by Ben Miller
Power couple Noah and Greta moving up the "Directed Actors to Oscar Nominations" charts
The Oscars are so stat heavy, it’s difficult to keep up with the information. Especially since each season there's yet more of it. One of the stats that gets perpetually lost in the noise is the complex area of 'acting nominations by director'. If you’ve read my previous piece last year, I am somewhat of an expert in this field, and this year’s set of nominees and winners provides some interesting stats.
First Timers
With nominations for Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Laura Dern, Noah Baumbach does what Guillermo Del Toro did with Shape of Water and Martin McDonagh did with Three Billboards, going from zero to three acting nominations from his filmography in one year. A few directors have gone from zero to four, including but not limited to...
John Patrick Shanley in 2008 with Doubt, James L. Brooks in 1983 with Terms of Endearment, and Mike Nichols in 1966 with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Joseph L. Mankiewicz went from zero to five in 1950 with All About Eve but he's still the only director to start that strong with Oscar's acting branch.
With Laura Dern’s Best Supporting Actress trophy, Baumbach also joins a group of 20 other directors with one win from just three acting nominations. That list includes Lanthimos (The Favourite), and Rob Reiner (Misery, A Few Good Men, Ghosts of Mississsippi).
Kasi Lemmons talking to her cast on the set of "Harriet"
With Harriet's nomination for Cynthia Erivo, Kasi Lemmons joins a slew of 18 talented female directors with a sole nomination, including Catherine Hardwicke, Julie Taymor, Lina Wertmuller, Nora Ephron and Sofia Coppola.
Taika Waititi joins a list of 229 other directors who have had a single acting nomination under their direction.
With victories by Zellweger and Phoenix, Rupert Goold and Todd Phillips joins 32 other directors who have only guided one actor to a nominatino but it led to a victory. That list includesfilmmakers like Patty Jenkins (Monster), Andrew Davis (The Fugitive), Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight), Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential), and Roberto Benigni (Life is Beautiful).
Climbing the List
Pedro Almodovar always pulls great performances from his actors, but unless his lead is an international movie star, they don’t get Oscar nominations. Luckily for him, Antonio Banderas is a major star so he now has led two actors to nominations.
The Two Popes director Fernando Meirelles just joined the three-time list with nominations for Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins. Meirelles is also on that list Baumbach just joined with directors who have led three actors to nominations with one of them winning (Meirelles only previous directing of a nominee was Rachel Weisz for The Constant Gardener)
With nominations for Charlize Theron and Margot Robbie, Bombshell director Jay Roach joins a group of 64 directors with three nominated performances (Roach previously directed Bryan Cranston in Trumbo). Of those 64 directors, 36 of them have not had a win. Marielle Heller also joins that list with Tom Hanks' Supporting Actor nomination for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (she previously directed two actors to nominations in Can You Ever Forgive Me?).
Speaking of Heller, all three of the nominations have been for portraying real people. With her third this year, Heller joins Jane Campion, Niki Caro and Randa Haines in a tie for third-place among nominations from female directors.
Who is tied for first?
Barbra Streisand and Greta Gerwig. The latter picked up numbers three and four this year from Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh. Gerwig has only directed two films and has a good 40+ years to claim the all-time record solely for herself. Of Gerwig’s four nominated performances, both have been a pair of Best Actress/Best Supporting Actresses in which the actresses play family members.
One other interesting note: of the 542 directors who have directed an acting nomination, only 30 are women. Of those women, only four directors have only directed men to nominations. Christine Edzard, Lina Wertmuller, Sofia Coppola and Penny Marshall have never directed a woman to a nomination. The other 26 have at least once. Also, only once has a woman directed a man to an Oscar win: Valerie Faris co-directed Alan Arkin to a Best Supporting Actor win for 2006's Little Miss Sunshine.
Three Old-Timers
Quentin Tarantino has had a steady habit of guiding actors to nominations since Pulp Fiction (1994). Despite only directing ten films, nominations for Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio bring his total to nine nominated performances. He is now tied for 35th of all-time with a slew of famous men including Robert Wise, Victor Fleming, Otto Preminger, Hitchcock and Paul Thomas Anderson. The nomination for Pitt marks the fifth time Tarantino has had an actor nominated for Best Supporting Actor (if you count just that category he's #5 of all time in regards to directing actors to nominations).
The win for Pitt brings Tarantino’s Best Supporting Actor wins to three, where he is tied with Elia Kazan, John Ford and Clint Eastwood for second place. They all still trail William Wyler, in that category, who led five men to Best Supporting Actor trophies.
The surprise nomination for Kathy Bates moved Clint Eastwood into a tie for 13th in terms of all-time nominations with 14. Eastwood has one of the best win-to-nomination percentages for any director with five wins, good for 35.7% of the nominated roles. Among directors with more than 10 nominations, only Wyler, Kazan, Woody Allen, Ford, Hal Ashby and James L. Brooks have higher percentages. The five Eastwood victories are spread across Best Actor, Actress and Supporting Actor.
With two acting nominations for The Irishman, Martin Scorsese moves into a tie for second place of all-time with Elia Kazan; they've each directed actors to 24 nominations.
Scorsese's films have won five Oscars for acting, twice in Best Actor and once each in the other categories. Best Actress is Scorsese’s least prolific acting category, with only two nominations (Sharon Stone in Casino and Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore), while Best Actor and Supporting Actor are the most frequent (7 nominees in each category). Curiously, despite the media complaints about the lack of women in his movies, Best Supporting Actress is the category where he's directed the most nominees, with eight over the years. In the Best Supporting Actress category, considered alone, he's tied for third of all time with Kazan and Nichols, but trails Woody Allen (10) and Wyler (12).
Unlike Tarantino, Scorsese has a paltry win-to-nomination percentage of 20.8%. Still, that's a much better percentage than his peers high up in the "directed the most acting nominations" ranks. Among those directors with 15 or more nominations for their films, Kramer, Nichols and George Stevens have only two wins. Stevens’ two wins come from 19 nominations, which is the worst percentage among the 29 directors with more than 10 nominations.
What’s it going to take for Scorsese to overtake Wyler's impressive records? Probably a cure for aging. While Scorsese has 24 nominations and could take second place by himself, Wyler is sitting pretty on this statistical throne with no rivals given those 36 acting nominations.