Actors Turned Producers @ the Oscars
Wednesday, March 17, 2021 at 4:00PM 
We've already posted about the records broken with this year's Oscar nominations, but one particular achievement remained unmentioned. With her double nominations for Nomadland – Best Picture and Best Actress – Frances McDormand became the first woman to earn an acting and a producing nomination for the same project. This comes after a decade when this feat became quite common for male performers. Historically, ever since the 1950s, when AMPAs started to list producers with Best Picture nods, instead of merely the studios' name, actors have been producing their movies and earning added honors for those efforts. It was in the late 1960s when someone finally scored the now common double citation from the Academy…
The first star to produce a Best Picture nominee they appeared in was Henry Fonda in 1957 for 12 Angry Men. Despite that, he was snubbed in the Best Actor category, which feels absurd when thinking about that movie's legacy and the quality of the performance. A decade later, Warren Beatty became the first person nominated for the acting/picture double via Bonnie and Clyde. That revolutionary picture was the first of many such events for Beatty who went on to receive the combination of Best Picture/Best Actor nods for three other movies, proving himself the undefeated champion of this particular Oscar stat. Despite this, he never won either a producing or acting trophy. To this day, his only Academy Award is for directing Reds (1981).
In terms of victors, Kevin Costner was the first to pull off a winning bid with 1990's Dances With Wolves. He won Best Picture but lost Best Actor to Jeremy Irons in Reversal of Fortune. Adding to that sweet deal, Costner also received a Best Director statuette for the western epic. Overall, the 1990s were a great decade for actors turned directors/producers, but only one other Hollywood mogul received the coveted double nomination in acting and picture. That was Clint Eastwood, who repeated Costner's feat with, coincidentally, another western, Unforgiven. He'd do the same feat 12 years later with Million Dollar Baby – nominated for Best Actor, winner of Best Picture, and Best Director.
As mentioned before, the 2010s were the decade where this curiosity became a trend. Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Denzel Washington, and Bradley Cooper all produced films they starred in and received double nominations for their work. The expanded Best Picture lineup made this easier, but it also feels like more and more movie stars are using their wealth and influence to produce cinema instead of depending on studio executives. Before conquering a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Pitt was already a Best Picture champion thanks to his producing gig on 12 Years a Slave. Cooper, Matt Damon, and others have also earned Best Picture nominations for productions they didn't star in, adding to the growing movement of star turned producer.
Nonetheless, all these examples have been men. The fact that AMPAS continues to privilege male-centric stories contributes to the disparity; Reese Witherspoon, in particular, could have achieved the double nomination had Wild been more of a contender in the Best Picture race. Another person that could have featured in this list is Oprah Winfrey, who was nominated for producing Selma. Unfortunately, her stellar, though tiny, supporting turn in Ava DuVernay's flick never came close to the Oscar conversation. Frances McDormand is the first woman, then, and she might become the first person, ever, to win Best Picture and an Acting trophy for the same film. No man or woman has managed that yet.
Here's a list of all the Picture + Acting combos conquered by actors turned producers. All of them received nominations in the leading acting categories. No supporting players here:
WARREN BEATTY
1967) Bonnie and Clyde
1978) Heaven Can Wait
1981) Reds – won Best Director
1991) Bugsy
KEVIN COSTNER
1990) Dances with Wolves – won Best Picture, plus Best Director
CLINT EASTWOOD
1992) Unforgiven – won Best Picture, plus Best Director
2004) Million Dollar Baby – won Best Picture, plus Best Director
BRAD PITT
2011) Moneyball
LEONARDO DICAPRIO
2013) The Wolf of Wall Street
BRADLEY COOPER
2014) American Sniper
2018) A Star Is Born
DENZEL WASHINGTON
2016) Fences
FRANCES MCDORMAND
2020) Nomadland
Are you rooting for a Frances McDormand double win?
Reader Comments (13)
Curious that Jane Fonda never received a nomination for producing Coming Home, The China Syndrome & On Golden Pond, even though it was her production company. Were the rules different back then, regarding the # of producers who could get credit?
Weird that Orson Welles isn't on this list for Citizen Kane. Oscars.og has the listed Producer as "Mercury" ... which is the company that Welles himself created and ran. But I guess technically Welles wasn't listed as producer. TMYK
Carey will win.
Broadview
According to Imdb Jane Fonda does not appear credited as Producer of those films.
James from Ames
It was in the 1950s (although I can't remember the exact year) that people credited as Producers received the nomination for Best Picture at the Oscars.
Before that it was the studio that received the nomination or the Oscar.
Part of the reason for this recent surge isn’t just that more actors are producing, but that more actors are taking credit for their producing efforts. As mentioned above, Jane Fonda produced several of her biggest hits, but isn’t credited as a producer on any of them. Likewise, anyone who knows the production histories of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and All the President’s Men knows that Ellen Burstyn and Robert Redford were, respectively, invaluable driving forces behind the productions of those films, but both declined producer credit.
This is actually part of a larger movement of artists—not just actors, but also writers and directors—taking credit for work they contribute outside their lane, so to speak. It’s unusual, for example, for a directing nominee these days to not have also been given credit for producing or writing their nominated film, and often both. This wasn’t the case even a decade ago. This doesn’t mean that directors didn’t have as big a hand in producing their films or crafting their scripts, but that they didn’t also pursue credit for it.
Dustin Hoffman still laments that he didn’t accept Benton’s offer of a screenplay credit for Kramer vs. Kramer.
Streep is producing her next movie... so I have read.
It is far more common to see individuals win Emmys as both an actor and a producer of a program.
2006 Kiefer Sutherland, 24
2007 Robert Duvall, Broken Trial
2008 Tina Fey, 30 Rock
2014 Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad
2015 Frances McDormand, Olive Kitteridge
2017 Nicole Kidman, Big Little Lies
2017 Elisabeth Moss, The Handmaid's Tale
2019 Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag
2020 Eugene Levy, Schitt's Creek
2020 Dan Levy, Schitt's Creek
And , , ,
2015 Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
2016 Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
2017 Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
YES
@rdf If Streep gets nominated for both producing and acting, she'll be bucking a trend: of her 21 nominations, a mere 4 were for Best Picture nominees. Before The Post (nominated for Picture, Actress and nothing else!) it had been 32 years since she'd been nominated in a Best Picture nominee (Out of Africa). The Academy likes Meryl Streep much more than it likes Meryl Streep movies!
"Nonetheless, all these examples have been men. The fact that AMPAS continues to privilege male-centric stories contributes to the disparity; Reese Witherspoon, in particular, could have achieved the double nomination had Wild been more of a contender in the Best Picture race. Another person that could have featured in this list is Oprah Winfrey, who was nominated for producing Selma."
Barbra Streisand produced THE PRINCE OF TIDES. It received a Best Picture nomination and several others as well (Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, etc., for a total of 7 nominations). So it seems odd that she isn't referenced in this paragraph: Streisand, in particular, could have achieved the double nomination had she been run in the Supporting Actress category (which wasn't particularly strong that year); it certainly wouldn't have been as big of a category fraud as Judas & The Black Messiah, since Streisand wasn't the titular lead of the film). That said, I think she deserved to be on this list for YENTL, since that Streisand film (which she produced and directed) was deserving of nominations both for Film and Actress (I would have swapped out THE DRESSER and Jane Alexander).
Another way to look at this: no one nominated as an actor and a producer for the same film has ever won for acting in that film. This reminds me of the rarity of self-directed acting performances that win an Oscar: only Laurence Olivier and Roberto Benigni have done it (and neither won Director).
I would be surprised if Frances McDormand won in both categories because the Academy has a steady track record of spreading the wealth when it comes to nominated actors who are also nominated in other categories. For example, Matt Damon, Emma Thompson, and Billy Bob Thornton all double-dipped in acting and writing, but each only won for writing.
By the way, I wouldn't expect Sacha Baron Cohen or Leslie Odom Jr. to win 2 awards in the same night either.
A lot of actors are just throwing their names in there and scoring an extra nod.
I though Margot Robbie was going to be nominated for Promising Young Woman.