11 is the magic number today and 11 comes with big and appropriately twinned A list Oscar trivia.
the great Fay Bainter was the first actor double-nominated in a single year
11 is the number of actors who have been double nominated for lead & supporting within the same year! Pretty cool, right? Details and adjacent trivia starring Lange, Bergman, Blanchett, De Niro, SigWeavie, and more after the jump...
11 PERFORMERS WHO HAVE BEEN DOUBLE-NOMINATED
LEAD & SUPPORTING ACTING IN THE SAME OSCAR YEAR
1938 Fay Bainter (Lead: White Banners; Supporting: Jezebel)
1942 Teresa Wright (Lead: The Pride of the Yankees; Supporting: Mrs. Miniver)
Curious how the "types" for supporting actress win settled in so early in Oscar history, right?
1944 Barry Fitzgerald (Lead: Going My Way; Supporting: Going My Way*)
After this fiasco double nomination rules were changed to where you could not be nominated in multiple categories for the same role. Now if you have enough votes to qualify for the shortlist in both lead & supporting for the same performance, you will only be nominated in the category in which you qualified for that distinction first.
You might also say that this event way back in 1944 primed the pump for Hollywood to figure out some 50 years later that they could get more nominations and possibly both acting Oscars for the same film (Going My Way took both Oscars with Bing Crosby winning in lead), merely by cheating with the same sex leads and pretending one of them is supporting! (The examples are too numerous to mention post Thelma & Louise, the last film to score double leading nods 26 years ago, though it was fairly common before that.)
1982 Jessica Lange (Lead: Frances; Supporting: Tootsie*)
To get a sense of how much the "Category Fraud" conversation has changed over the years it's worth noting that there was concern in 1982 that Lange was doing it with the supporting win for Tootsie -- which highly displeased her co-star Terri Garr who lost to her). Nowadays of course with egregious fraud occurring every year no one cares about cases like this one, a role which is technically the female lead within the story but mostly supporting in other definable ways.
Curiously this is the only case of a win whilst double-nominated that felt like a "sorry you couldn't win in the other category!" style award. (Not that she isn't great in Tootsie, she's luminous, but people were gonzo about her work in Frances which would surely have won in any year without a Sophie's Choice level steamroller as its competition)
1988 Sigourney Weaver (Lead: Gorillas in the Mist; Supporting: Working Girl)
Poor Sigweavie! She was the first (but not the last) performer double-nominated to lose both categories. Then, to add insult to injury, she became the only performer in Oscar's 89 year history to have never won either of the categories before, during, or after the twin nomination achievement.
1992 Al Pacino (Lead: Scent of a Woman*; Supporting: Glengarry Glen Ross)
The textbook case of a storied legendary actor winning for one of their weakest performance under the Career Honors Playbook
1993 Holly Hunter (Lead: The Piano*; Supporting: The Firm)
Emma Thompson (Lead: The Remains of the Day; Supporting: In the Name of the Father)
This is the only year in which two actors received double nominations which means there were only 8 actresses being fêted everywhere that year instead of the usual 10 -- a rough year for fans of Gong Li (Farewell My Concubine) who couldn't turn her critical honors into an Oscar nomination and fans of Michelle Pfeiffer (The Age of Innocence), Juliette Binoche (Blue), and Penelope Ann Miller (Carlito's Way) none of whom were able to transfer their Globe nods to Oscar glory.
Additional note of interest: Emma Thompson (who had just won for Howards End) is the only actor to be double-nominated during their victory lap year.
2002 Julianne Moore (Lead: Far From Heaven; Supporting: The Hours)
She lost both but she'd finally triumph with Still Alice a dozen years later after a strange Oscar drought
2004 Jamie Foxx (Lead: Ray*; Supporting: Collateral)
One of the ugliest cases of category fraud and the only double nominated version of it. Foxx was already the frontrunner for the leading Oscar for Ray when he was successfully campaigned supporting for his other leading man gig that year in Collateral. There was then and remains no way to explain or justify or argue that he's anything but the lead in Collateral for which he would have never been nominated in the lead category*. This is why Category Fraud must be stopped. It just robs other worthy actors of honors, in most cases only to give unecessary extra honors to movie stars who are already drowning in adoration.
* yes he's excellent in Collateral -- arguably better than he is in Ray -- but that is not remotely the point.
2007 Cate Blanchett (Lead: Elizabeth The Golden Age; Supporting: I'm Not There)
Though she lost both of these nominations, she was already an Oscar winner for The Aviator
SOME RELATED TRIVIA:
• No performer who has been double-nominated in a single year has won both of those categories on Oscar night though they have at other awards shows -- recent examples include Kate Winslet at the Golden Globes for Revolutionary Road (lead) and fraudulent supporting campaign for The Reader (supporting) and the Spanish actress Emma Suarez who took both lead & suppporting wins at this year's Goya awards.
• Sigourney Weaver is a curious "page break" in these statistics. Before Sigourney all double nominees won in supporting. After Sigourney all double nominees either lost both categories or won in the lead category.
• There was nearly a 40 year break with no double nominations (1945-1981) but we've entered another short break (2008-2016). Will it turn into a long one? Stay tuned!
• It is more common for female actors to be double-nominated than male actors
• The number of performers who have won both the lead & supporting Oscars during their careers (always in separate years) is a different statistic altogether . There are 12 of them and its entirely different names than the double-nominated set except for two highly worshipped divas: Jessica Lange and Cate Blanchett.
So on that note, that particular list:
Maggie Smith hasn't been nominated for an Oscar in 17 years. Do you think she has one more in her?
THE ONLY PERFORMERS HAVE WON BOTH LEAD & SUPPORTING OSCARS
in the order in which they achieved this....
1970 Helen Hayes, Lead: Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931); Supporting: Airport (1970)
1973 Jack Lemmon, Supporting: Mister Roberts (1955); Lead: Save the Tiger (1973)
1974 Ingrid Bergman, Lead: Gaslight (1944); Supporting: Murder on the Orient Express (1974)
1978 Maggie Smith, Lead: Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969); Supporting: California Suite (1978)
1980 Robert De Niro, Supporting: Godfather, Part 2 (1974); Lead: Raging Bull (1980)
1982 Meryl Streep, Supporting: Kramer vs. Kramer (1979); Lead: (Sophie's Choice (1982)
1983 Jack Nicholson, Lead: One Flew Over... (1975); Supporting: Terms of Endearment (1983)
1992 Gene Hackman, Lead: French Connection (1971); Supporting: Unforgiven (1992)
1994 Jessica Lange, Supporting: Tootsie (1982); Lead: Blue Sky (1994)
1999 Kevin Spacey, Supporting: The Usual Suspects (1995); Lead: American Beauty (1999)
2001 Denzel Washington, Supporting: Glory (1989); Lead: Training Day (2001)
2013 Cate Blanchett, Supporting: The Aviator (2004); Lead: Blue Jasmine (2013)
Interesting that over half of these were between 1970 and 1983, right? 25% of these performers also won a third Oscar: that'd be Bergman, Nicholson, and Streep who each have won the leading acting Oscar twice in addition to their one supporting statue.
Being promoted from supporting wins to lead wins is slightly more common than the other direction with 7 of the 12 winning supporting first.
Other three or three plus time winners: Walter Brennan, Katharine Hepburn, and Daniel-Day Lewis. In those cases each statue was for the same category -- all supporting for Brennan, all leads for Hepburn & Day-Lewis.