By Nathaniel R
JUDD HIRSCH, record-breaker!
It used to be that Oscar experts were few and far between but now you throw a rock and you hit one! Are you wielding elaborate spreadsheets to track things at home? If so we salute you in solidarity and ask for your help in fleshing this out. We will add to this list as new trivia occurs to us or is told to us by you (or others) but for now here’s some “firsts” and rarities and other interesting factoids from the nominations for the 95th Oscars...
OLDEST NOMINEES THIS YEAR - INCOMPLETE (incomplete -- will fill in as we uncover)
- John Williams (90) for Best Original Score (The Fabelmans)
- Judd Hirsch (87) for Best Supporting Actor (The Fabelmans)
- Jerry Bruckheimer (79) for Best Picture (Top Gun Maverick) - first nomination!
- Bill Nighy (73) for Best Actor (Living) - first nomination!
- Roger Deakins (73) for Best Cinematography (Empire of Light)
John Williams is now the oldest competitive Oscar nominee of all time (90!) and Hirsch becomes the second oldest acting nominee of all time (Christopher Plummer holds that record with his final nomination when he was 88)
YOUNGEST NOMINEES THIS YEAR (incomplete -- will fill in as we uncover)
Happy birthday to Paul Mescal next week. He's very young for Oscar love!
- João Gonzalez (26) Best Animated Short (Ice Merchants) - 1st nomination
- Lachlan Pendragon (26) Best Animated Short (An Ostrich Told Me) - 1st nomination
- Tems (26) Best Original Song (Black Panther Wakanda Forever) - 1st nomination
- Paul Mescal (26) Best Actor (Aftersun) - first nomination!
- Barry Keoghan (30) for Best Supporting Actor (Banshees of Inisherin) -first nomination!
- Daniel Roher (30) for Best Documentary (Navalny) - first nomination!
NOTE: The same age people aren't in order exactly as we don't know when exactly their birthdays are.
BEST PICTURE & BEST DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY
• RARE Top Gun Maverick is only the third traditional sequel ever nominated for Best Picture whose predecessor was not nominated in the category. The only others were Toy Story 3 (2010) and Mad Max Fury Road (2015) so this has only occurred in the 21st century. Maybe it will begin happening often? Speaking of...
• FIRST TIME This is the first time in Oscar history that two sequels (Top Gun Maverick and Avatar the Way of Water) have competed against each other in one Best Picture field. In short, the Academy had no choice but to embrace sequels since that's 80% of film culture now (sigh).
• UNPRECEDENTED STREAK This is the fourth consecutive year with Asian talent nominated for both producing and directing! The films that made it happen: Parasite for 2019, Minari/Nomadland for 2020, Drive My Car for 2021, and Everything Everywhere All At Once for 2022)
• UNCOMMON The Daniels are only the fourth directing pair nominated. The first were Robert Wise/Jerome Robbins who won for West Side Story (1961), then came Warren Beatty / Buck Henry for Heaven Can Wait (1978), and finally Joel and Ethan Coen who have been nominated twice together, winning for No Country For Old Men (2007)... spiritually they've been nominated thrice, though, since Joel was also up for Fargo (1996).
• RECORD BREAKER Steven Spielberg extends his run as the most nominated Producer in history with his 12th nomination in Best Picture. (It's worth noting though that producers weren't "nominees" until 1951 and prior to that the Best Picture Oscar went to the studio behind the movie).
• RECORD TYING Steven Spielberg has also tied William Wyler for being the director with the most nominated Best Pictures (13) which is not the same thing as being the most nominated in director or picture. Spielberg is nowhere close to William Wyler's Best Director nomination record: Wyler was nominated for 12 Directing Oscars, winning thrice. Spielberg has been nominated for 9 Directing Oscars, winning twice.
• DID YOU KNOW? For the second year in a row a remake of a former Best Picture winner is in the running (West Side Story / All Quiet on the Western Front)
• FIRST TIME EVER - Best Director & Best Original Screenplay are not only an exact match (it's never happened before) but the directors were also the screenwriters (or co-screenwriters) so it's a match in two different ways!
• SUPER RARE - Women Talking becomes the first film to be nominated for only Best Picture and Adapted Screenplay since... State Fair (1933) 89 years ago!
ACTING IN GENERAL
• RARE With only Austin Butler and Ana de Armas nominated for playing real people, this is the lowest amount of biographical performances nominated in the past 20 years. The lowest in that time was 2003 when only Charlize Theron in Monster was a biographical portrayal.
• FIRST TIME This is the first year in history when three Asian actors have been nominated simultaneously (Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu)
• RECORD TYING There are 16 first time acting nominees this year which hasn't happened since 1936 which was the very first year of the supporting categories!
• RARE Cate Blanchett is the only previous acting winner nominated which does not happen often. The last time was 2004 with Hilary Swank as the only previous winner nominated
• RARE This is the first year since 1977 (Julia/The Turning Point) when two different films have received 4 acting nominations (Everything Everywhere All At Once / The Banshees of Inisherin)
• RECORD BREAKING 25% of the acting nominees are Irish (the Banshees quartet plus Paul Mescal)
• UNCOMMON Tom Hanks and Cate Blanchett join the "starring in 10 Best Picture nominees" club this year with Elvis and TAR. This will begin to happen more often now that we have 10 Best Picture nominees each year. The all time leader is Robert DeNiro who haas starred in 11 but the most impressive stat belongs to 10 timer Jack Nicholson (who managed his 10 nominees *before* the Best Picture expansion years. He was retiring just as that started to happen)
• UNCOMMON This is the first year since 2016 that there's not a consecutive nominee in any of the acting categories. In the earlier days of Oscar this was slightly more common but is increasingly rare.
BEST ACTRESS
• FIRST TIME Michelle Yeoh is the first Asian actress to be nominated in this category*. Two Asian women have won Best Supporting Actress but none have competed in Best Actress unless you count * Merle Oberon (Dark Angel, 1935) was of Asian descent (her mother being mixed race) but Oberon hid her heritage in those days.
• A RECORD Ana de Armas is the first actor nominated for an NC-17 rated picture with Blonde. (There have been actors nominated for rated X films from Last Tango in Paris and Midnight Cowboy but the MPAA system has changed considerably since the late 60s early 70s).
• RECORD BREAKING ??? We haven't yet determined how exactly this broke records (help) but Andrea Riseborough's nomination for To Leslie is definitely unprecedented in some fashion or another. Are there any other women who received an Oscar nod in this category without anything other than a Spirit nomination and with literally no reported domestic box office for a film that wasn't a streaming release? Most of the other grassroots low profile films with Oscar campaigns have either not paid off OR have succeeded in hitting a major precursor somewhere before the Oscar nod, thereby predicted the Oscar nomination. For example people like to cite Sally Kirkland's grassroots fellow-actors-love-it support for Anna (1987) but she was already very buzzy before the nomination with the LAFCA and Golden Globe wins (back when there were only a small handful of precursors) and her film was an indie success, breaking the $1 million mark at arthouses.
• RARE Cate Blanchett, receiving her 8th nomination for acting become only the 7th woman to ever accomplish that after Meryl Streep (21 noms), Katharine Hepburn (12 noms), Bette Davis (10 or 11 noms depending on how you count them), and Geraldine Page, Judi Dench and Glenn Close (all with 8 like Cate). If she wins her 3rd, she'll join the very rarified ranks of Streep, Ingrid Bergman, and Frances McDormand as a 3 time winner (Katharine Hepburn will remain the champ with 4)
• UNCOMMON Michelle Yeoh and Ana de Armas join Halle Berry, Rosamund Pike, Naomie Harris, and Kim Basinger as "Bond Girls" (the loose definition of the term of course) who later became Oscar nominated actors. (Dame Judi Dench doesn't count since she was an Oscar player before the Bond films)
BEST ACTOR
• RARE This is the first time since 1934 (if you can believe) that we have an all first time nominee lineup in this category. Historically speaking the Best Actor categories is obsessed with repeat players.
• UNCOMMON Bill Nighy (73) is the 7th oldest man ever nominated for Best Actor. The oldest ever is Anthony Hopkins who won for The Father when he was 83.
• RECORD BREAKING Bill Nighy (73) is the oldest first time nominee ever in this particular category
• UNCOMMON Paul Mescal (26) turns 27 next week so he doesn't make the list of Top Ten Youngest Best Actor nominees but he *almost* does. He is the 11th youngest ever nominated.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
• FIRST TIME Hong Chau is the first actress of Vietnamese descent to be nominated for an Oscar (though she was born in Thailand).
• SUPER RARE Jamie Lee Curtis becomes only the second actor ever nominated whose parents (Tony Curtis & Janet Leigh) were both Oscar-nominated actors. The only other is Laura Dern (Bruce Dern & Diane Ladd). Hollywood is a family town so there are a lot of people nominated whose family members were also nominees but for actors this combo is rare.
• UNCOMMON The majority of nominees in Supporting Actress are women of color this season which is not the norm but not unprecedented. It's happened a few times before, the first time being in 1985 when Meg Tilly, Oprah Winfrey, and Margaret Avery were up for the prize. It will surely become more common now given the progress Hollywood has made in racial equity in casting within high profile films.
• FIRST TIME This is the first time in history that two Asian women have been nominated together in for acting. (it's happened twice in male acting categories, first in 1984 when Dr Haing S Ngor and Pat Morita were both up for Supporting Actor and once for Best Actor 2020 when Steven Yeun and Riz Ahmed were nominated)
• FIRST TIME Angela Bassett is the first woman nominated for acting in a superhero film. It is rare in general but it's only happened to men previously
• RARE Angela Basset becomes only the third person in history to be Oscar nominated for reprising a role she wasn't nominated for the first time. Interestingly they've all been women. The other two were Talia Shire in The Godfather Part II (1974) and Sigourney Weaver in Aliens (1986)
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
• RECORD BREAKER Judd Hirsch now holds the record for “longest time between nominations”. It has been 42 years since his nomination for Ordinary People (1980). This record was previously held by Henry Fonda (41 years) between The Grapes of Wrath and On Golden Pond (1981)
• RARE Brian Tyree Henry is not the first simultaneous “lone nominee” and “first time nominee” in Supporting but it’s not common!
• UNPRECEDENTED STREAK Two nominees from the same film used to be uncommon in Best Supporting Actor (but common in Supporting Actress). The past few years have changed that. This is the fourth consecutive year of double nominations in this category (a record)
INTERNATIONAL FILM
• FIRST TIME Ireland scores its first ever Oscar nomination for The Quiet Girl which is just a lovely movie. Can't wait for y'all to see it. They previously made the finals with the Cuban set film Viva.
• RECORD BREAKING Jerzy Skolimowski, the master behind the incredible EO from Poland, is now the oldest director whose film has ever been nominated in Best International Feature. He is 84. The previous record holder was also Polish, Andrzej Wajda was 82 when Katyń was nominated.
• RECORD BREAKING (FOR NOW) With All Quiet on the Western Front, Germany has now broken its tie with Denmark as Oscar's favourite foreign country of the 21st century. Germany has had 9 nominations and 2 wins since 2000 while Denmark has had 8 nominations and 2 wins in that same time frame. In short: they're shaping up to be what France & Italy were to the Oscars of the 20th century.
CRAFT CATEGORIES
• UNCOMMON (THUS FAR) Mandy Walker, nominated for Elvis, becomes only the third woman ever nominated for Best Cinematography (after Rachel Morrison for Mudbound and Ari Wegner for The Power of the Dog). None have yet won. All of those were in the past six years so the tide is turning.
• RECORD BREAKING (ALMOST) Two-time winner Roger Deakins with his 16th nomination in Best Cinematography (Empire of Light) is now just two nominations behind the all time record holder Leon Shamroy (who won 4 times)
• RECORD BREAKING With two new nominations in Costume and Production Design, Catherine Martin leapfrogs Cate Blanchett to become the "Most Nominated Australian of All Time" with 9 nominations to Cate's 8.
• FIRST TIME EVER All Quiet on the Western Front marks the first time a non-English language film has been up for Best Visual Effects
ANIMATED FEATURE / SHORT
• UNCOMMON (THUS FAR) Domee Shi, who won the Oscar for the Animated Short film Bao (2018), is now nominated for Animated Feature for Turning Red. She is the first woman to score this double in her career. This "promotion" has only previously happened for Michael Dudok de Wit (Father & Daughter / The Red Turtle), Glen Keane (Dear Basketball/Over the Moon), and Nick Park (Creature Comforts / The Curse of the Were-Rabbit). Nick Park was the first to do it and the only one to win in both categories. We suspect this will become more common but Animated Feature has only been around for 21 years.
SHORT FILMS
• DID YOU KNOW? Italian auteur Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro,The Wonders) is now a nominee. She's up for Best Live Action Short for Le Pupille.
• RECORD TYING? Alfonso Cuaron shares that Live Action Short nomination (producing) which means he's competed in 7 different categories now, tying with Kenneth Branagh for "nominations in most categories".
• RECORD... SOMETHING An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It is the longest title ever nominated in terms of number of worlds... if not quite the longest title in terms of number of letters!
SCORE & SONG
• UNCOMMON Ryan Coogler joins Lars von Trier in the very strange category of "famous directors who have never been nominated for directing but have been nominated for Best Original Song". Coogler co-wrote "Lift Me Up" For Black Panther Wakanda Forever
• RECORD BREAKING Diane Warren extends her own record for "Most nominations without a win" with her 14th nomination for "Applause" from Tell It Like a Woman
• RECORD BREAKING John Williams extends his own record as "Most Nominated Living Person" with his 53rd nomination. He's up for Original Score for The Fabelmans
Can you think of any others?