New Oscar Records!
Monday, April 26, 2021 at 9:32AM Refresh your screen as we'll add to this list as we discover things. And we trust that you'll let us know if we got anything wrong.
PICTURE
• Chloe Zhao is the third Asian to win Best Picture and the first of Chinese descent. (The only previous Asian winners were Koreans, Bong Joon-Ho and Kwak Sin-Ae, both for Parasite)
DIRECTOR
• Chloe Zhao is the first woman of color to be nominated for AND to win Best Director. (She is the third Asian to win Best Director following Ang Lee, twice, and Bong Joon-ho last year). She is the 7th woman to receive a nomination in this category after Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow (the only previous female winner), Greta Gerwig, and Emerald Fennell. Interestingly enough all but one of those women have Oscars (sorry Greta Gerwig), most of those in the Best Original Screenplay category...
ACTRESSES
• With her third win following Fargo and Three Billboards, Nomadland's Frances McDormand is now the second biggest winner of Best Actress of all time, trailing only Katharine Hepburn who won 4 times in her career. McDormand was previously in an enormous tie for second place with 12 other two-time winners and now she has second place all to herself.
Frances McDormand also joins Hilary Swank, Sally Field, Luise Rainer, and Vivien Leigh in this weird factoid: they're the only multiple Best Actress winners who never lost a Best Actress prize they were nominated for.
• Youn Yuh-jung is the second Asian woman to win an acting Oscar. The only previous was Miyoshi Umeki for Sayonara (1957)
• Glenn Close is now tied with Peter O'Toole as Oscar's biggest acting 'loser'. They were both nominated 8 times competitively without ever winning (Peter O'Toole received an Honorary Oscar but Glenn so far has not). In second place is Richard Burton with 7 nominations. In third place are Amy Adams, Deborah Kerr (Honorary Oscar presented by Glenn Close herself!), and Thelma Ritter who were all nominated 6 times without winning.
ACTORS
• Sir Anthony Hopkins is now the oldest acting winner of all time in any of the four categories at the age of 83 and obviously by extension the oldest Best Actor winner (the previous record in the latter regard was held by Henry Fonda who won at 76 for On Golden Pond.)
• Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah) is the first Black British actor to win an Oscar. Most of the black nominees in the past have been African-Americans. He's also the first Black British person to receive multiple acting nominations having previously been up for Get Out.
• Kaluuya is also the first regular cast member of the British series Skins to win an Oscar. Dev Patel was also nominated and a few other performers from that British series have gone on to big film and TV careers. (Olivia Colman also appeared on Skins before winnig an Oscar but she was only in one episode.)
CRAFT AWARDS
• Costume Designer Ann Roth is now the oldest person to win in a visual craft category at 89. She's the second oldest winner of all time in any category, just slightly younger than James Ivory was when he won Adapted Screenplay for Call Me By Your Name also at 89 years of age.
• With his win for Soul, Pete Docter breaks the previous five way tie for "most wins" in Best Animated Feature. He now has three, making him the clear leader in the category. He leaves Brad Bird, Jonas Rivera, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich tied for second place (with two wins each.) He also holds the record for most nominations in this category with four.
• Mia Neal and Jameika Wilson are the first black people to win Best Makeup and Hairstyling. They were also the first ever nominated in that category. They mentioned that 'glass ceiling' in their acceptance speech. (Sergio Lopez-Rivera, from Spain, shared the award with them)
• With his win for Best Film Editing, Sound of Metal's Mikkel E.G. Nielsen is the first Nordic winner in this category. He's from Denmark.
• Sound of Metal's re-recording mixer Jaime Baksht is the first Latinx person to win in Sound. He's from Mexico. (He shared the award with Nicolas Becker, Michelle Couttolenc, Carlos Cortes Navarrete, Phillip Bladh
• Travon Free is the first black winner of Live Action Short Film with Two Distant Strangers, an award he shared with his co-director Martin Desmond Roe.
• With 12 nominations and another loss, Diane Warren extends her reign as the most nominated songwriter never to have won an Oscar. Her nearest rival in "always losing" is a VERY distant second. That would be the songwriter Mack David (1912-1993) who was nominated 8 times including for "Bibbidy-Bobbidi-Boo" from Cinderella and the title song from Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte.
• With her win for Best Original Song H.E.R. (Judas and the Black Messiah) is now the youngest living Oscar winner. She was born in 1997 and is 23 years old at the time of this writing. (The youngest living nominee is Quvenzhané Wallis from Beasts of the Southern Wild, who is 17 years old currently.)
NOT A RECORD BUT JUST INTERESTING
• All four of the acting winners this year were unusual ages for their prizes. Anthony Hopkins is the oldest Best Actor winner of all time, Frances McDormand, the 3rd oldest Best Actress winner of all time, Youn Yuh-jung the 3rd oldest Supporting Actress winner, and Daniel Kaluuya the 7th youngest Best Supporting Actor winner
• Nomadland is the first film since Million Dollar Baby (2004) to win the combo of Best Actress / Best Picture which only happens about once a decade (there have been 12 in total from 93 years of history)
• Mank won more Oscars (2) than Citizen Kane (1) which it is about.
• Best Picture champs used to win more Oscars but the days of sweeps or near-sweeps seem long gone. We think this is good news as longtime proponents of spreading the wealth since one film is rarely the best of everything in a given year. Nomadland continues the 21st century tradition of Best Picture winning 4 or fewer Oscars. Here are the past 21 years...
NOMADLAND (2020) - 3
PARASITE (2019) - 4
GREEN BOOK (2018) - 3
THE SHAPE OF WATER (2017) - 4
MOONLIGHT (2016) - 3
SPOTLIGHT (2015) - 2
BIRDMAN (2014) - 4
12 YEARS A SLAVE (2013) - 3
ARGO (2012) - 3
THE ARTIST (2011) -5
THE KING'S SPEECH (2010) - 4
THE HURT LOCKER (2009) - 6
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (2008) - 8
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007) - 4
THE DEPARTED (2006) - 4
CRASH (2005) - 3
MILLION DOLLAR BABY (2004) - 4
LORD OF THE RINGS: FELLOWSHIP OF THE KING (2003) - 11
CHICAGO (2002) -6
A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001) - 4
GLADIATOR (2000) - 5
Awards Yet To Be Broken
Lil Rel Howery joked that the 93rd Oscars were the "blackest" ever. But there are still some milestones to go in Hollywood's inclusiveness and racial diversity.
Only categories remaining that have never been won by a Black person
Cinematography, Editing, Director, International Feature, and Visual Effects
Only categories remaining that have never been won by an Asian person
Actress and Adapted Screenplay
Only categories remaining that have never been won by a Latinx person
Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Costume Design, Visual Effects, Documentary Feature, Animated Feature
Reader Comments (73)
@Sam: I see no "Glennfan cult" in this thread. I see one person who gave that opinion.
Frances McDorland is the first actress or actor to win Picture and Acting Oscars for the same film.
I wonder if Encanto wins Best Animated Feature next year could Charise Castro Smith be first Latina to win since she is a co-director, or does it have to be that you have the main director credit? There are two other people credited just as director for the film.
I love that Frances McDormand has three lead actress nominations, winning all of them; and three supporting actress nominations, losing all of them. No one else has anything like that!
J -- but i didn't ? unless i'm confused about what you're referring to. I mentioned that Jaime was the first Latinx to win in Best Sound (and he's from Mexico)
Chinoserie -- i'll admit i'm confused about how they divvy up the animated feature Oscars. BRAVE had three listed directors but only two of them won the animated feature Oscar (indicating it's fine for co-directors ...until it's not?) but COCO and SOUL both had co-directors who did not win the prize... not sure what that's about. In both cases it's really bad optics since the co-directors in both of the latter cases were people from the ethnicity/culture being portrayed and yet they went Oscarless.
Frances McDormand also has the distinction of winning those 3 Oscars for 3 movies that were nominated for Best Picture. Not even Hepburn can claim that. And from the 2-time winner club, only Sally Field, Vivien Leigh and Louise Reiner have that distinction.
Fuck all of you for saying that Glenn has no chance ever.
At least she lost to someone deserving now, not Othiefia Stoleman ugly ass.
@Fadhil why do you hate Colman? :'( Big Glenn fan and I love her.
I do think once Glenn turns 80, the Academy has to give her the honorary if she still doesn't have a competitive win.
Joe G. that is amazing! In 93 years only 1 woman (Halle Berry) of color has won Best Actress.
@Nathaniel - My bad, so sorry! Thanks for not mixing them :)
gio - 3 of Hepburn's wins also came from Best Picture nominees (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter, On Golden Pond). She's 3 for 4, but her 3 equal Frances McDormand's
@Amy - What I meant was that all her wins had a corresponding best picture nomination. So, Hepburn's wins are not all for best picture nominees, missing. one out of four.
And all of Sally. Field's, Louise Rainer and Vivien Leigh's wins also had a corresponding best picture nominations/ wins
Richter Scale - Yes. I wanted to say ONLY rsrsrs
"McDormand is the only woman to win for both acting and producing." And she's also the first person of any gender to win acting and producing for the SAME film. The other people who have both acting and producing Oscars (Michael Douglas, George Clooney, Brad Pitt) won them for different films.
It's utterly gratifying to read that Frances McDormand has dethroned Meryl Streep as Queen of Hollywood. So gratifying!
Others have repeated my early trivia post from Sunday night (H.E.R. as the youngest winner by birth year, Frances McDormand 3/3 as a lead and 0/3 as supporting, etc.) so here's some new stuff.
Anthony Hopkins won for playing a character named Anthony. I believe the only three previous winners to do the same are Anne Bancroft (as Annie Sullivan), George C. Scott (as George Patton), and Daniel Day-Lewis (as Daniel Plainview). Frances McDormand comes close, playing a character named Fern with an unknown last name that starts M-C-D. Then there's Diane Keaton, who is nicknamed Annie and was born with the last name Hall.
Daniel Kaluuya is the third actor to have multiple nominated performances directed by an African-American (Jordan Peele, Shaka King). He joins Denzel Washington (Spike Lee, Antoine Fuqua, himself) and Viola Davis (Denzel Washington, George C. Wolfe). Each has won for one of those nominations.
Speaking of Denzel, he is no longer the only African-American to be directed by an African-American to an acting nomination and also direct another African-American to an acting nomination. Regina King joins him.
Somebody please give Glennfan cult an obsession target for thier life after oscar, so they don't have to come after all the deserving and busy working Oscar winning actresses.
Nathaniel, regarding the Animated Feature director issue with Encanto. You mentioned Soul’s co-director not nominated, I red this from Awardswatch Final predictions page for Animated Feature
“The Oscar rules prohibit co-directors aka people brought on after a project has started, to earn that nomination”
So maybe that’s the issue, the co-directors weren’t there form the start with other films where they weren’t nominated. But I don’t know what the case is with Castro Smith and Encanto.
@Sam
Sorry you think one rude person means there is a "cult." Most Glenn fans are happy for the winners.
It's because i'm like totally fetch you guys, er whateva.
Gilbert it's so strange right? I feel like Sam and leon must be conflating comment sections or social media that they read elsewhere because what they state is barely even being said by lone commenters here most the time the get incensed.
Daniel Kaluuya winning ends Eddie Redmayne's six-year run as the youngest living male to have an acting Oscar. Jennifer Lawrence is at 9 years and counting on the female side and overall (she is 18 months younger than Kaluuya).