Quirky Oscars trivia

2005-01-26 10:07

The official Oscars poster

Beverly Hills, California - The following are some quirky facts linked to the nominations for the 77th annual Academy Awards.

The 11 Oscar nods for Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, falls short of the record of 14 held jointly by 1997's Titanic and 1950's All About Eve. Eight other films have won 13 nods in the past, including 1939's Gone with the Wind, 1966's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Mary Poppins (1964) and Forrest Gump in 1994. The highest number of Oscar statuettes ever won by a film is the 11 won by Titanic.

Two actors scored double nominations for the 2005 Academy Awards: Jamie Foxx and veteran star Clint Eastwood. Foxx won a best actor nod for his brilliant performance as soul legend Ray Charles in Ray and a best supporting actor nomination for his role in the thriller Collateral. Eastwood, 74, won a best director nod for his drama about a troubled female boxer, Million Dollar Baby, as well as a best actor nod for his role as trainer and ageing fighter Frankie Dunn in the film.

Foxx's double acting nods make him only the 10th actor in Oscars history to be nominated in both leading and supporting categories in the same year, putting him in an elite class with the likes of Jessica Lange in 1982, Sigourney Weaver in 1988, both Holly Hunter and Emma Thompson in 1993 and Julianne Moore in 2002.

Four out of five of the best actor nominees won their recognition for playing real-life characters, mostly in a wave of biopics that dominated the silver screen in 2004. Foxx played Ray Charles, Johnny Depp played Peter Pan author JM Barrie in Finding Neverland, Leonardo DiCaprio played US billionaire Howard Hughes in The Aviator and Don Cheadle played a hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina in Hotel Rwanda. Only Eastwood played a fictional character.

Only one performer nominated for the 77th annual Academy Awards has already won one of cinema's top honours: Hilary Swank, nominated as best actress for Million Dollar Baby, won the same statuette in 2000 for Boys Don't Cry. Swank is the only woman ever to be nominated for a boxing movie, and joins a fraternity of fellow pugilist Oscar hopefuls including Marlon Brando, nominated for 1954's On the Waterfront, Robert De Niro for 1980's Raging Bull, Denzel Washington for The Hurricane (1999), Will Smith for Ali (2001).

Ten of the 20 actors and actress nominated in the best actor and best supporting actor categories this year are first time Oscar nominees.

Colombia's Catalina Sandino Moreno, nominated for best actress for Maria Full of Grace, is the 25th actor or actress to be nominated in the past 77 years for a non English-speaking screen role. Only three have ever won for foreign-language roles: Italians Sophia Loren for 1960's Two Women, Roberto Benigni for 1997's Life is Beautiful and Puerto Rican Benicio de Toro for his Spanish-speaking role in Traffic.

Despite being acclaimed as one of Hollywood's top directors after producing such classics as Taxi Driver (1976) and Goodfellas (1990), Martin Scorsese has been nominated for a total of six Oscars in the past, but has never won a golden statuette. His nod for best director this year is his fifth in that category.

In a nod to diversity, black actors feature in three of the four acting categories this year: Foxx as best actor for Ray, Don Cheadle as best actor for Hotel Rwanda, Morgan Freeman as best supporting actor for Million Dollar Baby, Foxx as best supporting actor for Collateral and Britain's Sophie Okonedo as best supporting actress in Hotel Rwanda.

- AFP