All 95 Oscar nominations were revealed Tuesday morning in Los Angeles. And as usual, the most recent lineup featured a number of historic milestones. Among them this year:
◦ Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) is the first actress nominated for a Marvel Cinematic Universe film. “Black Panther” was the first superhero movie to be nominated for Best Picture.
◦ Among actresses, Bassett ranks third on the list for the longest gap between first and second Oscar nominations, with a span of 29 years since she was nominated for 1993’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It.” .
◦ Among all actors, Judd Hirsch (“The Fabelmans”) has broken Henry Fonda’s record for the longest period between nominations. Fonda was nominated for “The Grapes of Wrath” and “On Golden Pond” within 41 years of each other. Hirsch was cited this year 42 years after his nomination for 1980’s “Common People.”
◦ Four Asian/Asian-American actors have been nominated (Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu and Hong Chau), the most in a single year.
◦ Yeoh is the second Asian actress to be nominated in the Best Actress category, after Indian-born Merle Oberon in 1935.
◦ Remarkably, this year’s Best Actor lineup (Austin Butler, Colin Farrell, Brendan Fraser, Paul Mescal, Bill Nighy) are all first-time nominees, the first time that’s happened since 1934, when there were only three Best Actor nominees .
◦ Jamie Lee Curtis (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, 62 years after her mother, Janet Leigh, was nominated in the same category for 1960’s “Psycho.” Curtis and Leigh are the third nominees for mother-daughter acting after Judy Garland/Liza Minnelli and Diane Ladd/Laura Dern.
◦ Steven Spielberg has tied Martin Scorsese for the second most Best Director nominations, with nine each. William Wyler tops the list with 12.
◦ Spielberg has broken his own record for most individual Best Picture nominations as a producer (with 12) and tied William Wyler for directing the most Best Picture nominations (13).
◦ Tom Cruise was passed over for Best Actor, but still earned his first nomination in 23 years, since his Best Supporting Actor nomination for “Magnolia,” as one of the producers of “Top Gun: Maverick.”
◦ Frances McDormand, a three-time Best Actress winner, was nominated as one of the producers of “Talking Women.”
◦ The most popular Oscar genre for acting nominations, the biopic, garnered just two nominations, for Ana de Armas in “Blonde” and Austin Butler in “Elvis.” (Michelle Williams and Judd Hirsch in “The Fabelmans” play characters inspired by real people, though not in the biographical mold.)
◦ With only three films to his name, writer-director (and former actor) Todd Field earned a best screenplay nomination for each one (“In the Bedroom,” “Little Children” and “Tár”).
◦ With nine nominations, “All Quiet on the Western Front” is the second most nominated foreign language film in history, after “Roma” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (both with 10).
◦ Mandy Walker (“Elvis”) is the third female nominee for Best Cinematography, after Rachel Morrison (“Mudbound”) and Ari Wegner (“The Power of the Dog”).
◦ The Daniels (Daniel Kwan with Daniel Scheinert), directors of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” are the first pair of directors nominated since the Coen brothers (for “True Grit”) in 2011.
◦ All the nominees for Best Director – all men, it is worth mentioning – were also nominated in the category of Best Original Screenplay.
◦ Composer John Williams (“The Fabelmans”) has broken his own record for Best Score nominations with 48, and the most nominations for anyone living with 53.
◦ At the age of 90, Williams is also the first nonagenarian to be nominated for an Oscar. She was 35 years old when she received her first nomination in 1968.
◦ For the fifth time in six years, the Best Supporting Actor award has included two men from the same film. This year it’s Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan for “The Banshees of Inisherin.”