Bradley & Gaga at the beginning of their run for "A Star is Born"by Nathaniel R
With the 20 acting nominations this year coming from only 11 films this year we got to wondering how frequently that happens. The Favourite, Vice, and A Star is Born all received 3 acting nods each. Green Book and Roma received doubles, though of course doubles happen frequently. But how often do three acting noms from three separate films happen in a single year? And is this anything like a record? This was somewhat tough to investigate but investigate we did.
MOST NOMINATIONS EVER FOR ACTING FROM A SINGLE FILM
Before we get to individual years which had a small pool of films dominating the acting prizes, let's look at the films that hold the record for nominations: It's an nine-way tie for the record with the following films receiving 5 acting nominations each...
Monty & Frank in "From Here to Eternity"
- Mrs Miniver (1942) 2 leads, 3 supporting
- All About Eve (1950) 2 leads, 3 supporting
- From Here to Eternity (1953) 3 leads, 2 supporting
- On the Waterfront (1954) 1 lead, 4 supporting
- Peyton Place (1957) 1 lead, 4 supporting
- Tom Jones (1963) 1 lead, 4 supporting
- Bonnie & Clyde (1967) 2 leads, 3 supporting
- The Godfather Pt II (1974) 1 lead, 4 supporting
- Network (1976) 3 leads, 2 supporting *tied for most acting wins ever with A Streetcar Named Desire. Each took 3 wins*
What's telling about this list is that it ends abruptly in 1976. Our suspicion as to why that is is three-fold: 1) Rampant Category Fraud began to remove the possibility of multiple leading nominations from the same film. 2) The proliferation of precursor awards started focusing Oscar voters on a fewer and fewer people in each category each year and 3) there are far more movies released in a year now than there used to be, so the conversation goes wider... at least at first.
Bale, Adams, and Cooper in "American Hustle"
The runner up position for most acting nominations from a film is way too long to list with 28 films receiving 4 acting nominations, most recently with two consecutive David O. Russell films (Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle) in 2012 and 2013.
But how often do we see three films hogging the acting nominations as we've seen this year? Here are the years wherein a greedy trio really hogged the acting honors, even moreso than this year.
YEARS WHERE THREE MOVIES HOGGED 50% OR MORE OF THE ACTING NOMINATIONS
(do please let us know if we left a key year out. Again this was painstaking to research.)
Curtis & Poitier, both nominated in Best Actor for "The Defiant Ones"
1958 Three movies The Defiant Ones, Separate Tables, and Some Came Running accounted for 10 of the 20 nominations or 50%. Only 11 movies were nominated for acting prizes (same as this year but with slightly more dominance from the big three.)
1967 Three movies Bonnie & Clyde, The Graduate, and Guess Who's Coming To Dinner? accounted for 12 (!) of the 20 nominations, or a full 60% which we believe is the record for most dominant threesome in acting category history. Only 10 films in total were nominated for any acting prizes.
Redgrave and Fonda in "Julia"
1977 Three movies Julia, Turning Point, and The Goodbye Girl accounted for 11 of the 20 nominations or 55%. Only 10 films were nominated for any acting prizes.
1978 Three movies The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, and Heaven Can Wait accounted for 10 of the 20 nominations or 50% but 12 movies were nominated for acting prizes.
1981 Three movies Reds, On Golden Pond, and Only When I Laugh accounted for 10 of the 20 nominations or 50%. Only 9 films were nominated for acting prizes since there were a few doubles, too. We believe this is the record for least amount of films nominated for acting in a single year.
The cast of "Chicago" were reunited 10 years later at the Oscars
2002 Three movies Chicago, The Hours, and Adaptation accounted for 10 of the 20 nominations or 50% but 12 movies were nominated for acting prizes.
2012 Three movies Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, and The Master accounted for 10 of the 20 nominations or 50% but 12 movies in total were nominated for acting prizes.
YEARS WHERE THE MOST MOVIES WERE NOMINATED FOR ACTING
Tom Wilkinson and George Clooney in "Michael Clayton"
We believe that it's 2007. Thanks for your comments to help us decipher this. The norm seems to be around 14 films nominated for the 20 acting categories but 2007 had an incredible 18 films nominated for acting prizes with only Michael Clayton receiving multiple nominations. The runner up, we believe, is 1992 in which 17 films received acting nominations with no triple nominees but a few films getting doubles (Howards End, The Crying Game and Unforgiven). Will we ever see a 20 film year? We can dream!