New Oscar Trivia, courtesy of this season's nominations
Tuesday, January 22, 2019 at 2:50PM by Nathaniel R
We just called to say we love you!With each new year's nominations, new trivia or follow-up stat discussions can emerge. Here are some things we noticed straightaway this morning. If you have any suggestions, do tell!
ACTRESSES
• With Glenn Close's seventh nomination for acting at 71, she is now the 8th oldest nominee in that category ever, and THE most-nominated actress who has never won. Meanwhile Amy Adams, with her sixth nomination if she loses, takes Glenn Close's previous spot in a three way tie with 1950s mainstays Thelma Ritter and Deborah Kerr for 'most noms for an actress ever without a competitive win'. Related: OUR CHAT WITH GLENN LAST MONTH
• If Glenn Close wins in February for The Wife (2018), she'll become only the third leading actress over 70 to have won. The other two were 80 year old Jessica Tandy for Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and 74 year old Katharine Hepburn for On Golden Pond (1981).
• Last year Mary J Blige became the first actor ever nominated for Best Original Song and acting in the same year! The very next year, Lady Gaga has repeated the trick with A Star is Born , so now there are two people who have done it. Note: Barbra Streisand is the only person to win for both songwriting and acting but she did it in two separate years...
Yalitza and Marina in "Roma"
• We believe but we don't yet have the clarification that Marina de Tavira is now the ONLY performer ever in the modern era to receive an Oscar nomination without a single notice from critics awards or precursors of any kind. Not a single one. And remember there are 40+ now. There were far fewer precursor awards in 2000 when Marcia Gay Harden stormed toward the Oscar for Pollock out of the blue significant precursor attention but she did have a smidgeon of precursor support. She was a Spirit nominee and she won one major prize: The NYFCC for Supporting Actress.
• Roma is only the second film in history to receive two acting nominations for foreign language performances. The first was Babel (2006) which received two supporting actress nominations for Rinko Kikuchi (in Japanese sign language) and Adriana Barraza (a mix of English and Spanish).
• Marina de Tavira and Yalitza Aparicio are only the 5th and 6th Mexican-born actresses to ever be nominated. Only one (Lupita Nyong'o) has ever won. Of the 11 Latin-American actresses nominated for acting Oscars to date, nobody has ever received a second nomination. Three Latin-American men, though, have been repeat nominees and winners (Benicio del Toro, Anthony Quinn, and Jose Ferrer)
ACTORS
• This is the first time Viggo Mortensen (Green Book) has been nominated for a performance in which he didn't go full frontal. He had complete nude scenes (rare for male actors) in both of his previous leading actor nomination (Captain Fantastic and Eastern Promises)
• We believe but have not yet verified that Rami Malek is the only the second actor of Egyptian descent to be nominated. The first was Omar Shariff for Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
PICTURE / DIRECTOR / SCREENPLAYS
• Best Director / Best Picture split wins have become almost the norm since the expansion of the Best Picture ballots in 2009. In the last 9 years, there has been a split 4 times. If we split again this year (which we seem likely to with both A Star is Born and Green Book missing the Director field) it will be a 50% statistic moving forward.
• With Roma's Best Picture nomination, producer Gabriela Rodriguez becomes the first Latina woman to have ever been nominated in that category.
• While Alfonso Cuarón did not break the record some were expecting him to in terms of most nominations in a single year (he missed in Film Editing), he does tie Warren Beatty's record with his four nominations for Roma. (We don't understand why Oscar doesn't count the foreign film prize as being an official nomination for the director, but they don't). Warren Beatty accomplished the four nominations for one film twice in his career with both Heaven Can Wait (1978) and Reds (1981). The most nominations in a single year is still Walt Disney (6 nominations for 1953 albeit for different films)
• Roma has now tied Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon so Ang Lee's wuxia masterpiece has to share the title of "most nominated foreign language film of all time". They each received 10 nominations including Best Picture and Best Director. Crouching Tiger shares the record of "most wins for a foreign language film" with Fanny And Alexander (1983). They each won 4 Oscars, so Roma will have to win 5 Oscars in February to best that record. We assume it has three nearly locked up (Director, Foreign, Cinematography) but the others will be harder wins.
• Jordan Peele, who produced BlacKkKlansman, is the first African American to receive two nominations for Best Picture. He was previously nominated in the category just last year for Get Out.
• With their respective nominations for the screenplays to BlacKkKlansman and If Beale Street Could Talk, Spike Lee and Barry Jenkins are now the most nominated black screenwriters ever. They've each been nominated twice.
FOREIGN FILM
• With Never Look Away, Germany receives its 20th nomination, surpassing Spain to become the third most honored country ever in the foreign language category. Germany has won 3 times. Numbers #1 and #2 of all time in the Foreign Film race are Italy (28 nominations / 11 wins / 3 honoraries) and France (37 nominations / 9 wins / 3 honoraries)
CRAFT CATEGORIES
• With her nomination for Black Panther, costume designer Ruth E Carter ties Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer to be the most nominated black woman of all time at the Oscars. They've each been up three times for the prize. Both Viola and Octavia have won before but Ruth has yet to win.
Ruth E Carter and Sandy Powell, celebrated costume designers
• With her double nominations for Mary Poppins Returns and The Favourite, Sandy Powell now holds the record of most double-nominations in any one category for a woman. This is her THIRD time being double-nominated in Costume Design. With her 14th nomination, Sandy Powell is now the fourth most-nominated Costume Designer of all Time and the only one of the top four not to have the benefit of TWO costume design categories to get them there (they used to have one for black and white films and one for color films). A few men have multiple years of double or even triple nods (like Walt Disney and composer Alan Menken)
• This is only the second time in Oscar history that the Cinematography category has been dominated by foreign language films with Cold War, Roma, and Never Look Away all nominated. The only other time that three have made it into the category was 2004 (The Passion of the Christ, A Very Long Engagement, and House of Flying Daggers... curiously none of those three in the earlier record were Best Foreign Language Film nominees!).
• Diane Warren was already the most nominated songwriter never to have won but she received her 10th nomination today, upping her record. Her nearest rival in most nominated songs without a win is a guy named Mac David (1912-1993) who was nominated in the category 8 times without winning. Some of his most famous songs to be nominated were "Bibbiddi-Bobbidi-Boo" from Cinderella, and the title songs for Cat Ballou and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte. Related Post: MIDDLEBURG'S DIANE WARREN TRIBUTE.
• Franchise Fatigue? This is the first time since 2007 that a Potterverse movie has been shut out of any Oscar recognition. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald failed to secure the usual Potter nomination (Best Production Design) and Colleen Atwood failed to follow up her Costume Design win for the previous film in the franchise with another nomination. Usually once Oscar gets bored with a series, they don't show up again unless there's a long break. Take the case of Spider-Man, the first two films (2002 and 2004) were honored with nomination but the third missed any nominations and they've skipped all of the reboots and sequels since. The spin-off Into the Spider-Verse is the first time they've shown interest in the webslinger again. Or take the case of Pirates of the Caribbean or Transformers. Both of those series were regulars in the craft categories until suddenly they weren't.
• With his 6th surprise nomination for Cinematography for Never Look Away Caleb Deschanel becomes the most-nominated living cinematographer to have never won. The record for most noms without a win ever in that category is George J Folsey's 13 nominations. Folsey used to share that record with Roger Deakins but Deakins finally won last year on his 14th nomination (Blade Runner 2049). And, yes, Caleb Deschanel is the father of the actresses Zooey and Emily Deschanel. Related: MORE ON THE FOLSEY & DEAKINS PREVIOUS RECORD.
• Hannah Beachler (Black Panther) is the first black person ever, man or woman, to be nominated in Best Production Design.
SHORT FILMS
• With nominations for both Bao, One Small Step, and Weekends in Animated Short Film, this is the first time THREE films by Asian filmmakers have been nominated in the category (Domi Shee, Bobby Pontillas, and Trevor Jimenez respectively). In fact, there had never been a time with two Asian filmmakers competing in this category together let alone three. Here's an awesome Instagram post from Bobby Pontillas reacting to his nomination.
Can you think of any others? We'll add them.
P.S. Sign up for our newsletter which we'll be relaunching this week, if you dont wanna miss anything going forward related to Oscar and beyond...
Related Articles:
• 12 things we learned from the noms
• Adams vs Weisz, Round Two
• Best Picture Silliness
• Mourning the Snubs
• How to Stage the Original Song Performances
• Nomination Index (individual charts still being updated)
Reader Comments (115)
America invented the racial caste system of white people and black people. America tells the truth about what you are as they see fit. Hispanic heritage boxes you in a racialized other box unless you pass wholly as white and none of the three amigos do. They can be white in Mexico but it's wholly irrelevant stateside.
I made no statement about whether they were white or not. The distinction I used was that there has only been one white American male to win in the last ten years.
@Paul B: Thanks for the info. It's amazing how people count minutes so differently.
Paul B: I clocked him to and got 9.50 min . He has a lot of pop up scenes in the later part of the movie when he is on screen but does nada. Yes Im a nerd I know :P
I respect Lady Gaga's performance in "A Star Is Born" (one of my favorites of the year, by far) and I understand the love for Yalitza Aparicio's performance in "Roma"... but I can' believe I live in a world where there's an "Academy Award nominee Lady Gaga / Yalitza Aparicio" and noScarlett Johansson, Kirsten Dunst, Emily Blunt, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gael García Bernal or Donald Sutherland xD
Seven out of the 20 Oscar-nominated acting roles are gay/queer. That has got to be a record.
Nat, you should do a post about the left-field acting nominees! Reading about them here has been interesting: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Laura Linney (still don't know how you called that one), Tommy Lee Jones, Demian Bichir and now De Tavira, it'd be cool to look back and wonder how that happened.
Paul B; My bad.
Always surprised when I'm reminded Donald Sutherland has never been nominated.
/3rtful is 100% right and I've no idea what Reginald is trying to say. Bring a darker skinned Brazilian here, one who is considered black here or there, and you point to a light skinned black guy here and he doesn't know how that guy is black. Come on, Reginald.
I'm a little late to the party on this one, and it's not really trivia, so much as an interesting trend, but...
From 1980-2012, only 4 out of 33 Best Picture winners had both a Supporting Actress and Supporting Actor nominee.
The last 5 years (2013-2017), every Best Picture winner has had both a Supporting Actress and Supporting Actor nominee.
Of this year's 8 Best Picture nominees, only one has both a Supporting Actress and Supporting Actor nominee.
Ladies and gentlemen, your 2018 Best Picture winner will be...
Vice
(I'm just kidding - I hope :)).
Lucky - If I remember correctly, Nathaniel called the Maggie Gyllenhaal nomination too.
gwynn1984: Good spot!
Lucky: Remember, Demian Bichir was nominated by SAG. His Oscar nomination wasn't from out of nowhere like those others were.
I've thought of another bit of trivia: this is, I'm pretty sure, the first year since 1981 in which three films have three or more acting nominations (in 1981 it was On Golden Pond, Only When I Laugh and Reds). And it's the first time it has happened to three Best Picture nominees since 1978 (Coming Home, The Deer Hunter and Heaven Can Wait).
Someone asked if anyone has ever been nominated for lip-syncing. Jamie Foxx.
Edward L; One of those three nominations for Only When I Laugh was for James Cuoco, who was also nominated for a Razzie for the same performance.
Me: Yes! I think that he and Amy Irving (in Yentl) are the only two performances nominated for both an Oscar and a Razzie.
Lol it's funny. Jack almost got nominated for Hoffa, but did get a Razzie nod (weird).