On 10 March, Emma Stone and Martin Scorsese will be hoping to join Jodie Foster and Robert De Niro in becoming two-time Oscar winners. The latter pair, however, will have designs on moving into the exclusive group of artists with three Academy Awards. But who are the other members of Oscar's Two-Time Club? Cinema Paradiso looks to find out.
The race for the acting Oscars has rarely been more open. All five contenders for Best Actor are seeking their first success, with Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers) being the only previous nominee for his Best Supporting role in Ron Howard's Cinderella Man (2005). Nominated for Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things, Emma Stone is the only previous winner in the Best Actress category. But Lily Gladstone's win at the Screen Actors Guild Awards for Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moontips the balance back in her favour just a week after Stone had triumphed at the BAFTAs.
Who will prevail is anyone's guess, so why not give your verdict in our 2024 Oscar prediction competition, with six months of free Cinema Paradiso rentals as the prize!
Best Actor
Seven men have doubled up in the Best Actor category at the Academy Awards. The only one to have a shared and an outright victory is Fredric March, whose work in Rouben Mamoulian's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde couldn't be separated from Wallace Berry's in King Vidor's sentimental boxing saga, The Champ (both 1931). However, March returned to the podium after his performance as a war veteran renewing acquaintance with wife Myrna Loy and daughter Teresa Wright in William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1945).
March has something in common with Bradley Cooper, who has been nominated for his self-directed depiction of composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein in Maestro. Each has been nominated for the male lead in A Star Is Born, with March playing a washed-up actor opposite Janet Gaynor in William A. Wellman's 1937 original and Cooper taking the role of a musician on the downturn alongside Lady Gaga in Cooper's 2018 remake. The pair also have five nominations, an achievement that has been matched by Paul Muni, James Stewart, Gregory Peck, Arthur Kennedy, Albert Finney, Gene Hackman, and Morgan Freeman.
Two more five-time nominees also have a couple of Best Actor statuettes to their credit. As the United States had just entered the Second World War, Gary Cooper's victory for playing a Great War hero in Howard Hawks's Sergeant York (1941) was probably borne on a wave of patriotism. By contrast, his performance as Will Kane in Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952) was considered unAmerican in some quarters during Hollywood's Communist witch-hunt. Despite collecting the award on his friend's behalf, John Wayne never forgave Coop for the scene in which he tosses away his marshal's badge before treading into the dirt.
Having failed to take the prize for Tim Robbins's Dead Man Walking (1995), Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown (1999), and Spike Lee's I Am Sam (2001), Sean Penn came good with his next two nominations. While he won Best Actor for playing an ex-con who runs a neighbourhood convenience store in Clint Eastwood's Mystic River (2003), co-star Tim Robbins took the Best Supporting prize, making them the first pair to do the acting double since Charlton Heston and Hugh Griffith in William Wyler's Ben-Hur (1959). The feat was emulated by Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto in Jean-Marc Vallée'sDallas Buyers Club (2013).
Penn's second win came for his portrayal of assassinated gay rights activist Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant's Milk (2008). He opened his acceptance speech with a line that would have had Duke Wayne spinning in his grave: 'Thank you. Thank you. You commie, homo-loving sons-of-guns!' According to Hollywood lore, Tom Hanks outed former teacher Rawley Farnsworth when he collected his Oscar for playing a gay lawyer who dies of AIDS in Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia (1993). In fact, Hanks had called a couple of days before the ceremony to ask his mentor's permission. But producer Scott Rudin saw the funny side in the misreported story and, consequently, gushing actor Matt Damon costs horrified teacher Kevin Kline his job in Frank Oz's In & Out (1997). Hanks was more careful about what he said when he returned the following year to claim the Oscar for Robert Zemeckis's Forrest Gump (1994).
In so doing, Hanks followed the great Spencer Tracy in securing back-to-back victories. Tracy would be nominated a further seven times, with his nod for Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) coming posthumously. His tally of nine in one category has only been equalled by Laurence Olivier, who became the first to direct himself to an Oscar in Hamlet (1948). Olivier took his score to 10, with a Best Supporting nomination for John Schlesinger's Marathon Man (1976) and citations in the same category enabled Paul Newman, Al Pacino, and Denzel Washington to equal Tracy's total. His turn as a pugnacious Catholic priest in Norman Taurog's Boys Town (1938) is currently unavailable. However, Cinema Paradiso can bring you Victor Fleming's Captains Courageous (1937), an adaptation of a Rudyard Kipling story in which a Portuguese fisherman rescues a 10 year-old boy (Freddie Bartholomew) who has fallen overboard from a luxury liner.
Eighteen years separated Marlon Brando's Best Actor wins. Revolutionising screen acting by introducing the Method to Hollywood, he was unlucky to lose out for Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire to Humphrey Bogart for John Huston's The African Queen (both 1952). But, following consecutive nominations for Kazan's Viva, Zapata! (1952) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Julius Caesar (1953), Brando prevailed as onetime boxing contender Terry Malloy in Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954).
With its theme of naming names, this proved a provocative winner as Hollywood sought to recover from the effects of the HUAC inquiry into Communism in the entertainment industry. Indeed, the film was still stirring emotions when Kazan was presented with an Honorary Oscar in 1999, as several attendees opted not to applaud, while 250 picketed the venue. Having not been nominated since Joshua Logan's Sayonara (1957), Brando was the favourite to win for his work as Don Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972). Once again, however, the audience was divided when Sacheen Littlefeather came to the dais to explain that Brando had decided to decline the award in protest at the depiction of Native Americans in Hollywood films. Following her death in October 2022, however, her sisters revealed that Maria Louise Cruz was Mexican American and had no White Mountain Apache or Yaqui ancestry, as she had claimed.
Despite the snub, Brando was nominated the following year for Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1973), which has become notorious because of the revelations about the treatment of Maria Schneider on the set. But this proved to be Brando's last Best Actor nod, although he was cited for Best Supporting Actor for playing a South African lawyer in Euzhan Palcy's A Dry White Season (1989), which was the only film in his 50-year career to have been directed by a woman.
Brando's total of eight nominations puts him level with Robert De Niro, Jack Lemmon, and Peter O'Toole, who holds the record for most Oscar losses after having failed to be called to the stage for any of the nominations he amassed between David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Roger Michell's Venus (2006). Like his co-star in Peter Glenville's Becket (1964), Richard Burton also drew an Oscar blank. He sits on seven nominations with Robert Duvall, Jeff Bridges, and Dustin Hoffman, whose Best Actor wins came for Robert Benton's Kramer vs Kramer (1979) and Barry Levinson's Rain Man (1988).
Although it has been credited with raising awareness of autism, Hoffman's performance as autistic savant Raymond Babbitt has also been accused of reinforcing negative stereotypes. As around half of all subsequent Oscars in this category have gone to those playing characters with a physical or developmental disability that the actor does not actually share, groups representing disabled performers have protested that these roles could and should have gone to their members.
Best Actress
Emma Stone already has a Golden Globe and a BAFTA in her bag for playing Bella Baxter in Poor Things. But will the Academy seek to break new ground by making Lily Gladstone (who has Piegan Blackfeet and Nez Perce ancestry) the first Native American to win an Oscar for her work in Killers of the Flower Moon?
If she does win, the 35 year-old Stone will match the feat achieved by all but one dual winner of having received the Academy Award for Best Actress twice before turning 40. Indeed, German star Luise Rainer managed the feat at the age of 28 in winning in consecutive years for playing Broadway star Anna Held in Robert Z. Leonard's The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and O-Lan in Sidney Franklin's adaptation of Pearl Buck's Nobel Prize-winning novel, The Good Earth (1937). Such a 'yellowface' performance would no longer receive such acclaim. Not that Hollywood had any objection for another five decades, as Aline MacMahon was nominated for Best Supporting Actress as Mrs Ling Tan in Harold S. Bucquet's take on Buck's Dragon Seed (1944), while Gale Sondergaard was cited in the same category for her portrayal of Lady Thiang in John Cromwell's Anna and the King of Siam (1946). Nine years later, Jennifer Jones landed a Best Actress nomination as Eurasian doctor Han Suyin in Henry King's Love Is a Many Splendored Thing (1955), while Yul Brynner (whose claim of Buryat heritage has been disputed) won Best Actor for essaying King Mongkut in Walter Lang's The King and I (1956).
Even more recently, Linda Hunt won Best Supporting Actress for playing Billy Kwan in Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously (1982). To add insult to injury, she got to present Haing S. Ngor with the Best Supporting Actor statuette the following year for his work as Dith Pran in Roland Joffé's The Killing Fields (1984). Two years after that, the make-up team responsible for turning the Golden Globe-nominated Joel Grey into Korean martial arts expert Chiun in Guy Hamilton's Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985) received an Oscar nomination. A similar controversy has erupted this year, with Jewface accusations being levelled against the nomination for transforming Helen Mirren into Golda Meir in Guy Nattiv's Golda, as well as Bradley Cooper's facial impersonation of Leonard Bernstein in Maestro (both 2023).
Jodie Foster and Hilary Swank had yet to hit the big 30 before taking home their second statuette. At 29, the former was just a few months younger when she followed a win for Jonathan Kaplan's The Accused (1988) with a second for Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Now, the 61 year-old has a chance of becoming a three-time winner if her Best Supporting turn in Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's Nyad pips overwhelming favourite Da'Vine Joy Randolph for Alexander Payne's The Holdovers (both 2023).
Like Olivia De Havilland, Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Jones, Norma Shearer, Irene Dunne, Susan Hayward, Anne Bancroft, Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, Susan Sarandon, Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Michelle Williams, Foster and co-star Annette Bening have five nominations each. Hilary Swank, however, has been chosen each time she has been nominated, as she followed a win for Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry (1999) with another for Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby (2004).
Should she win on 10 March, Stone would join Elizabeth Taylor in doubling up at the age of 35. However, Taylor was only two months past her birthday when she won for Mike Nichols's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) after having previously benefitted from a sympathy vote (after recovering from a near-fatal bout of pneumonia) for her performance in her last picture for MGM, Daniel Mann's Butterfield 8 (1960). Younger than both were Bette Davis and Olivia De Havilland, who were respectively 30 and 33 when they picked up their second Best Actress Oscar for films directed by William Wyler: Jezebel (1938) and The Heiress (1949). Alfred E. Green had guided Davis to her first victory in Dangerous (1935), while Mitchell Leisen had directed De Havilland in To Each His Own (1946). Davis, by the way, was the first performer to amass 10 nominations, when she was listed for her barnstorming turn opposite old rival Joan Crawford in Robert Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).
In 1974, 36 year-old Glenda Jackson followed her triumph as Gudrun Brangwen in Ken Russell's Women in Love (1969) with a second as Vickie Allessio in Melvin Frank's A Touch of Class (1973). This year, sadly, she will be part of the always moving 'In Memoriam' section of the ceremony, having died on 15 June 2023 after completing her final role opposite the retiring Michael Caine in Oliver Parker's The Great Escaper. More happily, Sally Field is still with us. She is currently the last member to join the Two by Forty club, after she followed a win for taking the title role in Martin Ritt's Norma Rae (1979) with success as Edna Spalding in Robert Benton's Places in the Heart (1984), prompting the 37 year-old to gush to the applauding audience, 'I can't deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me!'
Vivien Leigh was less demonstrative in collecting her first Oscar for Victor Fleming's Gone With the Wind (1939), as she began: 'Ladies and gentlemen, please forgive me if my words are inadequate in thanking you for your very great kindness.' However, the 38 year-old was in New York when she took the prize again for Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Greer Garson accepted on her behalf. Leigh had a 100% conversion rate at the Academy Awards, while her compatriot had to be content with one win, for William Wyler's Mrs Miniver (1942), from her seven nominations.
It seems somewhat ungallant to reveal that Jane Fonda is the only dual Best Actress winner to reach the landmark in her forties. She had rather alienated the Academy electorate in the 1960s with her stance on the Vietnam War. But, having taken the Oscar for playing prostitute Bree Daniels in Alan J. Pakula's thriller, Klute (1971), she won hearts and minds as veteran's wife Sally Hyde in Hal Ashby's Coming Home (1978), even making part of her acceptance speech in sign language. Fonda has been nominated seven times, along with Garson, Ingrid Bergman, and Kate Winslet. But let's not forget Thelma Ritter and Glenn Close, who have been recognised on six and eight occasions respectively and gone home empty handed each time.
Supporting Turns
Of the nine performers whose membership of Oscar's Two-Time Club is due to their Best Supporting success, two won their awards for playing historical characters. Anthony Quinn converted his first two nominations for his portrayals of Eufemio Zapata opposite Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata! (1952) and as Paul Gauguin alongside Kirk Douglas's Vincent Van Gogh in Vincente Minnelli's Lust For Life (1956). Quinn had less luck in the Best Actor category, however, as he was overlooked for George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind (1957) and Michael Cacoyannis's Zorba the Greek (1964).
Born in Chihuahua to a Mexican mother and Irish father, Quinn is one of only five Latin American performers to have won an Academy Award. The others are José Ferrer ( Cyrano de Bergerac, 1950), Rita Moreno ( West Side Story, 1961), Benicio del Toro ( Traffic, 2000), and Lupita Nyong'o ( 12 Years a Slave, 2013). By contrast, Jason Robards, Jr. was born into a Hollywood family, with his father being a busy character actor in pictures like D.W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln (1930), Frank Capra's Broadway Bill (1934), Mark Robson's Val Lewton-produced duo of Isle of the Dead (1945) and Bedlam (1946), H.C. Potter's Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), and Sidney Lumet's Long Day's Journey into Night (1962).
These are all available to rent on high-quality disc from Cinema Paradiso. But, while Robards, Sr. never got close to an Academy Award nomination, his son won in consecutive years. Having played Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee in Alan J. Pakula's Watergate saga, All the President's Men (1976), Robards essayed hard-boiled novelist Dashiell Hammett in Fred Zinnemann's Julia (1977), which also brought Vanessa Redgrave a Best Supporting win in the title role.
Robards lost out for Jonathan Demme's Melvin and Howard (1980), which means he shares a two from three record with Melvin Douglas and Peter Ustinov, who share an Imperial Russian heritage. The son of a Latvian émigré concert pianist, Douglas enjoyed a spell in the 1930s as a dapper leading man in classics like Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka (1939), in which he famously made Greta Garbo laugh by falling off his chair. He later settled into supporting roles, winning the Oscar for playing Paul Newman's father in Martin Ritt's Hud (1963) and the ailing friend of Peter Sellers's gardener in Hal Ashby's Being There (1979). In so doing, he set the record for the longest gap between Best Supporting wins, although he was back at the Oscars in the Best Actor category for Gilbert Cates's unjustly neglected I Never Sang For My Father (1970). Douglas is also one of 24 performers to have attained the Triple Crown of Oscar, Tony, and Emmy - although he lacks the Grammy that would have made him an EGOT (see the 'Cinema Paradiso article' for more information).
The grandson of a Russian nobleman, Londoner Peter Ustinov has the distinction of being nominated for two stories set in Ancient Rome. He missed out for Mervyn LeRoy's Quo Vadis (1951), but emerged triumphant for his work as slave trader Lentulus Batiatus in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960). Four years later, Ustinov won again for his amusing turn as hustler Arthur Simon Simpson in Jules Dassin's Topkapi (1964), a heist companion to his earlier masterpiece, Rififi (1955), that was adapted from a novel by the estimable Eric Ambler.
The only other Brit to double up in the Best Supporting stakes is Michael Caine, who joins AnthonyHopkins, Tom Hanks, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Leonardo DiCaprio on overall six nominations. Despite missing out on Best Actor for Lewis Gilbert's Alfie (1966) and Educating Rita (1983), Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Sleuth (1972), and Philip Noyce's The Quiet American (2002), Caine claimed statuettes for Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Lasse Hallström's adaptation of John Irving's The Cider House Rules (1999).
Caine and Hannah and Her Sisters co-star, Dianne Wiest were the fifth pairing to have won Best Supporting Oscars for the same film after Karl Malden and Kim Hunter for A Streetcar Named Desire, Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed for Fred Zinnemann's From Here to Eternity (1953), Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki for Joshua Logan's Sayonara (1957), and Jason Robards and Vanessa Redgrave for Zinnemann's Julia. Subsequently, their feat has been matched by Christian Bale and Melissa Leo for David O. Russell's The Fighter (2010) and Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).
Having missed out for Ron Howard's Parenthood (1989), Wiest's second Oscar came for Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway (1994). This made her the first to win the Best Supporting Actress award in films by the same director. In winning two of his three Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, Walter Brennan (more of whom anon) was directed by William Wyler, although he only took over halfway through Come and Get It (1936) after Samuel Goldwyn had fired Howard Hawks for tinkering with the script - and, ironically, in the process boosting Brennan's previously minor role.
Austrian Christoph Waltz also shares the same director distinction, as both Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012) were signed by Quentin Tarantino. Waltz is the first continental European to win two Best Supporting Oscars. Alongside him, Shelley Winters became the first woman to double up for her work in George Stevens's The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and Guy Green's A Patch of Blue (1965), while Mahershala Ali became the first African American and Muslim dual winner, thanks to Barry Jenkins's Moonlight (2016) and Peter Farrelly's Green Book (2018). Like Waltz, Ali has also won each time he has been nominated, but Winters could count herself unlucky to be overlooked for both George Stevens's A Place in the Sun (1951) and Ronald Neame's The Poseidon Adventure (1972), when she was respectively pipped by Kim Hunter for Streetcar and Eileen Heckart for Milton Katselas's adaptation of Leonard Gershe's play. Butterflies Are Free, which didn't require her to swim a considerable distance underwater!
One of Each
Fourteen performers have won Academy Awards in each of the acting categories. We'll come on to two of the women and one of the men in the next section, as they have more than two Oscars to their names. But we start with Helen Hayes, who waited a record 39 years to double up with a Best Supporting win for George Seaton's Airport (1970) after claiming Best Actress at the 5th ceremony for Edgar Selwyn's The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931). She is also the only actress to double up at the Oscars and the Tonys, an achievement matched only by Fredric March, who did it first.
Jack Lemmon had an 18-year wait to secure his Best Actor prize for John G. Avilden's Save the Tiger (1973) after winning in the supporting category for his comic turn as Ensign Pulver opposite James Cagney and Henry Fonda in John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy's Mister Roberts (1955). A wonderfully versatile actor, Lemmon shares a 2/8 win rate with Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro. However, the latter can move up a division if he can somehow pass Robert Downey, Jr. for Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (2023) with his quietly malevolent display as William King Hale in Killers of the Flower Moon. Martin Scorsese has directed De Niro to half of his nominations, with Taxi Driver (1976) and Cape Fear (1991) being trumped by Raging Bull (1980), which brought a Best Actor win for a punishing display as Jake LaMotta.
De Niro's Best Supporting win came for Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II (1974), in which he spoke in an Italian dialect in making history by winning an Oscar in a role originated by another Academy Award winner, as Don Vito Coreleone had already been played by Marlon Brando in The Godfather (1972). Prior to winning Best Actress for her comic turn in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine (2013), Cate Blanchett (who also has a 2/8 record) achieved a similar first by winning Best Supporting Actress for her Katharine Hepburn in Scorsese's The Aviator (2004), which made her the first to claim an Academy Award by portraying an Oscar winner.
Technically, Renée Zellweger matched the feat by depicting Judy Garland in Rupert Goold's Judy (2019). However, Garland's Oscar for Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz (1939) was a special juvenile award, as she missed out (scandalously) on Best Actress for George Cukor's A Star Is Born (1954) and on Best Supporting Actress for Stanley Kramer's Judgment At Nuremberg (1961). Zellwegger's success in this category came for Anthony Mingella's Cold Mountain (2003) after she had previously been nominated for Best Actress for Sharon Maguire's Bridget Jones' Diary (2001) and Rob Marshall's Chicago (2002).
Maggie Smith received the statuette for Best Supporting Actress by playing an anxious British star fretting over her appearance before attending the Oscar ceremony in Herbert Ross's California Suite (1978), which was scripted by Neil Simon. Jay Presson Allen adapted Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) for Ronald Neame, who guided Smith to the Oscar for Best Actress. Sharing a 2/6 stat with Smith, Jessica Lange also landed the Best Supporting award for playing an actress in Sydney Pollack's Tootsie (1982). This was her first nomination and she took Best Actress with her last to date, although Tony Richardson's Blue Sky (1994) was completed in 1991, when Lange would have found herself up against Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs. So, she can thank those responsible for shelving the picture following the bankruptcy of Orion for her double success.
Also currently on two wins from six nominations, Anthony Hopkins, of course, won Best Actor as Hannibal Lecter opposite Foster's Clarice Starling. Like Lange, he has also converted his first nomination and drew Best Supporting Actor with his most recent, for Florian Zeller's The Father (2020) after missing out for both Steven Spielberg's Amistad (1997) and Fernando Mereilles's The Two Popes (2019), in which he had played the historical figures of John Quincy Adams and Pope Benedict XVI. The former meant the Welshman became the first performer two be nominated for essaying two different American presidents, as he had also been Richard Nixon in Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995).
At 86, Hopkins is still working. But 94 year-old Gene Hackman retired 20 years ago after completing Donald Petrie's Welcome to Mooseport (2004). He won't, therefore, be seeking a sixth nomination and will rest content with his Best Actor win as NYPD Detective 'Popeye' Doyle in William Friedkin's The French Connection (1971) and his Best Supporting success as Sheriff 'Little Bill' Daggett in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992). Circumstances dictated that Christopher Plummer got to be nominated for playing Jean Paul Getty in Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World (2017) and that Kevin Spacey's completed performance wound up on the cutting-room floor following allegations of sexual misconduct (for which he has since been acquitted). It remains to be seen whether he will get to add to his Best Supporting win as Verbal Kint in Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects (1995) and his Best Actor victory as Lester Burnham in Sam Mendes's American Beauty (1999).
As the most nominated Black performer in Oscar history, one would expect Denzel Washington to increase his tally of nine citations. While Paul Newman and Al Pacino only took home a single statuette from the same figure, Washington added a Best Actor prize for Antoine Fuqua's Training Day (2001) to the Best Supporting award he had nabbed for Edward Zwick's Glory (1989). This was his second listing in this category after having played Steve Beko in Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom (1987), He has also been up for Best Actor for his portrayal of further historical figures in Spike Lee's Malcolm X (1992), Norman Jewison's The Hurricane (1999), and Dan Gilroy's Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017).
Why Stop At Two?
The first performer to win three Academy Awards was Walter Brennan, who has been rather forgotten over the passing years. A veteran of the Great War whose voice was affected by mustard gas, he started out as an extra at Universal Studios in 1925. Over the next decade, he racked up dozens of B Westerns and comic shorts before a contract with Sam Goldwyn led to improved roles. We have already seen how he lucked out in having his part in Come and Get It boosted behind the producer's back. But Brennan made the most of his break and scooped a second Best Supporting win for Henry King's horse racing saga, Kentucky (1938). He became the only three-timer to win for character roles when he swayed the vote as Judge Roy Bean in William Wyler's The Westerner (1940). A reunion with Gary Cooper on Howard Hawks's Sergeant Yorkmight have brought a fourth win, but Scot Donald Crisp prevailed for John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (both 1941).
Swede Ingrid Bergman became the first to win three Oscars across two categories. Following a first nomination for Sam Wood's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), she won Best Actress as Alice Alquist in George Cukor's melodrama, Gaslight (1944). Further nods came for Leo McCarey's The Bells of St Mary's (1945) and Victor Fleming's Joan of Arc (1948). But Bergman fell from favour in Hollywood after her adulterous romance with Italian director Roberto Rossellini and it was seen as a sign of forgiveness when she won a second statuette in the title role of Anatole Litvak's Anastasia (1956). However, she wasn't nominated again for 18 years, when she received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Greta Ohlsson in Sidney Lumet's all-star adaptation of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1974). He had offered her the more significant role of Princess Dragomiroff, but she had chosen to play the Swedish missionary and didn't expect to win. Indeed, she had already been on the stage to collect an honorary award on behalf of the indisposed Jean Renoir and had been so surprised at hearing her name that she had apologised to Valentina Cortese for beating her for her poised display in François Truffaut's Day For Night (1973), which is the subject of one of Cinema Paradiso's What to Watch Next articles.
Jack Nicholson has a Best Supporting win in his trio of victories. This recognition for playing retired astronaut Garrett Breedlove in James L. Brooks's Terms of Endearment (1983) came between Best Actor successes as Randle. P. McMurphy in Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and as Melvin Udall in his reunion with Brooks on As Good As It Gets (1997). In all, Nicholson has amassed 12 nominations, which makes him the most listed male actor in Oscar history. In addition to Best Supporting nods for Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969), Warren Beatty's Reds (1981), and Rob Reiner's A Few Good Men (1992), he has also accumulated Best Actor recognition for Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces (1970), Hal Ashby's The Last Detail (1973), Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), John Huston's Prizzi's Honor (1985), and Alexander Payne's About Schmidt (2002).
Nicholson is now retired, as is Daniel Day-Lewis. He only has half the number of nominations, but they have all come in the Best Actor category. Having won first time up as Christy Brown in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot (1989), he triumphed again as Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (2007) and in the title role of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln (2012). He missed out as Gerry Conlon in Sheridan's In the Name of the Father (1993), as Bill the Butcher Cutting in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York (2002), and as Reynolds Woodcock in Anderson's Phantom Thread (2017), which he insists will be his final project.
Day-Lewis's 50% record is identical to that of Frances McDormand, although she also has three Best Supporting nominations, for Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning (1988), Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous (2000), and Niki Caro's North Country (2005). Her three Oscars were awarded for the lead roles of Marge Gunderson in Joel and Ethan Coen's Fargo (1996), Mildred Hayes in Martin McDonagh's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and Fern in Chloé Zhao's Nomadland (2020). To date, McDormand is the only Best Actress winner to have been directed to an Oscar by her husband (and brother-in-law), although Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon were an item when she won for Dead Man Walking (1995).
McDormand is also only the sixth Best Actress winner to have been directed by a woman. The first was Marlee Matlin in Randa Haines's Children of a Lesser God (1986), who has been followed by Holly Hunter in Jane Campion's The Piano (1993), Hilary Swank in Kimberly Peirce's Boys Don't Cry (1999), Charlize Theron in Patty Jenkins's Monster (2003), and Meryl Streep in Phyllida Law's The Iron Lady (2011).
This was Streep's second win in the category after Alan J. Pakula's Sophie's Choice (1982), She also has a Best Supporting statuette for Kramer vs Kramer (1979) and a further 18 nominations. This makes her the most nominated performer by a comfortable and, one suspects, unbridgeable margin. Now 74, Streep remains busy, although she hasn't been nominated since Steven Spielberg's The Post (2017), with the seven-year gap being the longest between nominations since she was first recognised for Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978).
Consequently, Katharine Hepburn's record of four Best Actress wins remains unequalled. Indeed, all 12 of her nominations came in this category, which is also unique. She won at the first time of asking as aspiring actress Eva Lovelace in Lowell Sherman's Morning Glory (1933). A second nomination arrived for George Stevens's Alice Adams (1935). But Hepburn's career had its troughs and she was branded 'box-office poison' in a damning 1938 article. Undaunted, she bounced back with nominations for George Cukor's The Philadelphia Story (1940) and Woman of the Year (1942), and more followed for John Huston's The African Queen (1951), David Lean's Summertime (1955), Joseph Anthony's The Rainmaker (1956), Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), and Sidney Lumet'sLong Day's Journey into Night (1962).
But it seemed as though the 60 year-old's Oscar race was run. Hepburn was never one to quit, however, even as she had started to suffer from essential tremor. Thus, having ended a 34-year wait to land a second Best Actress prize as Christina Drayton opposite partner Spencer Tracy and niece Katharine Houghton in Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), she won again the following year as Eleanor of Aquitaine in Anthony Harvey's The Lion in Winter. Hepburn made history again at the 41st Academy Awards by sharing the category's first tie with the debuting Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice in William Wyler's Funny Girl (both 1968). This back-to-back success matched that of Luise Rainer three decades earlier. But Hepburn had one last Oscar night to savour, as she won again for her poignant display as Ethel Thayer opposite a dying Henry Fonda in Mark Rydell's On Golden Pond (1981).
In so doing, she set another record, as 48 years had elapsed between her first and last Oscars. But Hepburn couldn't attend the ceremony, as she was appearing in her final Broadway play, The West Side Waltz. This had been written by Ernest Thompson, who was on hand to collect his award for Best Adapted Screenplay for On Golden Pond and to invite the entire audience to 'suck face' with him after the show.
Doubled-Up Directors
Although he would love to join the Two-Time Club if he wins Best Director for Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese has still made Oscar history before the 96th ceremony. By receiving his 10th nomination, he passes Steven Spielberg to become the most nominated living director and he now only trails William Wyler by two for the all-time record. The German-born Wyler also leads the way for consecutive Best Picture nominations (seven, 1936-42) and for directing the most Oscar-nominated (36) and Oscar-winning (14) performances. Elia Kazan (24/9), George Cukor (21/5), Fred Zinnemann (20/6), and Woody Allen (18/7) trail in Wyler's wake. But Scorsese (26/5) could add two more if Lily Gladstone and/or Robert De Niro's names are called on the big night.
Scorsese is unique in having all 10 of his Best Director nominations also go up for Best Picture, although Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Sidney Lumet, and Clint Eastwood have done likewise in posting 4/4 records. Wyler only missed out once, as did Frank Capra (6/7). But Spielberg has been snubbed on four occasions when he was up for Best Picture (9/13), although Mervyn LeRoy (1/8), Henry King (2/7), and Sam Wood (2/6) can feel more aggrieved. David Lean and Fred Zinnemann actually drew one more Best Director than Best Picture nomination (7/6), as did Alfred Hitchcock, John Huston, and Elia Kazan (all 5/4). Billy Wilder had eight Best Director nods, with only five titles going up for Best Picture, while Clarence Brown and King Vidor (5/2), Frank Lloyd and Robert Altman (5/3), and Stanley Kubrick. Mike Nichols, and Peter Weir (all 4/3) have all outperformed their pictures in the Oscar stakes. Remarkably, Italian maestro Federico Fellini never landed a single Best Picture nomination, despite being up for Best Director four times, for La dolce vita (1960), 8½ (1963), Fellini Satyricon (1969), and Amarcord (1973).
John Ford was bypassed on four occasions in having nine titles nominated for Best Picture. But he only missed out on Best Director once, when Stagecoach (1939) lost to Gone With the Wind, which was actually directed by Victor Fleming, with a little help from George Cukor and Sam Wood and plenty of interference from producer David O. Selznick. Ford holds the record for Best Director wins, with The Informer (1935), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and The Quiet Man (1952) all taking the prize. But only one of the quartet was also a Best Picture winner. Frank Capra and William Wyler fell one short, after respectively receiving Oscars for It Happened One Night (1934), Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936), and You Can't Take It With You (1938), and Mrs Miniver (1942), The Best Years of Our Lives (1945), and Ben-Hur (1959).
The first to receive two Oscars for directing was the Russian-born Lewis Milestone. At the inaugural awards, he won Best Directing (Comedy Picture) for the military romp, Two Arabian Knights (1927), a silent that was produced by Howard Hughes. He returned to the 3rd Academy Awards to claim Best Director for another Great War title. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), thus pipping Frank Borzage to the double by two years. Hailing from Salt Lake City, Borzage had won Best Directing (Dramatic Picture) at the first Oscars for Seventh Heaven (1927), which can rented from Cinema Paradiso in a double bill with Street Angel (1928). His second winner, Bad Girl (1931), is more elusive, however.
Similarly unavailable are Frank Lloyd's The Divine Lady (1929) and Cavalcade (1933). But the Scot would have had a third win in six years had John Ford not been named Best Director for The Informer when Lloyd landed Best Picture with Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), which teamed Charles Laughton and Clark Gable as Captain William Bligh and Fletcher Christian. Lloyd is one of only two Brits to double up in this category, with the other being David Lean, who planned a two-part account of the 1789 mutiny with screenwriter Robert Bolt. When he fell ill, Melvyn Bragg was brought in to script 'The Lawbreakers' and 'The Long Arm'. But, even though the screenplays were condensed to form 'Pandora's Box', Lean couldn't raise the funding and the replica ship he had commissioned was used in Roger Donaldson's The Bounty (1984), with Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson.
Lean won for two epics, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Subsequently, only Steven Spielberg has doubled up with pictures on a similar scale, as he won for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998), although the latter lost Best Picture to John Madden's Shakespeare in Love. However, combat also features prominently in Oliver Stone's triumphs, Platoon (1986) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). The latter didn't win Best Picture, either, as Driving Miss Daisy took the top prize without Bruce Beresford even making the Best Director cut. This makes it one of 27 films to have won Best Picture but not Best Director in the 95 ceremonies to date.
Seven of these instances happened in Oscar's first decade, while nine have occurred since the millennium. Among the most notable were the 1940 split that cost Alfred Hitchcock an Oscar for Rebecca; the 1948 division that deprived Laurence Olivier of a unique Best Picture/Actor/Director treble for Hamlet when John Huston won for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); the 1967 verdict that saw Mike Nichols take Best Director for The Graduate, while Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night won Best Picture; the 1972 shocker that meant Francis Ford Coppola won Best Picture with The Godfather, but lost Best Director to Bob Fosse for Cabaret (1972); the 2000 controversy when Steven Soderbergh was declared Best Director for Trafficwhen Ridley Scott's Gladiator took Best Picture;
and the infamous moment at the 89th Academy Awards when Barry Jenkins's Moonlight was eventually declared Best Picture after a mix-up involving La La Land, which had earlier made Damien Chazelle the youngest ever winner of the Oscar for Best Director.
The chances of a parting of the ways was increased in 2008, when it was decided to allow 10 nominations for Best Picture and only five for Best Director. Subsequently, there have been six split decisions, with the sole instance of one woman director pipping another to the Picture/Director double coming in 2021, when Sian Heder's CODA took first prize after Jane Campion had won Best Director for The Power of the Dog when Heder hadn't even been nominated. Such shenanigans, however, have only cost Francis Ford Coppola a place in the Two-Time Club, although he had the bittersweet pleasure of winning Best Director for The Godfather Part II with Bob Fosse among his vanquished rivals for Lenny (both 1974).
Back at the Two-Time clubhouse, we find Leo McCarey, who won for The Awful Truth (1937) when William Dieterle's The Life of Emile Zola took Best Picture and for Going My Way (1944), in the year in which Barry Fitzgerald entered Oscar folklore for being nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Father Fitzgibbon. He won in the latter category. Billy Wilder missed out for Double Indemnity, but emerged victorious the following year with The Lost Weekend (1945). Having been overlooked for Some Like It Hot (1959), his second win came for The Apartment (1960). The 15-year gap is the biggest between dual Best Director wins, with Fred Zinnemann being the runner-up, courtesy of the 13-year hiatus between From Here to Eternity (1953) and A Man For All Seasons (1966). Wilder and Zinnemann were both Austrians and their double double-up record is shared by Turkish-born Elia Kazan for Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and On the Waterfront (1954).
In taking consecutive Best Director and Best Screenplay awards, Joseph L. Mankiewicz failed to double up with A Letter to Three Wives (1949) when Robert Rossen's All the King's Men was named Best Picture. But he came good the following year, when All About Eve (1950) won Best Picture and its 14 nominations included ones for Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Thelma Ritter, and Celeste Holm, thus making it the only film with four nominated actresses in screen history.
George Stevens has the unwanted record of having landed Best Director twice without once winning Best Picture. His 1951 drama, A Place in the Sun, lost to Vincente Minnelli's An American in Paris, while Giant was beaten by Michael Anderson's all-star adaptation of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days (both 1956).
Robert Wise is the only Two-Timer to have co-directed a winning film, as he shared the credit for West Side Story (1961) with choreographer Jerome Robbins, who never made another movie. A former editor who included Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) among his credits, Wise remained prolific and became the only person to win Best Director for two musicals, when he prevailed with The Sound of Music (1965). These victories put him on a par with Wilder, Zinnemann, and Kazan (see above) and they were joined by Miloš Forman and Clint Eastwood, who respectively did the Picture/Director two step with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984) and Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004).
Coming more up to date, Mexican Alejandro González Iñárritu did the Picture/Director double with Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) , only to see The Revenant lose out for Best Picture to Tom McCarthy's Spotlight (both 2015). Compatriot Alfonso Cuarón, who became the first Latin American to be named Best Director, has missed out on Best Picture each time he has won. When he triumphed with
Gravity (2013), he was pipped to the top award by Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, while Roma was prevented from becoming the first Best Picture winner in Spanish by Peter Farrelly's Green Book (both 2018).
Finally, spare a thought for Taiwan's Ang Lee. Not only was he robbed of the double when Paul Haggis's Crash somehow won Best Picture instead of Brokeback Mountain (both 2005), but he also saw Ben Affleck's Argo take the major honour without even securing a Best Director nomination after he had won with Life of Pi (both 2012). This year, Christopher Nolan is the hot favourite to double up with Oppenheimer. But, if Oscar has taught us anything over the last 95 years, it's to expect the unexpected and keep smiling when the camera's on you, even when you lose.
