by 1.
Eva Marie Saint is currently the oldest living Oscar winner at 98. She’s actually older than the Oscars themselves, which started five years after she was born.
2.
The shortest performance ever to win an acting Oscar was given by Beatrice Straight. He was only on screen for 5 minutes and 2 seconds Network in 1976.
3.
A total of 10 children have been nominated for competitive acting awards before their 12th birthday. Two of them (Tatum O’Neal and Anna Paquin) even won.
Here’s the full breakdown of the kid candidates:
4.
Only one person has won two Oscars for the same performance, and that’s Harold Russell, a non-professional actor who lost both hands in World War II.
The Academy’s board actually didn’t think Russell would win in his category, so at the last minute (literally the night before!), they created a special Oscar on his behalf.
5.
Only one person has ever been able to legally sell their Oscar at auction, and that’s also Harold Russell.
Then-President of the Academy, Karl Malden, tried to convince Russell not to sell his Oscar, even offering him an “interest-free loan of $20,000” to pay it back. Despite objections, Russell sold it to a then-unnamed buyer for $60,500.
6.
The only person to ever win an Oscar for playing an actual Oscar winner is Cate Blanchett, who played Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator in 2004.
FYI: Renée Zellweger apparently won her second Oscar for playing Judy Garland in the 2019 biopic Judybut Garland (honorary Oscar winner) never won a ~competitive~ Oscar, so technically, Zellweger’s win doesn’t count for that stat.
7.
And the only actress who won for playing a fictional Oscar nominee is Maggie Smith. She won Best Supporting Actress in 1979 for her role as Diana Barry California Suite.
8.
Kate Hepburn holds the record for most Oscars by an actress. All four were for Best Actress and she received 12 Best Actress nominations in total.
9.
Walt Disney has won the most Oscars of any person, with a total of 22 awards. He also holds the record for most Oscars won in a single night, with four.
And here are all of Walt Disney’s nominations and wins since 1954, if you’re curious.
10.
On three separate occasions, two different actors won Oscars for the same character. The most recent example of this is Rita Moreno and Ariana DeBose, who both played Anita in their respective West Side Story movie theater.
11.
The first time two actors won for the same character was when Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro received Oscars for playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II.
12.
And the only other time this happened was when Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix both won for playing the Joker at the 2009 and 2020 ceremonies.
13.
Since the Academy Awards began in 1929, only 16 Oscars have been awarded posthumously. Of those 16, only two were in the acting categories: Heath Ledger and Peter Finch.
14.
Midnight Cowboy it is the only X-rated film to win Best Picture. The 1969 film won three Oscars in total, out of seven nominations.
15.
Hattie McDaniel was the first black woman to be nominated for an Academy Award, winning Best Supporting Actress in 1940 for her work in Gone With the Wind.
16.
Three actors have refused to accept their Oscars outright – the most famous being Marlon Brando in 1973 after winning Best Actor for The Godfather.
17.
A few years before Brando’s denial, George S. Scott was denied his Best Actor win Patton (1970) because he “did not feel that he was in any competition with other actors.”
18.
And the first to refuse their Oscar was Dudley Nichols. It was denied the then-titled Best Writing and Screenplay award The Informant in 1936 due to a union boycott.
19.
The shortest Oscar speech ever came from Patty Duke, who simply said “thank you” when she won the Best Supporting Actress award in 1963.
20.
Edith Head is the woman with the most awards and the most nominations in Oscar history, with 8 wins from 35 nominations. She’s so iconic that Pixar literally used her as inspiration when they created the character Edna Mode in The Incredibles.
21.
No one has ever won the Academy Award for Best Actor for their debut performance, but four have won it for Best Actress.
22.
No film has won Oscars in all four acting categories, but three have won “The Big 5,” also known as Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor and Actress.
23.
And finally, there were six ties on Oscar night, two of which occurred in the acting categories (the most famous was between Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand in 1969).
