Check out these quirky factoids about the 85th Academy Awards nominations.
What is an Oscar race without loads of trivia and factoids to ponder? Here are some of the highlights for the 85th Academy Awards nominations, announced this week.
— Four acting nominees are first-timers: Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook), Hugh Jackman (Les Miserables), Emmanuelle Riva (Amour) and Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild).
— Nine out of the 20 acting nominees are previous winners, including all five up for supporting actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Denzel Washington, Alan Arkin, Robert De Niro, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tommy Lee Jones, Christoph Waltz, Sally Field and Helen Hunt.
–Day-Lewis is the second actor to be nominated for playing Lincoln. Raymond Massey played the rail splitter in 1940’s Abe Lincoln in Illinois.
— Four other nominated actors were recognized for their portraits of real-life presidents: Alexander Knox as Woodrow Wilson in 1944’s Wilson; James Whitmore as Harry Truman in 1975’s Give ’em Hell, Harry!; Anthony Hopkins as a lead in 1995’s Nixon and in a supporting role as John Quincy Adams in 1997’s Amistad; and Frank Langella as the presidential half of 2008’s Frost/Nixon.
— French actress Riva at 85 is the oldest actress to earn a lead nomination. Gloria Stuart was the oldest acting nominee ever at 87 when she was nominated for her supporting role in 1997’s Titanic.
— At age 9, Wallis is the youngest contender to make the lead-actress cut. The youngest acting nominee in any category was 8-year-old Justin Henry in 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer.
–The French-language Austrian film Amour is the fifth film to be nominated for best picture and best foreign film, joining 1969’s Z, 1971’s The Emigrants, 1998’s Life Is Beautiful and 2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
— Silver Linings Playbook is the first film since Warren Beatty’s 1981 epic Reds to earn spots in all four acting categories as well as best picture, director and screenplay.
— Les Miserables is the first musical to make the best-picture cut since 2002’s Chicago won the category. Only nine other films in Oscar history have finished the awards season on a winning note: The Broadway Melody (1929), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Going My Way (1944), An American in Paris (1951), Gigi (1958), West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), The Sound of Music (1965) and Oliver! (1968).
— If Jackman wins for Les Miserables, it would be the first best-actor for a musical since Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady (1964). It hasn’t been as long a drought in the supporting-actress field, where Anne Hathaway has a nod for Les Mis: Jennifer Hudson won in the same category for her debut in 2006’s Dreamgirls.
— Adele’s Skyfall is the first original song contender in 10 years to have also been a top-10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
— Composer John Williams, competing in the original score category for Lincoln, has the most nominations of any living person with 48. Woody Allen is second with 23. The late Walt Disney racked up 59.
— Composer Thomas Newman extends his nomination total to 11 and his family’s track record to 87 with his score for the James Bond film Skyfall. Other noteworthy members of the musical Newman clan who have competed are Alfred, Lionel, Emil, David and Randy.