100 Oldest Living Oscar Winners & Nominees

This list has been updated and now lives here. 

Comments

[joel6]

Great list!

All hail Queen Olivia!!! 104 and from what I've read she's still sharp as a tack and feisty. She and Norman Lloyd are such inspirations.

A shame we just lost Carl Reiner but he too was able to stay active right up until the end. What a great legacy he's left behind.

Love the idea of Gena Rowlands playing Blanchett's mother! Get on it Hollywood.

[Keith]

Sorry to have to inform you that Johnny Mandel died on Monday.

[FR]

The 'Years Young' thing is really patronizing.

[NATHANIEL R]

FR -- it's meant to be celebratory

[Boxer]

Anyone interested in Jan Troell should also seek out 'Everlasting Moments' from 2008 about photographer Maria Larsson. One of the best biopics from the last 20 years. Didn't get any Oscar love but did get some mentions on top ten lists if I remember correctly.

[Val]

Is there a more unlikely Oscar trajectory than Christopher Plummer's? Clearly well-known and respected career, but no love from the Academy. The snub for The Insider in '99 had to sting (did Michael Caine really need a second one?). Probably thought he'd be on his way to honorary consideration, but now a bona-fide three time nominee and winner for a performance that's easily puts his win on any all-time greats list. AND, he's still working and may not be done with Oscar, as far as we know.

[Jonathan]

Val, for actors you mean. Probably Christoph Waltz.

[DAVID]

joel6-

YES!! Supposedly, there was a picture of Ms. Havilland riding a bike a few years back, though I can't find it. She is still the picture of class and elegance (pearls and all) at 104.

I wish the news coverage would take a few minutes off from COVID today to cover this milestone! Happy Bday Dame Olivia!!

[BJT]

Val - Plummer may have been well known but for most of his career he wasn't well loved.

There's a story in Kenneth Tynan's diaries about how Plummer was rehearsing at the National Theatre, UK and after several heated arguments with the director he called a general meeting with the full cast demanding that they all strike for a better director. Not one of the cast sided with him so he quit the following day.

As Tynan said [Christopher Plummer's] own worst enemy is himself, but only just.

[Alguém]

What is "patronazing"?

[ken s]

Jan Troell should also be remembered for Here Is Your Life and Hamsun, the latter with one of Max Von Sydow's greatest ever performances (and that's saying something). He also made a superb serial killer psychological drama Il Capitano, which won him the Best Director Award at the Berlin Film Festival in 1992. I was lucky enough to see it; it was my favorite of the films I saw at the festival - in fact I consider it an out-and-out masterpiece. Yet almost 30 years on and it has received no distribution at all in the USA, and so should serve as a salutary reminder of all the great films out there that we don't even get a chance to see here.

[James]

Let's take a look at De Havilland's two Oscar wins.

De Havilland won the Oscar in 1946 as a tribute for her long, hard won lawsuit against the studio system. Contracts for studio actors typically ran for seven years. When her studio sought to extend de Havilland’s, she filed suit under California Labor Code. After a long and expensive court battle, she won. The victory gave actors greater freedoms and more power over creative expression. The studios colluded and gave De Havilland a two year blacklisting. When she finally got a job again in the traditional weepy To Each His Own, there was little doubt she’d win an Oscar. It was payback from her grateful peers for her brave and expensive fight to give actors better financial working conditions.

Of course, De Havilland won a second Oscar for playing Catherine Sloper in The Heiress. When her friend Bette David played the victim of an unloving, emotionally abusive parent in Now, Voyager a few years earlier, Davis relied on appearance to convey the effects of such treatment and her recovery. Not so for De Havilland. Catherine Sloper shows no outwardly agony for the years of being unwanted and unloved. Rather, it is internal. We realize the situation early in the film. Our agony is watching Sloper finally acknowledge the absence of love, and in that fateful climb of the staircase to bed resolve herself to a life without love.

[TOM]

Happy Birthday. Olivia! GWTW rules!

[Lizzie]

What about Betty White?!?

[NATHANIEL R]

Lizzie -- never Oscar nominated. She's on the other list, linked above.

[Jair]

Marilyn Bergman????