Random Oscar Facts
If you know me, you know I love the Oscars. I don’t think they are the end all be all for measuring films/actors/etc., but I do think they’re incredibly fun to read about, research, and enjoy in the present. In this article, I’m just going to share some of the fun facts I’ve learned in my readings. Maybe you’ll get a kick out of these like I did or maybe you don’t care. Who knows.
The most nominations for a film is 14 and is a three-way tie between ‘All About Eve,’ ‘Titanic,’ & ‘La La Land.’ While the most wins is 11 and is also a three way tie between ‘Ben-Hur’ (won 11/12 nominations), ‘Titanic’ (11/14 nominations), and ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King’ (a perfect 11/11 nominations).
The most Oscars won by an individual is 22 by Mr. Walt Disney and the most by a living individual is Dennis Muren, a special effects artist who has worked on films and franchises like ‘E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,’ ‘Jurassic Park,’ ‘Indiana Jones,’ & ‘Star Wars’ who has been awarded 9, however 3 of these were special achievement awards, not competitive ones. If you eliminate these the most by a living individual is composer Alan Menken’s 8. The most total wins by a woman is costume designer Edith Head with 8. Walt Disney won his 22 awards on a record 59(!) nominations, also setting the records for most wins & nominations in a single year with 6 nominations & 4 wins in 1954. The most nominations by a living person is John Williams’s 54.
The most awards won for acting is Katharine Hepburn’s 4, all of which she won in the Best Lead Actress category for films ‘Morning Glory,’ ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?,’ ‘The Lion is Winter,’ & ‘On Golden Pond.’ The first and last of which came out in 1934 & 1982, respectively. The most awards for an actor is 3, tied between Walter Brennan (3 Supp.), Daniel Day-Lewis (3 Lead), & Jack Nicholson (2 Lead, 1 Supp.).
The most acting nominations received by an individual is Meryl Streep’s 21 and the most by a male actor is Jack Nicholson’s 12. Peter O’Toole & Glenn Close share the record for most nominations (8) without a win, and Geraldine Page & Al Pacino share the record for most nominations before their first win (8). The longest gap between a first and second nomination is Judd Hirsch’s 42-year gap between ‘Ordinary People’ & ‘The Fabelmans,’ though the longest gap between a first and last nomination is Robert De Niro’s 49-year gap between ‘The Godfather Part II’ and ‘Killers of the Flower Moon.’ The actor with the most posthumous nominations is James Dean with 2.
The most awards won for directing is John Ford’s 4 for ‘The Informer,’ ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ ‘How Green Was My Valley,’ and ‘The Quiet Man.’
The country that has won the most awards for International Feature Film is Italy’s 14 and the most nominations is France’s 41. The most nominations without a win is Israel’s 10.
No actor has ever won Best Actor for their film debut but 3 (Harold Russell, Timothy Hutton, & Haing S. Ngor) won Best Supporting Actor in their debut roles. 4 actresses (Shirley Booth, Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand, & Marlee Matlin) have won Best Actress in their film debuts and 9 have won for Best Supporting Actress. 6 directors have won in their debut, the 2 most recent being Kevin Costner for 1990’s ‘Dances with Wolves’ and Sam Mendes for 1999’s ‘American Beauty.’
5 films have won ‘The Big Five’ which means they won Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, & Original/Adapted Screenplay. Those films are ‘It Happened One Night,’ ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ & ‘The Silence of the Lambs.’
John Ford, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, & Alejandro G. Iñárritu are the only directors to win back-to-back Best Director awards. Prior to 1980, 4 actors won back-to-back awards, Spencer Tracy (Actor), Jason Robards (Supp. Actor), Luise Rainer (Actress), & Katharine Hepburn (Actress). The only person to win back to back acting awards since 1980 is Tom Hanks for 1993’s ‘Philadelphia’ and 1994’s ‘Forrest Gump.’
The youngest winner of an acting Oscar was 10-year old Tatum O’Neal (Supp. Actress) for ‘Paper Moon’ (1973), while the youngest nominee was 8-year old Justin Henry (Supp. Actor) for ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ (1979). The youngest nominee for Best Actor was 9-year old Jackie Cooper for ‘Skippy’ (1931) and the youngest winner was 29-year old Adrien Brody for ‘The Pianist’ (2002). The youngest Best Actress winner was 21-year old Marlee Matlin for ‘Children of a Lesser God’ (1986) and the youngest nominee was 9-year old Quvenzhané Wallis for ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ (2012).
The youngest ever Oscar winner was 6-year old Shirley Temple who won the non-competitve Academy Juvenile Award. The youngest ever 2x Oscar winner is Billie Eilish who won twice in the Best Original Song category.
The youngest person to win an Oscar for writing is Ben Affleck who was at age 25 for ‘Good Will Hunting’ and the youngest to win for directing is Damien Chazelle who won at age 32 for ‘La La Land.’ John Singleton was the youngest Best Director nominee, when he was nominated at age 24 for ‘Boyz n the Hood.’
Anthony Hopkins became the oldest winner of an acting award in 2020 for ‘The Father’ at age 83, while the oldest nominee was Christopher Plummer at age 88 for ‘All the Money in the World.’ Clint Eastwood is the oldest Best Director winner when he won at age 74 for ‘Million Dollar Baby’ and Martin Scorsese became the oldest nominee this year at age 81 for ‘Killers of the Flower Moon.’
John Williams became the oldest ever nominee this year at age 91 for Best Original Score for ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,’ though the oldest winner is James Ivory (age 81 at the time) for Best Adapted Screenplay, ‘Call Me By Your Name.’ John Williams also holds the record for being nominated in the most decades, being nominated in every decade from the 1960s-2020s.
The film that won the most awards without winning Best Picture is ‘Cabaret’ with 8, and the two films that had the most nominations without a single win are ‘The Turning Point’ & ‘The Color Purple,’ with 11 nominations each.
Several films and their remakes have both been nominated for Best Picture and these include 1934 & 1963’s ‘Cleopatra,’ 1935 & 2012’s ‘Les Misérables,’ 1937 & 2018’s ‘A Star is Born,’ 1933 & 2019’s ‘Little Women,’ & 1930 & 2022’s ‘All Quiet on the Western Front.’ The story of Romeo & Juliet has also been adapted and nominated several times including 1936 & 1968’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ & 1961 & 2021’s ‘West Side Story,’ with 1998’s ‘Shakespeare in Love’ being based on the production of the story of Romeo & Juliet.
3 animated films have been nominated for Best Picture and they are ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ‘Up,’ & ‘Toy Story 3.’ 3 Best Picture winners also won the Palme d’Or: ‘The Lost Weekend,’ ‘Marty,’ and most recently, ‘Parasite.’
9 different movies have had 5 actors receive nominations, including: ‘All About Eve,’ ‘On the Waterfront,’ ‘Bonnie and Clyde,’ ‘The Godfather Part II,’ and ‘Network.’ 3 films have received 3 acting awards: ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ ‘Network,’ and ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once.’
Barry Fitzgerald holds the record for being the only actor to have two nominations (Best Actor & Best Supporting Actor) for the same role as Father Fitzgibbon in ‘Going My Way,’ and he won Best Supporting Actor. While Lee Marvin is the sole holder of the achievment of winning an Oscar (Best Actor) for playing two roles in a film, ‘Cat Ballou.’ Peter Sellers is the only person to have been nominated for playing three roles in a single film, ‘Dr. Strangelove.’
Two people have won both an Oscar and Nobel Prize, George Bernard Shaw, who won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature and Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar in 1938 for ‘Pygmalion, & Bob Dylan, who won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature and Best Original Song Oscar in 2000 for ‘Things Have Changed’ from the film, ‘Wonder Boys.’
The only person who has won an Olympic Medal & Oscar is Kobe Bryant who won an Oscar in 2017 for Best Animated Short for ‘Dear Basketball’ and won gold medals in basketball in 2008 & 2012.
The only person to win an Oscar for both acting & songwriting is Barbra Streisand for ‘Funny Girl’ & ‘A Star is Born,’ respectively. The only person to win for both acting & writing is Emma Thompson for ‘Howards End’ & ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ respectively. The only person nominated for acting, writing, directing, and producing for one film is Warren Beatty for both ‘Heaven Can Wait’ & ‘Reds,’ however if producers had always been the nominees of Best Picture (used to be the studio), Orson Welles would also have this honor for ‘Citizen Kane.’
The only person to win an Oscar for playing an Oscar winner is Cate Blanchett who won for her role as Katharine Hepburn in ‘The Aviator.’
The recently deceased Bernard Hill is the only person to star in multiple films that hold the record for most Oscar wins, appearing in both ‘Titanic’ & ‘The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.’
Two men have been nominated in seven different categories over their careers: Kenneth Branagh (Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Actor, Supporting Actor, & Live Action Short Film) and Alfonso Cuaron (Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Cinematography, & Live Action Short Film). Though it is also worth noting that Cuaron’s film ‘Roma’ was nominated for Best International Feature Film which would push his total to 8, but the nomination goes to the country, not the filmmaker.
The film franchise with the most nominations is Star Wars with 38, though the Middle-Eath franchise (Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit) has the most wins with 17. The only franchise to have multiple Best Picture winners is The Godfather trilogy.
The highest grossing film to win Best Picture is ‘Titanic’ ($2.2B) & the highest grossing nominee is ‘Avatar’ ($2.9B). The lowest grossing winner is ‘CODA’ ($1.9M) & lowest grossing nominee is ‘Mank’ ($100K), which were released during COVID on Apple TV+ & Netflix, respectively.
The tallest Oscar winner/nominee is 6’9” Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck who won Best International Film for ‘The Lives of Others.’ The shortest winner is 4’9” Linda Hunt who won Best Supporting Actress for ‘The Year of Living Dangerously’ and the shortest nominee is 3’10” Michael Dunn, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for ‘Ship of Fools.’
