Hilary Swank, 2000 & 2005 Best Actress
Wait, isn't that the girl from The Next Karate Kid? Seemingly overnight, the star of the absolutely devastating Boys Don't Cry was a thespian to be reckoned with—and now she's a two-time Oscar winner!
Walton Goggins, 2000 Best Live-Action Short Film
A decade before terrorizing Timothy Olyphant on Justified, Goggins starred in and coproduced the Oscar-winning short film The Accountant.
Jim Rash, 2012 Best Adapted Screenplay
So, we've got the guys who adapted The Dependants for the big screen: Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and...Dean Pelton from Community?! Hey, Robin Williams' son in The Birdcage wrote Capote (didn't win though). These things happen.
Billy Bob Thornton, 1997 Best Adapted Screenplay
Before marrying Angelina Jolie, suiting up as Bad Santa and further cultivating his bad-boy image, the Arkansas native did a beautiful job starring in—and writing—Sling Blade. He was no match for the Geoffrey Rush-in-Shine momentum in the Best Actor category, though.
Kevin Costner, 1991 Best Director
Though not exactly known for his versatility when it comes to being on-camera, that famous monotone apparently got it done behind the scenes of eventual Best Picture winner Dances With Wolves—which is usually mentioned these days in sentences like, "Goodfellas was robbed by Dances With Wolves."
Three 6 Mafia, 2006 Best Original Song
We're glad DJ Paul, Juicy J and Lord Infamous got in on the Oscars when they were still setting aside time for nominees to actually perform their music. And with the group's win, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" joined "Over the Rainbow," "Moon River" and "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" as the most honored movie music of all time.
Whoopi Goldberg, 1991 Best Supporting Actress
Seventeen years before taking to TV full-time as a cohost on The View and four years before hosting the Oscars for the first of four times, the outspoken actress actually won one of these things for playing a sassy, initially skeptical psychic in Ghost. So, you know, for playing herself, if she could talk to dead people.
Bret McKenzie, 2012 Best Original Song
One minute it's "Business Time," the next it's Oscar time for one half of Flight of the Conchords.
Linda Hunt, 1984 Best Supporting Actress
The NCIS: Los Angeles star remains the only female Oscar recipient who won for playing a man. Not a woman dressed as a man, or a woman who wants to be a man—just a man who befriends (or does he?) Mel Gibson, in The Year of Living Dangerously.
Cher, 1988 Best Actress
Long before Burlesque, her Vegas revue and tweeting in support of Chaz, the Moonstruck star, supposedly still sore at being snubbed for her role in Mask, took home the Oscar in Bob Mackie's most head-scratching creation ever.