A look at notable facts, figures and curiosities from Tuesday's nominations for the 96th Academy Awards, which saw Oppenheimer lead with 13 Oscar nominations, with Poor Things and Killers of the Flower Moon also running up big numbers.
Jodie Foster became an Academy Awards mainstay starting at age 14 with her first nomination for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver in 1977. This year she returns with a best supporting actress nomination after an unusually long absence. Like her Nyad co-star Annette Bening, she got her fifth Oscar nomination for the based-on-a-true-story swimming drama from Netflix, and it's Foster's first in 29 years. Her last nod was for Nell in 1995.
She has won twice, for The Accused in 1989 and for The Silence of the Lambs in 1992. (Bening has yet to take a statuette home.) Foster has more nominations than the rest of the actors in her category combined. Emily Blunt, Danielle Brooks, America Ferrera and Da’Vine Joy Randolph are all first-timers.
Foster's gap between nods isn't close to a record, though. Last year, Judd Hirsch got his first nomination in 42 years, for The Fabelmans, breaking a record set by Henry Fonda. Helen Hayes went 39 years between her 1932 nomination for The Sin of Madelon Claudet and her 1971 nod for Airport. She won both times.
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The nominations for Foster and Colman Domingo — nominated for best actor for Rustin — also brought the rare Oscars occurrence of openly gay actors playing gay characters.
At 91, John Williams becomes the oldest nominee in history with his nod for writing the original score for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, breaking his own record, set last year at 90.
Williams has been nominated a staggering 54 times — 49 for original score and five for original song, making him the most nominated living person. He’ll need a half-dozen more to surpass the late Walt Disney’s record of 59 nominations.
But despite all those chances, Williams has won just five times, and has come up empty in his last 22 nominations, not taking a trophy since the score for Schindler’s List in 1994.
A record three films directed by women were nominated for best picture: Barbie from Greta Gerwig, Anatomy of a Fall from Justine Triet, and Past Lives from Celine Song. But only one of them – Triet – was nominated for best director.
Gerwig's snub along with Margot Robbie's in the best actress category for playing Barbie were widely decried after the nominations were announced Tuesday. But each are still in the larger pool of nominees. Robbie is a producer who will get an Oscar if Barbie wins best picture. And Gerwig is nominated for best adapted screenplay. It's her fourth nomination, and the fourth for her husband and co-writer Noah Baumbach, though it's their first together.
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Steven Spielberg managed to be an Oscars presence even on a year off. Spielberg didn’t direct a movie that was eligible for an Academy Award this year, but still managed to nab a nomination as a producer of Maestro. He’ll get his fourth Oscar if the Bradley Cooper-directed film wins best picture.
Scorsese, meanwhile, surpassed his friend Spielberg with his 10th best director nomination. Both trail William Wyler, who was nominated 12 times and won three. And while Spielberg trails Scorsese in director nominations with nine, he tops him in wins two to one.
But Scorsese stands alone as the oldest-ever best director nominee at 81, surpassing John Huston’s nomination at 79 for Prizzi’s Honor in 1986.