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While every Tom, Dick and Oscar is busy Academy-chatting around the water cooler today, I thought I’d arm you with some ammo from past years that’ll have all your cohorts thinking you really know your trivia.
1) Composer/conductor John Williams has been nominated for 45 Academy Awards, the record for the most Oscar nominations for a living person.
2) Walt Disney, who picked up 26 Oscars out of 64 nominations (some say 59), holds the record for the most wins.
3) The youngest winner of the Best Actor Oscar went to Adrien Brody at only 29 years old for his role in The Pianist.
4) The youngest winner of the Best Actress Oscar went to Marlee Matlin at 21 for Children Of A Lesser God.
5) But even Tatum O’Neal has her beat. She won Best Supporting Actress for Paper Moon at the staggeringly young age of 10.
6) Now then, the youngest ever, ever, ever, was, of course, Shirley Temple, who was still wet behind the ears at 6 (how could she even lift the 8.5-pound award?) when she won a Special Award for her contribution to film in 1934.
7) At the other end of the spectrum, we have the 80-year-old Jessica Tandy winning the Best Actress Award for Driving Miss Daisy in 1989.
8) The oldest Best Actor Award went to Henry Fonda at 76 when he won for On Golden Pond.
9) The only sequel to win Best Picture was The Godfather Part 2, which took the Oscar in 1974.
10) Lastly, and poignantly: A woman has never won Best Director, ever! And the only women to have been nominated are Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation, Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties and Jane Campion for The Piano. High time that changed, wouldn’t you say?
“9) The only sequel to win Best Picture was The Godfather Part 2, which took the Oscar in 1974.”
It was the first sequel to win Best Picture, but “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” won, too. Of course, you might consider the LotR movies to be just thirds of a whole and not really sequels.
filmsite(dot)org tells us:
“[The Godfather Part 2] was the only sequel to win a Best Picture Oscar at the time of its win. [An earlier unsuccessful attempt at a sequel-Best Picture win was The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) - following the Best Picture winner of the previous year - Going My Way (1944). Later, its ’sequel’ The Godfather, Part III (1990) was also nominated for Best Picture - and lost, and two sequel-installments of The Lord of the Rings (in 2002 and 2003) were also nominated, with the latter winning the top honor. Some might consider the Best Picture-winning The Silence of the Lambs (1991) as a sequel to Manhunter (1986), but that stretches the definition of a true sequel.]”
posted by Tim on 2-26-2007 at 7:08 am
Two corrections — first Adrien Brody was actually a couple of months younger than Richard Dreyfuss when he won the best actor Oscar. And The third woman nominated for best director was Sofia Coppola.
posted by Karen Jensen on 2-26-2007 at 7:12 am
> High time that changed, wouldn’t you say?
No, I wouldn’t say. The awards reflect who is working in the industry. There will be more women director winners when there are more women directors. Are you suggesting some type of affirmative action quotas be imposed on Hollywood?
posted by nukebubba on 2-26-2007 at 7:13 am
“9) The only sequel to win Best Picture was The Godfather Part 2, which took the Oscar in 1974.”
Does “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” count as a sequel?
posted by Tim on 2-26-2007 at 7:30 am
Wasn’t Sofia Coppola (sp?) nominated for “Lost In Translation”?
posted by Bill T on 2-26-2007 at 7:36 am
Coppola won a Golden Globe for her screenplay, as well the Lina Mangiacapre Award at the Venice Film Festival for the film. She also received Best Director and Best Original Screenplay nods at the 2004 Academy Awards, winning the Best Original Screenplay Oscar.
posted by KJ on 2-26-2007 at 7:53 am
Thanks for the corrections, guys. I was sitting with my wife last night watching some of the Oscars and she reminded me about Sofia. Somehow I just forgot to add her (telling?)
I didn’t know about Brody, though. I’ll fix now.
posted by David on 2-26-2007 at 8:08 am