Stats And Trivia From The 96th Academy Award Nominations

Every year, with a new crop of Oscar nominees minted, there are loads of interesting stats, pieces of trivia, and records set. This year’s Oscar nominations saw plenty of firsts, extended nomination streaks, and unique trivia in nearly every category. From Diane Warren, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg extending their records to Lily Gladstone and America Ferrera breaking new ground, there’s no shortage of exciting facts to sift through.

Please take a look at our comprehensive list of as much trivia as we could gather from this year’s Academy Award nominations.

OVERALL STATS & TRIVIA

• “Oppenheimer” is the 11th film to receive thirteen nominations. The last film to receive thirteen nominations was “The Shape of Water” in 2017.

• Bradley Cooper received three nominations this year, bringing his total nominations to 12. If he fails to win any of these nominations, he will be tied with Federico Fellini for the 8th most nominations without a win.

• Though challenging to determine if it’s an actual record, this year saw five romantic couples nominated together in the same respective category: Margot Robbie & Tom Ackerley in Best Picture, Christopher Nolan & Emma Thomas in Best Picture, Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach in Best Adapted Screenplay, Justine Triet & Arthur Harari in Best Original Screenplay, and Jared & Jerusha Hess in Best Animated Short.

• John Williams extended his record of the most time between a person’s first and most recent nominations, with 55 years since his first Academy recognition.

BEST PICTURE STATS & TRIVIA

• This is the first time in the expanded era that the PGA Nominees for Best Feature matched with the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture 10 for 10. In the pre-expanded era, the lineups only matched three times: 1992, 1993, and 1994.

• Greta Gerwig is the first woman to have directed three Best Picture nominees, with “Lady Bird,” “Little Women,” and now “Barbie.”

• Gerwig is the first filmmaker whose first three solo directorial features were all nominated for Best Picture.

• With “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Barbie,” and “Past Lives” in Best Picture, this is the first time that three Best Picture nominees were nominated by women in the same year.

• This is a record fifth year in a row with at least one Best Picture nominee directed by a woman.

• Nine women were nominated for Best Picture this year, tying the record set in 2016.

• “Barbie” is the ninth Best Picture nominee to have grossed over a billion dollars.

• This is the second year in a row that the highest-grossing movie of the year (“Barbie“) was nominated for Best Picture, following last year’s nomination for “Avatar: The Way Of Water.” This last happened in 1976-1977, with “Rocky” and “Star Wars.”

• With “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Robert De Niro expands his record for the most credited appearances in Best Picture nominees to 12. Leonardo DiCaprio continues to hold the second-most credited appearances in Best Picture nominees with 11, breaking his previous tie with Cate Blanchett and Jack Nicholson.

• “Killers of the Flower Moon” is Martin Scorsese’s tenth film nominated for Best Picture, the second-most for any director. Only Steven Spielberg and William Wyler have more, at 13 apiece.

• Steven Spielberg (“Maestro“) extends his record as the most nominated person in Best Picture, with 13 nominations.

• Spielberg has now received Best Picture nominations for three consecutive years. Since producers began receiving individual nominations in 1951, only Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Barrie M. Osborne have accomplished this feat for producing the three “Lord of the Rings” films.

• In their long careers, this is only the second time Spielberg and Scorsese have been nominated against each other in the same category. They were previously both nominated for Best Picture in 2012 for “War Horse” and “Hugo” respectively.

• At 206 minutes long, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is the seventh longest Best Picture nominee, just shy of Scorsese’s “The Irishman” at 209 minutes. The other films that surpass it: “Ben-Hur” (212 minutes), “The Ten Commandments” (220), “Lawrence of Arabia” (222), “Gone With The Wind” (238), and “Cleopatra” (248).

• Emma Stone received nominations for both Best Actress and Best Picture this year, becoming the second woman to achieve this, following Frances McDormand. She is the tenth overall person nominated for producing and acting in the same film, following Warren Beatty, Kevin Costner, Clint Eastwood, Denzel Washington, Brad Pitt, Bradley Cooper, Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Smith, and McDormand, who is the only person to win both categories in the same year.

• Bradley Cooper received nominations for both Best Actor and Best Picture this year. Cooper has now accomplished this three times (“American Sniper,” “A Star is Born,” and “Maestro“), only surpassed by Warren Beatty, who did this four times (“Bonnie and Clyde,” “Heaven Can Wait,” “Reds,” and “Bugsy”).

• Cooper and Stone’s nominations for Best Picture and acting marks the first time two people have accomplished this in the same year.

• “Anatomy of a Fall” is technically the second International Feature (non-English language, non-American-produced) to receive a Best Picture nomination whose country did not submit the film for Best International Feature. France chose to submit “The Taste of Things” instead. The same fate befell “Il Postino” in 1995 when Italy submitted “The Star Maker” instead. The caveats: “Grand Illusion” received a Picture nomination in 1938, before the Best Foreign Language Film existed. “Cries and Whispers” received a Best Picture nomination in 1973 but missed the window to be submitted for Best Foreign Language Film, and Sweden did not submit any other film.

• With Best Picture nominations for “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest,” this is the first year that more than one primarily non-American-produced and non-English language film was nominated for Best Picture. This is also the first year three films not primarily in English are nominated for Best Picture, including “Past Lives.”

• This is the sixth year in a row that a non-English language film was nominated for Best Picture. The previous record was two in a row from 1972-1973.

• This is the first year that two A24 films scored Best Picture nominations in the same year.

• “American Fiction” is the first Best Picture nominee to use the term “Oscar bait” in the film’s dialogue.

BEST DIRECTOR STATS & TRIVIA

• At 81 years old, Martin Scorsese is now the oldest person to receive a Best Director nomination. He surpasses John Huston, who was nominated at 79 years old for directing “Prizzi’s Honor.”

• With his tenth nomination, Scorsese broke his tie with Steven Spielberg to become the second-most nominated person in Best Director. Only William Wyler has more nominations in the category, with 12 nominations.

• Justine Triet is the eighth woman to receive a Best Director nomination.

• This is the third time Best Director had two nominees for non-English language films in the same year. This previously happened in 1976 and 2018.

ACTING STATS & TRIVIA

• Technically, this is the first year since 1935 that all the acting nominees are over 30 years old. That year, at the 7th Academy Awards, Bette Davis was 27, but she was a write-in nominee, and it’s not considered by the Academy to be an actual nomination. If you count her, the last time all acting nominees were older than 30 was 1932, in the 5th Academy Awards.

• Lily Gladstone is the first Indigenous American ever nominated for an Academy Award for acting. She is the sixth Indigenous person nominated for acting and the 12th Indigenous person nominated for any Academy Award.

• Gladstone is considered the second Indigenous American ever nominated for an Academy Award, following Best Original Song nominee Buffy Saint-Marie. However, Saint-Marie’s Indigenous ancestry has been called into question.

• Martin Scorsese has now directed 26 acting nominations, adding two this year. This is the second-most for any director, breaking Scorsese’s tie with Elia Kazan. Only William Wyler has directed more acting nominees, with 36.

• Among actors, Robert De Niro broke Katherine Hepburn’s record of time between first and most recent acting nominations. De Niro first received an acting nomination 49 years ago to Hepburn’s 48 years.

• Jodie Foster was last nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1976, returning to the category for the first time in 47 years. This is the longest gap between an individual’s nominations in one specific category, defeating Kristine Samuelson’s record 44-year gap in Best Documentary Short.

• Colman Domingo is the first Afro-Latino man nominated for an acting Oscar. He is the third Afro-Latino person nominated for acting Oscars, following Rosie Perez and Ariana Debose.

• With Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown’s nominations from “American Fiction,” this is the first film to produce black nominees in both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor.

• America Ferrera (“Barbie“) is the first person of Honduran descent to be nominated for an Academy Award. She is the eighth person of Latin American descent nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

• With Colman Domingo and Jeffrey Wright’s nominations, this is only the sixth time that two black men have been nominated for Best Actor in the same year. This previously happened in 2001, 2004, 2006, 2017, and 2021.

• Both Jodie Foster and Colman Domingo were nominated this year for playing gay characters. They are the third and fourth openly queer actors nominated for portraying queer characters, following Stephanie Hsu in “Everything Everywhere All At Once” and Ian McKellen in “Gods and Monsters.”

• With Foster and Domingo’s nominations, this is the second time two out queer performers were nominated for acting in the same year. This previously happened in 2021 with Kristen Stewart and Ariana Debose.

• Jodie Foster is tied with Joe Pesci for the ninth-longest gap between acting nominations at 29 years. Her last nomination was for “Nell” in 1994.

• Robert Downey Jr. (“Oppenheimer“) is the first former SNL cast member nominated for a third Oscar.

• After a record-setting four years in a row with two actors from the same film nominated for Best Supporting Actor, the streak broke this year.

• Mark Ruffalo received his fourth nomination for Best Supporting Actor, tied with seven others for the most of all time. The others are Walter Brennan, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy, Jack Nicholson, Robert Duvall, Al Pacino, and Jeff Bridges.

• Before this year, Carey Mulligan had been the only person to have been exclusively directed to multiple acting nominations by female directors (“Promising Young Woman” and “An Education”). That streak ended with her nomination for “Maestro.”

SCREENPLAY STATS & TRIVIA

• Celine Song is the second Asian woman nominated for any screenplay award. She’s also the fifth person of Korean descent nominated for an Oscar for a screenplay. Before Song, Bong Joon-ho & Han Jin-won won Best Original Screenplay in 2019, Lee Isaac Chung was nominated in 2020 and Iris Yamashita was nominated for “Letters From Iwo Jima” back in 2006.

• Though the Writers Guild of America nominations won’t arrive until February 21st, “Barbie” is poised to become the fourth film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay while nominated in Original Screenplay for WGA. “The Last Emperor,” “Whiplash,” and “Moonlight” are the three previous films with this nomination oddity.

• With a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach and a Best Original Screenplay nomination for Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, this is the fifth time multiple romantic couples were nominated for writing in the same year. This previously happened in 1950 (Ruth Gordon & Garson Kanin and Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett), 1963 (Phoebe & Henry Ephron and Harriet Frank Jr. & Irving Revetch), 1979 (Harriet Frank Jr. & Irving Revetch and Valerie Curtin & Barry Levinson), and 2003 (Fran Walsh & Peter Jackson and Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini).

CRAFT AND OTHER CATEGORIES STATS & TRIVIA

• John Williams received his 54th Oscar nomination, this time for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny“), extending his reign as the most-nominated living person. Only Walt Disney received more Oscar nominations, with 59.

• Williams breaks his own record, set last year, as the oldest Oscar nominee of all time at 91 years at 349 days.

• At 82 years old, “The Boy and the Heron” director Hayao Miyazaki is the oldest nominee for Best Animated Feature, surpassing “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya” director Isao Takahata, who was nominated at 79.

• Miyazaki now ties Pete Docter with the most nominations in Best Animated Feature, with four apiece.

• In the history of Best Animated Feature, Pixar has never gone more than two years without winning. If “Elemental” does not win, this would make losses for three years, a first.

• “Elemental” director Peter Sohn became the first person nominated for Best Animated Feature while also voicing a character in a fellow nominated Animated Feature. Sohn voiced Ganke in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.”

• For “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Robbie Robertson received a posthumous nomination for Best Original Score. He is the ninth composer to receive a posthumous nomination in this category. Coincidentally, the last person to receive a posthumous nomination for Best Original Score was Bernard Herrman, who received two nominations, one of which was for another Scorsese film, “Taxi Driver” in 1979.

• Laura Karpman (“American Fiction“) is the ninth woman nominated for Best Original Score.

• This is the third time Best Editing contains three female nominees. This previously happened in 1975 and 1998.

• With her ninth nomination for Best Editing, “Killers of the Flower Moon” editor Thelma Schoonmaker becomes the most-nominated person in the category. She broke her tie with Michael Kahn, who has eight nominations.

• The second, third, and fourth most-nominated countries for Best International Feature each extended their records: Italy received its 33rd nomination, Spain received its 21st nomination, and Japan received its 18th nomination.

• The United Kingdom received its third nomination for Best International Feature with “The Zone of Interest.” This is the country’s first nomination for a film in a language other than Welsh.

• Iceland failed to receive a nomination this year for “Godland,” extending its record as the country with the most submissions for International Feature to have only been nominated once. They’ve submitted 43 films but were only nominated once in 1991 for “Children of Nature.”

• This is the first year that Best Documentary Feature is entirely comprised of non-English language features. It’s also the first time three of the nominated Documentaries were their country’s official submission for International Feature (“20 Days in Mariupol” from Ukraine, “Four Daughters” from Tunisia, and “The Eternal Memory” from Chile).

• “Godzilla Minus One” is the second non-English language film nominated for Best Visual Effects, following “All Quiet on the Western Front” last year.

• With “Godzilla Minus One” director Takashi Yamazaki’s nomination for Best Visual Effects, this is the second time a movie’s director has also been nominated for Best Visual Effects. Stanley Kubrick was the first person to do this for “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

• Though difficult to confirm, “Godzilla Minus One” appears to have the lowest budget of any film nominated for Best Visual Effects this century, at $10 million. Previously, this title was believed to be held by “Ex Machina,” with a budget of $15 million.

• Neil Corbould received three nominations for Best Visual Effects for “The Creator,” “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning,” and “Napoleon.” This is the first time that’s happened in Best Visual Effects, and it is extraordinarily rare for a single category in one year. The last time this happened was in 2007 with Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, who had three Best Original Song nominations for “Enchanted.”

• Kemp Powers (“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse“) is the second black nominee for Best Animated Feature, following Peter Ramsey for “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” Powers was infamously snubbed from a nomination when he co-directed “Soul” in 2020, something that also happened to his co-director Joaquim Dos Santos this year.

• “Robot Dreams” is the third film without dialogue nominated for Best Animated Feature. It was preceded in this feat by “Shaun the Sheep Movie” and “A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon.”

• Netflix missed a nomination for Best Documentary Short for the first time since 2015.

• Diane Warren (“Flamin’ Hot“) received her 15th Oscar nomination, all for Best Original Song. If she doesn’t win, she’ll extend her record as the woman with the most nominations without a win (though she received an Honorary Oscar last year). Roland Anderson, Thomas Newman, and Alex North also received 15 nominations without a win, and Greg P. Russell received 16 without a win.

• Diane Warren received her seventh consecutive nomination for Best Original Song. This is the second-most consecutive nominations among living people, following John Williams, who was nominated for eight consecutive years (1995-2002).

• With the nomination of “Wahzhazhe (A Song For My People)” from “Killers of the Flower Moon,” this is the fourth year in a row with a non-English language song nominated for Best Original Song. This has never happened before. It is the first Osage-language song to be nominated.

• Billie Eilish is the first person born in the 21st century to receive multiple Oscar nominations. To date, she and Quvenzhané Wallis are the only nominees born this century.

With such a unique field of nominees, there’s sure to be more history made with the Oscar winners themselves. As always, keep an eye on Next Best Picture as we cover the awards race and predict the winners. What stats and trivia surprised you the most? Did we miss any interesting tidbits? What history-making win are you predicting for the Oscars themselves? What do you think about this year’s nominations? Please check out our updated predictions here, listen to our reactions to the nominations here, and let us know your thoughts in the comments section below or over on our Twitter account.