The New Oscar Actor Hierarchy - Anthony & Denzel Rising

by Nathaniel R

We last updated the male version of this list (see the actress list here) just after Leonardo DiCaprio was finally crowned for The Revenant (2015) but it's time for some adjustments. What follows is a list of Oscar's 34 All Time Favorite Actors. The only brand new addition to the list is Anthony Hopkins who enters the exclusive club due to two new consecutive nominations (including this year's bid The Father) significantly changing his previous 4/1 record. But there are other big changes. Actors who improved their standing since the last update five seasons ago are Denzel Washington (up several notches and a tier due to Fences and Roman Israel Esq), Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio (up a handful of notches each due to recent nominations), Jeff Bridges and Al Pacino (up a couple of notches each), and Daniel Day Lewis (up a tier with that Phantom Thread nomination but the same numeric placement -- the higher up you go the harder it is to rise much after all). A handful of other men are getting very close to joining this club after recent Oscar favor, too.

This royal club is restricted to men with 5 or more nominations. Only the acting statistics are accounted for so George Clooney, for example, is not (yet) ranked...

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Actors Turned Producers @ the Oscars

by Cláudio Alves

We've already posted about many records broken with this year's Oscar nominations, but one particular achievement remained unmentioned. With her double nominations for Nomadland – for Best Picture and Best Actress – Frances McDormand became the first woman to earn an acting and a Best Picture nomination for the same project. This comes after a decade when this feat became incredibly 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. Still, it was only in the late 60s that someone scored the elusive double citation by the Academy…

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The New Oscar Actress Hierarchy - Glenn & Frances Rising

by Nathaniel R 

We thought it would be fun to revise the Oscar Acting Hierarchy we last shared when Julianne Moore FINALLY won an Oscar six years back. What follows is a List of Oscar's 36 All Time Favorite Actresses... (you can see the corresponding actor list here) restricted to women with 5 or more nominations (though 4 nominations will get you in the list if you've won twice). Only the acting statistics are accounted for so Emma Thompson, for example, is not ranked. If you included her screenplay win she would have made the list. If you counted non-acting nominations, you'd also see Shirley Maclaine jump a rank as she was nominated for documentary once. Now that virtually every major star is also a producer these types of extra stats will only get murkier so we're opting not to include them and focusing only on what the Academy thinks of them as actors.

🔺 = the actress has moved up the chart or strengthened her placement since the last publication of this list (in February 2015). An explanation of how the rank was determined is at the end of the post. 

OSCAR'S HOLY TRINITY 
And 33 More Royals 

 

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New Oscar Records!

Refresh your screen for updates as this post is in progress. It's always fun to look at new records or trivia after nominations. So let's go! 

 ACTING

• Anthony Hopkins is now the Oldest Best Actor nominee ever at 83 years of age and the first octogenarian ever nominated in leading actor. Previously the oldest nominee record in the category was held by Richard Farnsworth in The Straight Story (1999) who was 78.

• Chadwick Boseman becomes the first black actor to be nominated posthumously.

• Maria Bakalova is the first Bulgarian actor ever nominated.

• Riz Ahmed is the first actor of Pakistani descent to ever be nominated as well as the first Muslim actor nominated in the lead category...

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2 days til Oscar nominations - The rarity of father/daughter Oscar noms

by Nathaniel R

The final Oscar nomination predictions are up if you're just joining us. But if you've already discussed those, here's another discussion prompt with two as the magical number. Looking through the Oscar probabilities we don't have many familial pairs in the acting category competition this time like siblings or father/sons or mother/child etcetera.  What we do have is not one but three pairs of onscreen father & daughter teams, one only spiritually but it counts:

• Anthony Hopkins & Olivia Colman - The Father
• Sacha Baron Cohen & Maria Bakalova - Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
• Tom Hanks & Helena Zengel - News of the World

How often are father/daughter onscreen teams nominated? Turns out quite rarely...

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