Barbie Makes History, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Odd Snub Streak, and More Surprising Facts About the 2024 Oscar Nominations
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Joe Reid Chris Murphy Rebecca Ford Kase Wickman David Canfield Hillary Busis Tara Ariano Eve Batey Condé Nast
Breaking down each category for records, surprising trends, and the Oscar obsession with movies with “American” in the title.
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Vanity Fair
Whether you’re still levitating over Oppenheimer’s 13 Oscar nominations or drying your tears after All of Us Strangers got blanked, Tuesday’s Oscar nominations have a lot of us in our feelings. Need a distraction? Might I suggest diving into the deep well of Oscar trivia that this year’s nominations have provided. We’ve got record-setting film editors, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro chasing down the ghost of a 1930s character actor, and good news for Diane Warren and Amy Pascal. Come on, Oscar nerds, it’s our time to shine.

BEST PICTURE

Barbie may have missed out on some prominent nominations, but it still has plenty to celebrate. For starters, 2023 was the second straight year where the overall box-office champion went on to score a best-picture nomination. Prior to Top Gun: Maverick pulling that off last year, it had only happened twice in the previous 11 years: Black Panther in 2018 and American Sniper in 2014.

Gerwig also became the first director in history to have her first three feature films nominated in best picture, with Barbie following Lady Bird and Little Women.

It’s also the first time ever that the best-picture lineup has featured three films directed by women—Barbie, Celine Song’s Past Lives, and Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall.

Meanwhile, Killers of the Flower Moon becomes the 10th film directed by Martin Scorsese to earn a best-picture nomination. (Look away if you’d rather guess for yourself, but the previous nine were Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Hugo, The Wolf of Wall Street, and The Irishman.)

Steven Spielberg did not direct a new movie this year, and yet he still managed to scoop up an Oscar nomination, as one of the producers on Bradley Cooper’s film, Maestro. It’s the 13th best-picture nomination for Spielberg, who, in addition to his own movies, was nominated for producing Clint Eastwood’s 2006 World War II film Letters From Iwo Jima. Spielberg thus extends his lead as the most-nominated individual in the best-picture category—and it’s unlikely that second-place contender Scott Rudin will ever catch up.

Notable names getting their first best-picture nominations this year include Emma Stone for Poor Things, Margot Robbie for Barbie, and at long last, legendary indie film producer Christine Vachon, nominated for producing Past Lives.

In less good news for Past Lives, that film becomes the second best-picture nominee in as many years to only score one other nomination. Last year, Sarah Polley’s Women Talking garnered only best picture and best adapted screenplay (on the bright side, Polley ended up winning in the latter category). Past Lives also got its only other nomination in the screenplay categories, in original screenplay.

For the second time in three years, multiple debut features have been nominated for best picture. Past Lives is Song’s debut, as is American Fiction for writer-director Cord Jefferson. Back in 2021 there were three debuts, from Florian Zeller (The Father), Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman), and Darius Marder (Sound of Metal).

American Fiction becomes the sixth best-picture nominee in Oscar history to have American in its title, after An American in Paris, American Graffiti, American Beauty, American Hustle, and American Sniper. Meanwhile, Anatomy of a Fall is now the second best-picture nominee to have Anatomy in its title. (Make room, Anatomy of a Murder.)

BEST DIRECTOR

In addition to directing his 10th best-picture nominee, Scorsese also picked up his 10th best-director nomination. Strangely, they’re not for the same 10 films, as he was snubbed in best director for 1976’s Taxi Driver and snubbed in best picture (but not director) for 1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ. This 10th nomination moves him back out ahead of Spielberg for most best-director nominations by any living filmmaker. (William Wyler still holds the overall record at 12 nominations.)

OVERALL ACTING CATEGORIES

Among all four acting categories, only four nominated performances came from movies that did not make the best-picture lineup. Those would be Colman Domingo in Rustin, Annette Bening and Jodie Foster in Nyad, and Danielle Brooks in The Color Purple. That’s actually tied for the fewest non-best-picture acting nominees since the best-picture category expanded for the 2009 year. The only other year the acting nominees were this restricted to best-picture nominees was 2013, when only Blue Jasmine’s Cate Blanchett and Sally Hawkins, and August: Osage County’s Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts stood outside the inner circle.

Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown received their first ever Oscar nominations for American Fiction. They also set a milestone as the first time a Black lead actor and supporting actor have both been nominated for the same film.

BEST ACTRESS

Killers of the Flower Moon star Lily Gladstone made history as the first Native American woman to be nominated for best actress. Gladstone is a member of the Blackfeet Nation and spoke some of the Blackfeet language when she accepted her Golden Globe award earlier in January. Other Indigenous best-actress nominees include Merle Oberon and Keisha Castle-Hughes, who are Maori, and Yalitza Aparicio, who is Native Mexican.

With nominations as a producer and an actress on Poor Things, Emma Stone becomes just the second woman to pull off dual best-picture and best-actress nominations, after Frances McDormand did the same for 2020’s Nomadland.

ACTING CATEGORIES

Leonardo DiCaprio, not nominated in best actor, is making a habit of this: It’s the seventh time he’s starred in a best-picture nominee without a nomination of his own. Prior to Killers, Leo was snubbed for Titanic, Gangs of New York, The Departed1, Inception, Django Unchained, and Don’t Look Up. You’d think that would make DiCaprio the record holder for most snubs for actor nominations after featuring in best-picture nominees, but he’s not even close. In the 1930s and ’40s, character actor Ward Bond appeared in a whopping 13 best-picture nominees, albeit in small roles, but never received a nomination of his own. These films included such classics as It Happened One Night, Gone With the Wind, The Maltese Falcon, It’s a Wonderful Life, Sergeant York, and The Grapes of Wrath.

1DiCaprio was nominated that same year for Blood Diamond.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

DiCaprio’s Killers of the Flower Moon costar Robert De Niro was nominated for best supporting actor, and has now appeared in 12 best-picture nominees, second only to—you guessed it—Ward Bond. Leo, by the way, moves up to third place on that list, having appeared in 11 best-picture nominees (the aforementioned seven he was snubbed for, plus The Aviator, The Wolf of Wall Street, The Revenant, and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood).

With his fourth Oscar nomination in best supporting actor, Poor Things’ Mark Ruffalo has moved into an eight-way tie for the most-ever nominations in this category. He joins the ranks of Oscar winners Walter Brennan, Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall, Jack Nicholson, and Al Pacino (though only Brennan and Nicholson won in supporting), as well as Arthur Kennedy and Claude Rains. Had Ruffalo’s costar Willem Dafoe also been nominated, he, too, would have moved into a tie with four career nominations.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Danielle Brooks (2023’s The Color Purple) and Oprah Winfrey (1985’s The Color Purple) are now the second pair of best-supporting-actress nominees to be recognized for playing the same role. This comes only two years after Ariana DeBose and Rita Moreno did the same thing for West Side Story. This has happened upwards of 20 times in the other acting categories—including cross-category instances, like Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix for playing the Joker—but only twice within best supporting actress.

It’s been 29 years since Jodie Foster’s last nomination for best actress for 1994’s Nell. She joins 38 other actors who have at least 20 years between nominations. Last year’s Fabelmans nominee, Judd Hirsch, still holds the all-time record at 42 years.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY AND BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

In another example of this year’s ballot being especially favored toward the best-picture nominees, only one of this year’s screenplay nominees isn’t in the best-picture lineup: Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik’s script for May December. Since the best-picture category expanded in 2009, the last time this happened was 2010, when Mike Leigh’s Another Year was the lone screenplay nominee left off of the best-picture ballot.

Four of the screenplay nominees were written or cowritten by women—May December, Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet, cowriting with Arthur Harari), Past Lives (Celine Song), and Barbie (Greta Gerwig, cowriting with Noah Baumbach). That’s the most female writers represented across the two categories since 2017, when Gerwig was also a best-original-screenplay nominee for Lady Bird.

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE

With The Zone of Interest, the United Kingdom gets its first nomination in the international-feature (formerly foreign language film) category since the 1999 Welsh film Solomon & Gaenor.

In the timeless battle for Euro-cinema supremacy, Italy’s nomination for the Matteo Garrone film Io Capitano is the country’s 33rd all-time nomination. This helps nudge it ever closer to France, which was not nominated this year for its submission The Taste of Things, and which thus remains at 41 nominations of all time.

Japan’s nominee was director Wim Wenders’s elegant and soul-stirring Perfect Days. It’s Wenders’s fourth Oscar-nominated feature, but his first for a narrative feature, as his three previous nominations have been for documentaries. (Technically the international-feature award goes to the nominated country; it’s the filmmaker who goes up to accept the award.)

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

Hayao Miyazaki’s maybe-swan-song film The Boy and the Heron marks Miyazaki’s fourth career nomination in this category, after Spirited Away (which won), Howl’s Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises. This ties Miyazaki with Pixar’s Pete Docter for the most nominations ever in this category, which has existed since the 2002 ceremony.

A win for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse could mean more than merely the first good news that a Marvel superhero has had in a while. It would also be the first ever Oscar win for mega-producer Amy Pascal. The former head of Sony Pictures has now been nominated for three Oscars since she departed Sony, previously for producing The Post and Little Women. And if the Mandela effect has you thinking that Pascal has already won an Oscar for the first Spider-Verse movie, don’t feel too bad: She was definitely on the stage with the Spider-Verse team, but she was not an official nominee or winner.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

With his nomination for Killers of the Flower Moon, Rodrigo Prieto has become Scorsese’s most nominated director of photography. Scorsese has worked with many different cinematographers over the course of his career, including Michael Chapman (nominated for Raging Bull), Roger Deakins (nominated for Kundun), Michael Ballhaus (nominated for Gangs of New York), and Robert Richardson (a two-time winner for The Aviator and Hugo). Prieto has now been nominated three times for Scorsese projects, with Killers coming after nominations for Silence and The Irishman.

Whoever triumphs in this category will be winning their first ever Academy Award, which is always a fun moment. El Conde’s surprise nominee Ed Lachman has twice been nominated before for Todd Haynes–directed films Far From Heaven and Carol. In addition to his Scorsese movies, Prieto was also nominated for Brokeback Mountain. Maestro DP Matthew Libatique has previously been nominated for Black Swan and A Star Is Born. Hoyte van Hoytema is nominated for Oppenheimer after being nominated for Nolan’s Dunkirk. And Robbie Ryan is nominated for Poor Things after an earlier nomination for Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite.

BEST COSTUME DESIGN AND BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN

This year’s nominees in the costume-design category—Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon, Napoleon, Oppenheimer, and Poor Things—were the exact same movies nominated in best production design. While these two categories have always overlapped to some degree, it’s actually rare that they match up perfectly. The last time this happened was at the 2004 Oscars, when a sweeping The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King triumphed in both categories over Girl With a Pearl Earring, The Last Samurai, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and Seabiscuit.

BEST FILM EDITING

Over the years, there have been few professional partnerships more rewarding than that between Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who got her ninth career nomination for best film editing for her work on Killers of the Flower Moon. This nomination moves Schoonmaker out of a tie with Spielberg’s longtime editor Michael Kahn and into sole possession of the record for most film-editing nominations of all time. What’s more, if Schoonmaker wins the Oscar this year, she’ll break out of a four-way tie with Kahn, Daniel Mandell, and Ralph Dawson for the most wins in the category ever.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT

Oh, yes, there’s even intrigue in the short-film awards. With her nomination for producing and codirecting The ABCs of Book Banning (with directors Trish Adlesic and Nazenet Habtezghi), the great Sheila Nevins has earned her first ever Academy Award nomination. Nevins has been a giant in the world of television documentary, primarily as the former head of HBO documentary programming. She’s won 32 individual Emmy Awards, more than any other person. And she was the first person Elaine Stritch thanked in her legendary Emmy acceptance speech in 2004.

BEST ORIGINAL SONG

Well, she’s done it again. Diane Warren, who didn’t allow an honorary Oscar to stop her from picking up another best-original-song nomination last year, has extended her lead as the most-nominated songwriter without a competitive Oscar win. Her nod for writing “The Fire Inside” from the Hulu original film (and Eva Longoria’s directorial debut) Flamin’ Hot is her 15th nomination in this category. It would be a big surprise if the 15th time was the charm, but we love Diane for coming back again and again.