Warren Beatty and an Oscars accident that was waiting to happen

The rictus grin. The anxious glance. As soon as he saw Beatty open the envelope, Michael Simkins recognised the signs of humiliation

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty present during the live ABC Telecast of The 89th Oscars at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, on Sunday. Phil McCarten / AMPAS

You Only Had One Job And You Blew It is a popular website that is a mainstay of Twitter addicts everywhere.

It specialises in highlighting examples of simple tasks that people have messed up through ineptitude, ignorance or confusion. Road-sign painters misspelling crucial words, shop displays trumpeting incorrectly labelled merchandise, that sort of thing.

The actor Warren Beatty will, I suspect, soon become a regular feature on the site, after being party to one of the most spectacular examples of how to make a complete mess of a simple, solitary requirement.

He had one job at last night’s Academy Awards – to open an envelope, and read out the winner in the Best Picture category. Yet, through a combination of nerves, confusion and being in possession of the wrong envelope, he and fellow film star Faye Dunaway managed to wrongly present the award to the producers of La La Land, rather than Moonlight, its rival and the real winner.

For anybody watching who’s ever had the onerous task of presenting an award – be it a school prizegiving, a sporting event or a civic ceremony – it was obvious long before the fatal words were spoken that something was very wrong at this year’s Oscars.

All the biological signs were there in Beatty’s face: the glassy-eyed stare, the rictus grin, the anxious glance at the envelope, then at Dunaway, then at the envelope again – and so it proved. He’d been dealt the wrong card altogether.

Indeed, such was the inordinate amount of time he took about proceedings that it provoked Dunaway into a muttered comment – half-admiring, half-admonishing – on just how much he was milking his moment in the spotlight.

But it wasn’t that at all.

Instead, Beatty’s well-honed instinct for self-preservation had kicked in.

Something told him he’d been given the wrong card, and thus, with the world swimming before his eyes, he did what all self-respecting actors do when they are faced with humiliation and ignominy: he handed the task and the envelope over to his colleague. And so it fell to Dunaway to deliver the fake news that La La Land had won.

The fact that it was Beatty and Dunaway – who famously starred as the smash-and-grab partners in crime Bonnie and Clyde 50 years ago – who snatched the award from one set of filmmakers to give it to another is particularly ironic. Old habits do genuinely die hard, or so it would seem.

Perhaps we should be surprised that such incidents don’t happen more often. Awards ceremonies are, after all, notoriously difficult occasions to pull off.

They are susceptible to hold-ups, gaffes and unexpected glitches. They are the performance for which there can never be adequate rehearsal. People and presenters are shoved on from the wings, handed a piece of paper by some apparatchik or other and have to trust that it’ll all be all right on the night. But sometimes it isn’t.

And there have been some shockers over the years.

Who can forget the 2015 Miss Universe ceremony, when host Steve Harvey managed somehow to declare Colombia’s Ariadna Gutierrez the winning contestant, instead of Miss Philippines? Or Australia’s Next Top Model in 2010, when compère Sarah Murdoch crowned the wrong recipient?

I’ve rarely been asked to present an award, but from time to time have been the recipient of one. Even then, it’s possible to make an utter fool of yourself.

Some years back I was shortlisted for a prestigious book prize, one I fancied I was in with a good chance of winning.

So, as the compère said: “And the winner is Michael ...” I rose in somewhat grandiose fashion to make my way to the stage.

Alas, in my nerves and expectation I’d forgotten that my main rival was also called Michael and it was he, not I, who had bagged the prize. I sat back down as quickly as I could, suggesting all the time that I’d merely risen to stretch my legs, but I was fooling no one. “Poor you,” they cooed around me at the reception afterwards. “It must have been awful.” Well, yes it was.

Multiply this by a million and you can have some idea of Beatty’s discomfort Sunday night. We may like to see our heroes brought back to earth, but nobody deserved this.

“There’s no such thing as bad publicity” runs the old showbiz saw, but don’t suggest that to Beatty any time soon, not unless you want a fat lip for your troubles.

Indeed, as one wag – presumably a Democrat – observed afterwards: “What a shame he wasn’t asked to announce the winner of the 2016 presidential election. Things might now be very different.”

Michael Simkins is an actor and writer in London

On Twitter: @michael_simkins