Meryl Streep is often called the greatest living actress, and the people of the Academy agree: she’s the most-nominated performer in Academy Awards history, with 18 nominations. Sadly, she’s only actually won three times: in 1979, 1982 and 2011. She’s nominated this year for August: Osage County. Oscar Trivia But there’s someone you’ve never heard of who’s got Meryl beat: with 49 nominations, composer John Williams is the most nominated living person (this year’s nod is for the score of The Book Thief). The most nominated character is Henry VIII. The Oscar statuette was nicknamed “Oscar” in 1939, ten years after the annual ceremony began. According to The Academy, the nickname came from one of their librarians in the 1930s who thought the statuette looked like her Uncle Oscar. The award’s official name is the Academy Award of Merit. There has only been one Oscar winner named Oscar: Oscar Hammerstein II, who won two for best song. The record holder for most Oscars won in a single year is 11, and was set by Ben-Hur in 1959. It was matched in 1997 by Titanic, and again in 2003 by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. If you had to pick, 1978’s The Turning Point and 1986’s The Color Purple, are technically the Oscars biggest losers. Both movies received 11 nominations each — but neither took home a single award. To many, that’s still a win. The person who’s literally the biggest loser in Oscar history is sound recording engineer Kevin O’Connell — he’s been nominated 20 times since 1983, and hasn’t won once. The Academy stopped using “And the winner is…” in 1988, choosing to announce the award recipient with “And the Oscar goes to…” instead. In 2010 they went back to the old phrase, only to revert to the more gentle version the next year. The shortest televised ceremony was in 1958, at a very reasonable hour and forty minutes. For three years, during World War II, the Oscar was actually made out of painted plaster (recipients during those years were able to trade in their statuettes for gold-plated ones). Actors down on their luck can’t just offload the golden Oscar for quick cash: winners have agreed to offer it back to the Academy for $1 before selling it since 1950. If they don’t sign the agreement, they can’t keep their statuette. Some older statuettes do end up on the market: Steven Spielberg bought Bette Davis’ Oscar for $578,000 in 2001 and donated it back to the Academy, and Michael Jackson paid over a million for David Selznick’s award in 1999. Exactly zero nominated films were released during the spring or summer. According to the Academy, summer blockbusters do not equal art. Sorry, Michael Bay. Everyone’s best friend Jennifer Lawrence, 23, is the youngest actress to be nominated three times for Best Actress (this year, for her role in American Hustle). 55 Oscars were stolen in March of 2000. 52 were returned, one was discovered three years later in a Miami drug raid, and two are still MIA. And the show must go on! There have only been three cases where the Oscars have not aired on schedule: in 1938, due to massive flooding in Los Angeles; In 1968, after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination; and in 1981, following an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. Cue the music: 2010 was the first year acceptance speeches were limited to 45 seconds or less. And the award for shortest acceptance speech goes to… Alfred Hitchcock. His two-word response to winning the Irving Thalberg award for creative excellence? “Thank you.” And as the Telegraph points out, “His curtness was generally considered to be a terse comment on his failure to win Best Director.” Not everyone in Hollywood is so eloquent without a teleprompter: in 1992, The Silence of the Lambs director Jonathan Demme used the word uh almost 40 times in a five-minute speech. Only three animated movies have ever been nominated for Best Picture: “Beauty And The Beast,” “Toy Story 3” and “Up”. Talk about an overachiever: Frozen composer Bobby Lopez is nominated for “Let It Go,” and if he wins, he’ll be the twelfth—and youngest—person to reach EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) status. He’s 39, which doesn’t seem that young to us. In 1969, Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand tied for Best Actress — there have only been three other ties in Oscar history, twice in Best Documentary and once in Best Live Action Short Film. Judi Dench scored her seventh acting nomination this year for Best Actress in Philomena — all of her nominations have come after she turned 63, a distinction no one else comes close to. Martin Scorsese has directed 20 actors and actresses to Oscar nominations. So, you know, if you want a statuette, just get yourself in to one of his casts. Amy Adams is the only Best Actress nominee this year that hasn’t won an Oscar. Want to go to the Oscars and get paid? Seat fillers at the Academy Awards can earn $125 for the night — and their 15 seconds of fame, if the camera happens to pan over them. There were 8.9 million Tweets about the Oscars last year, a quarter of which were sent during the red carpet. The Best Picture award for Argo drew the most chatter: 85,300 Tweets per minute.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Mar 2014 08:14:38 +0000
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