An Academy Award, colloquially known as an “Oscar,” is a prestigious award in the Muggle world. The award itself is a golden statuette of a knight holding a crusader's sword, standing on a reel of film. It is considered one of the highest honours a person or film in the cinematic industry can receive.
The Academy Awards are a real-world, non-magical set of awards first presented by the Muggle Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1929. Their existence and prestige are evidently known to some members of the Wizarding World, who use the award as a point of comparison for their own accolades.
The only direct reference to the Academy Award in the novels occurs in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. While introducing himself as the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart boasts about his many achievements. He specifically mentions winning Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award five times in a row. To emphasize the significance of this feat, he tells the class, “but I don't talk about that. I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her.” The narrative states that Lockhart's claim to this award was comparable to a Muggle winning an Academy Award, establishing a direct parallel between the two honours in terms of perceived prestige.
The mention of the Academy Award serves two primary functions in the narrative:
Ironically, while used as a benchmark for success within the story, the real-world *Harry Potter* film series was frequently nominated for Academy Awards but never won one. Across the eight films, the franchise received a total of 12 Oscar nominations in categories such as Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, and Best Visual Effects, but did not secure a win for any of them (film).