Do you think that men who won the Best Actor Academy Award end up living longer than average lives? To answer that question I've gone through all the men who won the Best Actor Academy Award and calculated out their average lifespan.
Only the men who won the Oscar for Best Actor who have passed away were used in the study. Also actors like Spencer Tracy who won the Best Actor Academy Award multiple times were only counted once.
In total, there are 46 men who won the Best Actor Academy Award and have passed away. Do you think the 46 men lived longer than average lifespans for a man due to their winning the Academy Award?
In theory, winning such a prestigious award should give a man a huge boost in life and help him to live a longer lifespan than average. Certainly winning an Academy Award virtually guarantees an actor that he will be much richer than the average man and studies have shown that wealthier men live longer than average but is that true for Academy Award winners?
Does all that add up to a longer than average lifespan? Surprisingly, the answer is no.
Do Men Who Won Academy Award Live Longer than Average Lives?
- Average lifespan of a man in the United States is 76.9 years
- Average lifespan of a Best Actor Academy Award winner is 74.04 years
The 46 men in the study who won the Best Actor Academy Award and have passed away lived to an average age of 74.04 years vs 76.9 years average life expectancy of a man in the United States today. That's almost a full 3 years less than the average man for the Academy Award winners.
A few notes. Life expectancy for a man in the United States has risen over the years and many of the male actors in the study died when life spans for men were less. But survivor-ship bias is in full effect here as all the men who won the Best Actor award survived well into adulthood while some men in the overall life expectancy of 76.9 years did not. Some male babies and boys do not reach adulthood while all the Academy Award winners did.
For the men in the study I rounded off their ages. If a man was 80 years old and 180 days I counted him as 80 years old. If a man was 80 years old and 190 days I counted hims as 81 years old.
The oldest man who won the Academy Award and passed away is 95 years for Ernest Borgnine. The youngest age a man who won the award passed away at is 47 years for Philip Seymour Hoffman.
There are three Best Actor winners who are still alive who are well beyond the average age. Sydney Poitier is 90 years old while Gene Hackman is 87 and Robert Duvall is 86. Counting those three actors in the study the average age moves up to 74.87 but that is still a full 2 years less than the average lifespan for a man.
The results of the study are pretty clear. Winning the Academy Award for Best Actor does not increase the average lifespan of the man who wins the Oscar.
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