At the 97th Academy Awards this past Sunday,Mikey Madison won Best Actress in a Leading Role for her eponymous role in Sean Baker’sAnora.Anoratook home five other Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. It follows the titular character as she embarks on a whirlwind romance and eventual “fraud marriage” with the son of a Russian Oligarch (Mark Eydelshteyn). In her victory speech,the 25-year-old Madison(who also made history by becoming the first Gen Z actor to win an Oscar) proudly thanked and honored the sex worker community.
WhileAnoraand Mikey Madison’s win is one of the most overt examples of the Oscars recognizing sex work in recent memory, it has happened more times than many people may realize. 14 different women have taken home Academy Awards for portraying sex workers. In fact,Emma Stone also won in 2024for portraying Bella Baxter in Yorgos Lantimos’Poor Things. This is also not the first time a film centered on sex work has won Best Picture.Midnight Cowboy, for one, controversially took home the big prize in 1970, which is to date the only X-rated film to hold the honor.
Still, despite being regarded as the highest prize in movies, the Oscars have a deeply complicated history when it comes to properly acknowledging persecuted groups.One such community is sex workers. Here is a rundown of every actor that has won an Oscar for portraying a sex worker, and why Mikey Madison’s win forAnoramay just be the latest example of a harmful “Oscar Bait” tendency.
Who Are the 14 Winners?
The Oscars' Early Years
The first ever winner for Best Actress,Janet Gaynor, won for portraying a woman who turns to sex work to help support her dying mother in 1928’sStreet Angel.The next instancewas just three years later when Helen Hayes won forThe Sin of Madelon Claudet(1933). The plot is similar toStreet Angel, but it replaces a mother with a son.The 1940s saw two more winsfor sex-work-related roles, withAnne BaxterandClare Trevorboth winning Best Supporting Actress forThe Razor’s Edge(1946) andKey Largo(1948), respectively.
The 1950s to the Early 1970s
The 1950s were particularly concentrated on this phenomenon,especially for a decade at the height of the Hays Code(the censorship guidelines in place for movie-making from 1934 to 1968), and conservatism in the media. In 1953,Donna Reedwon Best Actress forFrom Here to Eternity, which, likeAnoraandMidnight Cowboy, won Best Screenplay, Director, Editing, and Picture.
1955 saw Elia Kazan’s film adaptation of John Steinbeck’sEast of Eden,for whichJo Van Fleetgarnered an Oscar for playing the iconic Cathy Ames.Susan Haywardwon Best Actress forI Want to Live!In1958, an adaptation of the real-life story of Barbara Graham, a sex worker who was convicted and executed for murder (I Want to Live!,importantly, explicitly implies that Graham was innocent). At the turn of the decade, both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in 1960 went to portrayals of sex workers, forShirley JonesinElmer GantryandElizabeth TaylorinButterfield 8, Taylor’s first Oscar ever. Two-time Oscar winner and this year’s lifetime achievement honoreeJane Fondareceived her first Oscar for playing the sleuthing Bree Daniels inKlute(1972).
The Recent Winners
Then, the trend seemingly went on sabbatical for the duration of the ’70s and ’80s. It is difficult to say why this might have been the case, but one could posit a guess that the lifting of the Hays code in 1968 temporarily took away the scandal of portraying the sex worker on screen (thus, making it less appealing to the Academy). That is, until he-who-shall-not-be-named directed the wonderfulMira Sorvinointo a Best Supporting Oscar win for 1995’sMighty Aphrodite. The next win would come only two years later forKim BasingerinL.A. Confidential. The 21st Century would only see two more Oscar-winning examples,Charlize Theronin 2003’sMonsterandEmma Stone’sturn in the aforementionedPoor Things(a role which many have condemned for its infantilized nature), both of which took home Best Actress trophies.
Even if they did not win an award for it,most if notall the actresses who have been awarded an acting Oscarhave played a sex worker at some point in their career (whether on screen or stage). If you do not believe this fact,you can visit this websitefor a full breakdown of which roles each of these actors has played that constitute sex workers. For example, the 2025 winner for Best Supporting Actress, Zoe Saldaña (who made history as the first American of Dominican origin to win an acting Oscar), played an exotic dancer in 2023’sThe Absence of Eden.It simply goes to show you just how synonymous playing a sex worker is with being a “legitimate” actress, despite the overwhelming stigma that still exists in the community.
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A Trend Worth X-amining
In an industry that is too often (rightly) criticized for promoting the male gaze and exploiting women, audiences are right to notice a trend when it comes to awarding performances of sex work.The Academy and film culture seem to laud actors for being “brave” enough to portray sex workers, but the sex worker community is still targeted and oppressed by society at large.
Perhaps some would argue that it is empoweringthat films about sex work have been so accoladed.Many view this trend as destigmatizing or educational about a misunderstood group of people. However,women, film critics, and sex workers alike have long criticized the way Oscar-winning films depict sex work. While it feels like a step in the right direction that movies likeAnora, which director Sean Baker says is about uplifting of the sex worker community (and for which Mikey Madison herselfdid a remarkable amount of research and said “all of the incredible women I have had the privilege of meeting from that community have been one of the highlights of this entire experience”), there has been a lot of discourse over the ways the film paints the industry and Anora’s agency, specifically.
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In the majority of films about sex work that win Oscars,the plots center on trauma, crime, and abuse. There is a propensity for these stories to reinforce harmful stereotypes that sex workers have been fighting for decades to dismiss.It has become such that portraying sex work, a profession which the mainstream film industry has never shown any real signs of respecting, is a way for actresses to get gritty and vulnerable, not for them to necessarily show the reality of sex work.
In fact, it is sometimes a joke in Hollywood. Sheryl Lee Ralph,beloved actress of Abbott Elementary,was quoted on the red carpet after the 2025 awards saying, “I have told people over and over again: The fastest way to an Oscar is either on a pole or…I’m telling you, sex sells baby.” It is worth mentioning thatall the movies in which women have won Oscars for playing sex workers were directed and written by men. The way the film industry depicts sex work has been criticized globally for years on end, and there are even museum exhibits and documentaries dedicated to the subject, such as Juliana Piccillo’sWhores on Film.
Mikey Madison’s Win in the Context of ‘The Substance’ Speaks Volumes
In an already semi-controversial year due to many people expecting Demi Moore to win forThe Substance, a movie ironically about the dismissal of women after a certain age,it does bring up questions as to why the Academy would be drawn to award Madison’s performance instead. Madison is amazing inAnora,and this is not meant to be a critique ofherin any way, but rather the larger systemic pitfalls that many have been calling the Oscars out on for decades. WhetherAnorawill go down in history as a positive depiction of sex work is still to be determined.The answer will never be a monolith.Generally, the sex work community seems to appreciative of the fact that real sex workers were so heavily involved in the making of the film (“nothing about us without us,” so to speak).
As many positive responses there are toAnorafrom sex workers, there are negative ones. One sex worker told Buzzfeed thatAnora"felt very much like a man’s fantasy" and that it made her “so sad to see this kind of character represented as naive.” All in all,perhaps the existence of prominent discussion on the subject is an indicator that the tide could be turning. May we get to a place where it truly becomes about highlighting the powerful women that make up the sex worker community and the talented actors that portray them.
