Where to Put Your Oscar? Feng Shui Experts Have (Strong) Opinions

March 8, 2024

As Hollywood legend or, rather, a recycled talk show anecdote tells us, Kate Winslet keeps her best actress Academy Award for 2008’s The Reader in a guest bathroom. This location allows visitors some private time with Oscar — a chance to hold him, gaze in the mirror, maybe mouth the acceptance speech they’ll likely never give. But her statuette’s proximity to the toilet could be the reason Winslet has yet to win a second.

Placing any symbol of career achievement or good fortune in the bathroom is generally a feng shui no-no. “I’ve certainly been in many homes with a Grammy in the bathroom,” says Kim Colwell, a Los Angeles-based interior designer and feng shui practitioner. “I get the punk rock attitude, but, from a feng shui standpoint, that’s good energy going down the literal tubes.”

Feng shui is the ancient Chinese practice that uses energy (qi) to harmonize people with their environments. Evidence of this method goes back more than 3,500 years. And while contemporary approaches vary wildly, there is one clear throughline: The arrangement of furniture and objects in one’s space, particularly the home, has a direct impact on the energy flow in that person’s life. This means that where an Oscar winner chooses to display their trophy is not merely an aesthetic decision — it could potentially sway their career toward fortune or frustration.

According to feng shui experts, ideal perches for any award are the office and living room, never isolated and instead surrounded by other accolades, decorative items and personal mementos. “You want to think about it as an object, its tones and scale,” says Colwell. “An Oscar is gold, so what would you do with a gold vase? Let it enhance the decor so it can be discovered and not just stand out.”

Ill-advised spots include anywhere in the primary bedroom (Melissa Leo), a place where no reference to work belongs; the kitchen (Jared Leto), where the environs tend to be chaotic; and a hallway, in which any object is likely to be ignored or otherwise disrespected. But the biggest misstep of all, and Geena Davis is guilty of this, is positioning an Oscar on that all-time classic pedestal: “There’s a lot of symbolism attached to the mantel above a fireplace,” says Cliff Tan, TikTok’s leading authority on feng shui with 2.9 million followers. The London architect, who released the book Feng Shui Modern in 2022, cautions that nothing of personal value belongs so close to a hearth: “Whether the fire is going or not, it’s burning away the award. And it’s too prominent. You’re telling others that the award is your whole life.”

Among the most important variables in feng shui is an object’s standing in the overall footprint of the home, and one of the most common methods of keeping attuned to that is by using a bagua map. It’s a grid aligned with the points of the compass and broken into nine squares that denote different aspects of one’s life — wealth, reputation and fame, love, family, health, creativity and children, knowledge, career and travel. Some practitioners overlay the bagua onto the blueprint of an entire home, the top row justified with the southern side of the building, while others employ it room by room. So, if an Oscar means “fame and reputation” for its owner, it should be situated south and centered in a home or room. If it speaks more to career, the Oscar belongs north and centered. And should it be a creative motivator, the western-most wall might make more sense.

But what if an Oscar inspires complicated feelings?

Gwyneth Paltrow, who recently joked on Instagram that she uses hers as a doorstop at her Amagansett house, years ago said that her best actress trophy for 1998’s Shakespeare in Love reminded her of a tough time, and she kept it mostly out of sight. “An award should be a symbol of empowerment, but if it’s attached to a project or a time that caused trauma, put it somewhere you don’t often go,” says Colwell, “like a guest room or even in a beautiful box. So long as you know it’s there for the day when it will hopefully have less connection to pain.”

Celebrities, Oscar winners or not, are an accidental touchstone for many feng shui aficionados. The combination of Architectural Digest spreads and social media presence means that glimpses into their homes are often quite easy to come by — and some experts don’t like what they see. “I’ll watch those videos where movie stars walk through their homes, and I’m usually just screaming … they’re so bad,” says Jessie Kim, a third-generation certified feng shui consultant and real estate investor who operates across Southern California as Ms. Feng Shui. “But not Reese Witherspoon. When I saw her home, everything made sense. The layout is brilliant. No wonder she’s doing so well.”

Witherspoon’s Oscar is said to have migrated around her various homes and rooms over the years, and experts say that works, too. Like any object, an Oscar’s relationship with the person who won it is bound to change. And, if it feels right, even a little time in the bathroom probably won’t derail any careers.

“With perfect shui, you wouldn’t even have indoor plumbing,” says Kim, noting how so much of modern living defies the original practice. “So if Kate Winslet wants to keep her Oscar in the bathroom, and it lets people have fun, I think it’s a clever way of keeping the energy in that room up — instead of sending it down the drain.”

This story first appeared in the March 6 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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