Hollywood Week: Academy Awards Trivia
Whether you're just interested in random facts or you want to make a game out of it, everyone loves a little bit of trivia. Here are twenty pieces of Academy Award trivia.
1. Meryl Streep holds the record for most acting nominations with 18, including her nomination this year for August: Osage County. Runners up to this record are Jack Nicholson and Katherine Hepburn with 12 each.
2. The red carpet used at the Kodak Theatre each Oscar night is 500 feet long and 33 feet wide.
3. If you’d like your film to be nominated for an Oscar, it must be at least 40 minutes long, at a minimum resolution of 2048x1080, and screened for at least a week in Los Angeles County, among other things.
4. There’s only be one Oscar winner named Oscar, Oscar Hammerstein II, who won twice.
5. Seat-fillers at the Academy Awards make $125 per hour.
6. Amy Adams is the only Best Actress nominee this year who has never won an Oscar.
7. David O Russell has been nominated three times for Best Director in only four years, for The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook, and American Hustle.
8. The Lone Ranger, which everyone agrees was terrible, is now an Oscar nominee in the Best Makeup Design category.
9. Wolf of Wall Street is allegedly uses the f-word the most of any nominated movie ever. People differ over how many times the word gets said, but it’s definitely more than 500.
10. Jennifer Lawrence is the youngest person to ever have three Oscar nominations, at 23. She makes me feel like I’ve already failed at life.
11. Bruce Dern’s (Nebraska) last nomination was 35 years ago for his film Coming Home.
12. Kevin O’Connell is known as the biggest loser in Oscar history, having been nominated twenty times and never winning.
13. Lupita Nyong’o and Barkhad Abdi are both nominated for their first screen performances ever.
14. The youngest Oscar winner was ten (Tatum O’Neal in 1973). The oldest was 82 (Christopher Plummer in 2012). I bet you’re saying “But what about Shirley Temple!?” Her award that she got at age five was honorary.
15. Only one woman has ever won the Oscar for Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow in 2010 for The Hurt Locker. Only four women have been nominated in the category ever.
16. In fact, the ‘average’ best director is white, male, and 46.
17. Nominees and other guests will be served 1.200 bottles of champagne at the ceremonies this year.
18. Acceptance speeches get to be 45 seconds long before the orchestra starts playing.
19. It takes almost a month to manufacture the 50+ statues needed for the ceremony. The engraving isn’t attached until after the winner is announced. Stopping by the engraving station is one of the things the stars have to do when they are led off the stage after winning.
20. And let’s end with a winner. John Williams, composer, received his 49th nomination, making him more nominated than anyone except Walt Disney (who had 59).
If you're hosting a viewing party, maybe you could make this isn't a trivia game and have a prize at the end? A few of these are obscure enough that it will be hard to guess.
1. Meryl Streep holds the record for most acting nominations with 18, including her nomination this year for August: Osage County. Runners up to this record are Jack Nicholson and Katherine Hepburn with 12 each.
2. The red carpet used at the Kodak Theatre each Oscar night is 500 feet long and 33 feet wide.
3. If you’d like your film to be nominated for an Oscar, it must be at least 40 minutes long, at a minimum resolution of 2048x1080, and screened for at least a week in Los Angeles County, among other things.
4. There’s only be one Oscar winner named Oscar, Oscar Hammerstein II, who won twice.
5. Seat-fillers at the Academy Awards make $125 per hour.
6. Amy Adams is the only Best Actress nominee this year who has never won an Oscar.
7. David O Russell has been nominated three times for Best Director in only four years, for The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook, and American Hustle.
8. The Lone Ranger, which everyone agrees was terrible, is now an Oscar nominee in the Best Makeup Design category.
9. Wolf of Wall Street is allegedly uses the f-word the most of any nominated movie ever. People differ over how many times the word gets said, but it’s definitely more than 500.
10. Jennifer Lawrence is the youngest person to ever have three Oscar nominations, at 23. She makes me feel like I’ve already failed at life.
11. Bruce Dern’s (Nebraska) last nomination was 35 years ago for his film Coming Home.
12. Kevin O’Connell is known as the biggest loser in Oscar history, having been nominated twenty times and never winning.
13. Lupita Nyong’o and Barkhad Abdi are both nominated for their first screen performances ever.
14. The youngest Oscar winner was ten (Tatum O’Neal in 1973). The oldest was 82 (Christopher Plummer in 2012). I bet you’re saying “But what about Shirley Temple!?” Her award that she got at age five was honorary.
15. Only one woman has ever won the Oscar for Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow in 2010 for The Hurt Locker. Only four women have been nominated in the category ever.
16. In fact, the ‘average’ best director is white, male, and 46.
17. Nominees and other guests will be served 1.200 bottles of champagne at the ceremonies this year.
18. Acceptance speeches get to be 45 seconds long before the orchestra starts playing.
19. It takes almost a month to manufacture the 50+ statues needed for the ceremony. The engraving isn’t attached until after the winner is announced. Stopping by the engraving station is one of the things the stars have to do when they are led off the stage after winning.
20. And let’s end with a winner. John Williams, composer, received his 49th nomination, making him more nominated than anyone except Walt Disney (who had 59).
If you're hosting a viewing party, maybe you could make this isn't a trivia game and have a prize at the end? A few of these are obscure enough that it will be hard to guess.