14 DAY TRIAL // Talk about a huge blunder! Someone at the AMPAS, aka the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which organizes the Oscars every year, wasn’t paying attention when they tweeted a photo of Penelope Cruz and identified her as Salma Hayek.
Useless to say, the photo went viral within minutes from its posting.
The faux-pas occurred last night during the Academy Awards 2014 gala, which aired live from the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, and caused quite a frenzy online. If you think about it, it was natural for this to generate some outrage: after all, someone mixed up two very famous actresses and did so on a very public forum, Twitter and Instagram.
The Academy posted the photo above (it’s no longer online, by the way, but BuzzFeed confirms it was at one point), with the caption, “Hayek and De Niro prepping backstage #oscars.”
Clearly, that’s not Salma Hayek in the pic, an error the Academy realized only later, after fans had launched at them to ridicule them for their inexcusable faux-pas.
Penelope and Robert were about to get up on stage to present the awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Adapted Screenplay. Salma wasn’t even at the awards gala, as far as I know, but my guess is neither her nor Penelope was amused by this.