The 25 Oldest Men Ever Nominated for Best Actor

by Nathaniel R

John Wayne just misses the list. Denzel almost double dips. And Hopkins tops the list setting a new recordWe did a "Youngest Best Actor" list a few years back so we thought we should balance it out with their counterparts given the return of Sir Anthony Hopkins this year at 83 years of age with The Father. He makes history in the process as the oldest nominee ever in this category. As we all know Oscar likes some years on his men (as opposed to how he feels about women) but that doesn't mean the golden years. Oscar loves men to be in their late 30s through mid 50s (whereas with women they prefer late 20s through mid 40s) but ageism  works against men, too. Just not as severely as it does against women. The roles still dry up at a certain age... though perhaps that's more on filmmakers and studios than the Oscars themselves. 

LIST HAS BEEN UPDATED WITH MINOR CORRECTIONS. (04/02). And a surprising piece of trivia about this list. Only one of the top 25 oldest nominees in this category actually won the Oscar. Not a strong success rate for senior men. Oscar likes to bid them farewell but doesn't feel the need to send them off with the statue (or a second statue)...

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The Furniture: Wallpaper and Wet Wood in 'The Grey Fox'

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Yesterday would have been the 100th birthday of Richard Farnsworth. You might have seen some tributes on Twitter, most of them recalling Farnsworth’s Oscar-nominated performance in David Lynch’s The Straight Story - the actor’s last film. Today I’d like to turn to something earlier, a gorgeous Canadian Western called The Grey Fox. 

It’s the kind of movie that feels undiscovered even as you’re watching it - even now that it’s been beautifully restored and rereleased by Kino Lorber. It’s not that it was ignored upon release, really; Farnsworth got a Best Actor - Drama nomination at the Golden Globes and it swept the Genie Awards. But its quiet, slow, rainy charm lends it an air of the forgotten, as if it had been left on a shelf for a century. 

The subject helps: the last years of the last notorious stagecoach robber in the West, released into the 20th century like a ghost...

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Showbiz History: Richard Farnsworth, The Women, Shirley Maclaine's daughter and more

8 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history...

1920 Richard Farnsworth, the very talented actor (Comes a Horseman, The Grey Fox), who started in film as a stuntman, was born on this day 100 years ago in Los Angeles. Happy Farnsworth Centennial.  Sadly he died 20 years ago, shortly after delivering his tremendously moving Oscar-nominated performancee in The Straight Story...

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