Gallery: Award-winning Oscar trivia
Want to impress, or perhaps annoy, your friends on Oscar night? There are a number of interesting factoids this year related to the impressive crop of nominees. The awards are handed out Feb. 24. I will no doubt be repeating many of these fascinating facts during the Calgary Herald’s live blog. So please join me, Ruth Myles, Tom Babin, Calgary filmmaker Jonathan Joffe and Calgary International Film Festival executive director Stephen Schroeder, among others, for a play-by-play on awards night. Meanwhile, here’s some fun facts that you may not have known about this year’s nominees.
1. No sentimental favourite for best supporting actor this year.
For perhaps the first time in the history of the Academy Awards, all of the actors who are up for best supporting actor have already won an Oscar.
This is notable because the best-supporting actor gold often goes to thespians who are old and haven’t won before: think Don Ameche for Cocoon (1985), Sean Connery for The Untouchables (1987) and Alan Arkin for Little Miss Sunshine (2006).
But this year, every nominee has had their turn giving an acceptance speech, albeit not always in this category. Arkin is up again for Argo. Robert De Niro, who is up for Silver Linings Playbook, won a best-supporting Oscar for 1975’s The Godfather II and a best actor statue for Raging Bull in 1981. Philip Seymour Hoffman, nominated for The Master, won in 2006 in the lead actor category for Capote. Tommy Lee Jones is a favourite for his role in Lincoln, but it would be his second time winning the award after taking the gold for The Fugitive in 1994. Christoph Waltz, nominated for Django Unchained, won in the same category with the same director in 2009 for Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
