Award host, Billy Crystal was the one who epitomized it for modern audiences. Hosting a total of nine times, the earliest in 1990 and the most recent in 2012, the prolific comedian and actor inevitably had some stronger stints and some weaker ones.  By the late ’90s, some of his jokes and running segments were beginning to feel slightly stale, and the 2012 ceremony was a bit like a droning Hollywood reboot of a nostalgic classic. But when he was firing on all cylinders, Crystal was like some supernatural platonic image of the ideal Oscar host: funny, snazzy, charismatic, resourceful, well-judged, and oozing love of movies with his every gag and number.

As the man who ushered the Oscars from the commercialist high-mindedness of ’80s Hollywood through the snarky ’90s and on to the brave new world of the 21st century, Crystal’s genius consisted in combining the strengths of his predecessors into a kind of super-mecha of Oscar hosting. He quipped and made fun of the nominated films, and inserted himself into them and wreaked havoc. He delighted in parading through the annual gallery of superstars, alternately pestering and exalting them like everyone’s favorite co-worker letting it rip at a New Years party, and he could sing and dance in elaborate musical numbers that served as delightful tributes to the year in film. In no other performer’s hands did the Oscars ever feel more like a cozy collective tradition.

Later personal controversies aside, Ellen DeGeneres was one of the strongest Oscar hosts ever for one very simple reason: She was just enormously funny. And, although the memetic pull of moments like the 2014 Oscar selfie have caused some people to remember her as a gentle, convivial sort of host in the Jack Lemmon tradition, the particular reason she was so funny actually runs counter to the style of family-friendly daytime comedy she favored on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” Simply put, Oscar Ellen was vintage, stand-up-comic-era Ellen — which is to say, brutal, ruthless, and marvelously dry.

In both of her turns at bat in 2007 and 2014, DeGeneres perfected the art of quasi-uncomfortable dark humor — constructing nesting dolls of serious-unserious digs at the nominees, at the Oscars themselves, and at the entertainment industry more broadly, and delivering it all with unimpeachable comedic timing. (On cinema’s power to offer an escape during hard times: “I’m not saying that movies are the most important thing in the world, because the most important thing in the world is youth.”) At the same time, she wasn’t above sending up her own vanity and “casually” delivering a spec screenplay directly to Martin Scorsese’s hands. 

What truly made her hosting special, though, was that, as caustic as her roasts and her material got, she delivered it all with a warm energy and a genuine sense of appreciation for the films and the craftspeople being honored — such that the ceremony always felt sharp but never unpleasant for either the attendees or the TV viewers.

It’s safe to say that nobody was ever bolder, more surprising, or more willing to take risks as an Academy Award host than Whoopi Goldberg. Some comedians have toned down their personas upon taking the Oscar stage, the better to keep the evening flowing smoothly and without controversy, but not so with Goldberg. A comedian known for the bite and fearlessness of her political material, she approached every one of her four hosting stints as a new, hilarious exercise in boundary-pushing yet still made each one of them feel entirely like vintage Oscars.

Goldberg herself quipped about her own association with feather-ruffling — arguing with the audience when they gasped, bemoaning the fact that Billy Crystal always got the controversy-free years, and, in a running bit, rapidly listing off her support for various causes and political struggles to get them out of her system. (That she advocated more explicitly for gay rights in 1994 than any of the hosts did in 2022 should tell you something.)

She quipped about everything, really. There was no film, no political issue, no tabloid hot item, no member of Hollywood royalty that could escape her boisterous wit. It would be sort of mind-boggling that she managed to get away with such trenchant material and get invited back three times — if not for the fact that she was Whoopi Goldberg, one of the most charming and charismatic humans on Earth, able to make even the most sneering “Come on!” feel like she was generously bringing her interlocutors in on the joke.

When we think of great Oscar hosts, we usually think of sharp, quick-witted comedians who knew how to refine their timing and their material for the occasion. But in a historic, one-of-a-kind gig, Hugh Jackman proved that you could come at hosting the Academy Awards from a totally different angle and still end up with a resounding success in your hands.

To be sure, Jackman could be funny when the occasion called for it, and the batting average for his relatively few punchlines at the 2009 ceremony was pretty much 100%. (Following up compliments to nominated actors’ versatility with, “I’m an Australian who played an Australian in a movie called ‘Australia'” remains one of the funniest self-deprecating jokes in Oscar hosting history.) But the 81st Oscars were all about proud, unabashed earnestness — a celebration of the cinematic arts that believed in their power to hold interest for three hours without the need for constant quips. And Jackman, a global A-lister with longtime experience starring in legendary stage musicals, was the perfect man for the job.

Beginning with a spectacular opening number featuring hilariously odd lyrics, elaborate set changes, and a surprise Anne Hathaway cameo before moving on through a series of straight-faced but chipper segments highlighting the craft behind each category — not to mention a show-stopping duet with Beyoncé paying tribute to movie musical history — Jackman brought full-blown showmanship back to the Oscars. It was an exhilarating thing to behold featuring a display of talent so tremendous and wide-ranging that it single-handedly made you believe in the power of showbiz.

While it is indeed true that an Oscar host doesn’t necessarily have to be a master of comedy to get the job done, the fact remains that Oscar hosting — and especially modern-day Oscar hosting — is largely a stand-up gig. And every comedian who turned their hosting duties into a tight Los Angeles set in the last 30 years owes something to Johnny Carson. True to his three-decade expertise with playing off of celebrities and drawing the humor out of them well into the wee hours on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” the giant of late night TV upended even comedy fans’ most optimistic expectations for the Oscars and proved that, with enough expertly-written and expertly-delivered jokes, Hollywood’s stuffiest night could be as positively, gut-bustingly hilarious as any Carnegie Hall show.

If you’ve never seen one of Carson’s five hosting stints between 1979 and 1984, you owe it to yourself to look them up on YouTube. The mastery of joke structure and timing he exhibits in them is a thing to marvel at. After decades of comedically conservative ceremonies, Carson effectively sent the Oscars beaming into stand-up’s bustling, boundless future. He incorporated social satire, political commentary, and dry observational wit like the coolest up-and-comer at your local open-mic bar, and he wrapped it all in the dependable confidence of a seasoned entertainment veteran. Best of all, Carson was always emphatic about wanting to keep everyone at ease and show the attendees and the audience a good time, and his friendly, relaxed energy was nothing short of infectious.

There’s really no other way to describe Steve Martin’s hosting of the 2001 and 2003 Academy Awards (his 2010 go-round, paired with Alec Baldwin, was a less-than-successful experiment, despite them being two of the best “SNL” hosts ever) than by saying he was the funniest to ever do it. A man accustomed to loopy, challenging, medium-deconstructing forms of comedy (especially in his film career), Martin kept it simple on the Oscar stage: Setup, punchline, setup, punchline, no big setpieces or elaborate routines, no speechifying, no grand arch-narratives. His only goal was to keep the laughs flowing, whether through deadpan, absurdism, self-mockery, Hollywood ego busting, or just plain silliness. He wasn’t particularly reverential to the nominated films or even to the Oscars as an institution, but every single one of his jokes would have been the shining highlight of any other host’s material.

It’s tempting to just list off a series of mind-bogglingly hilarious lines, but even that wouldn’t quite do justice to the sheer brilliance of Martin’s delivery, which teetered between straight-faced and profoundly goofy in that magical way only he is capable of. He tackled topical and political subjects, but mostly in passing and/or by implication; he poked fun at buzzy celebrities, but also sequestered the show for an impromptu one-minute Mickey Rooney roast, because to him, the whole town was just clay to bend into jokes. And that he did, with such dexterity as to square the circle: With Steve Martin in tow, there was no big secret to putting on a successful Oscar hosting gig. Just score laugh after laugh after laugh and you’re set.