Academy Awards®

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS

In its history, only three films have swept all five of the most important Academy Awards ^® : Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Writing. It Happened One Night first accomplished this feat in 1934 for director Frank Capra, actress Claudette Colbert, actor Clark Gable, and writer Robert Riskin (for Best Writing Adaptation). Over forty years later, in 1975, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest swept the Awards for director Milos Forman, actress Louise Fletcher, actor Jack Nicholson, and writers Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman (Best Writing, Screenplay Adapted from Other Material). In 1991 The Silence of the Lambs became the third film to achieve this landmark for director Jonathan Demme, actress Jodie Foster, actor Anthony Hopkins, and writer Ted Tally (Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium).

Other films have won more Oscars ^® . The record as of 2005 was held by three films that each won eleven Academy Awards ^® : Ben-Hur , Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1959 (12 nominations); Titanic , Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount, 1997 (14 nominations); and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King , New Line, 2003 (11 nominations). Only two films have received fourteen nominations: Titanic and All About Eve (1950), which took home six awards. Meryl Streep (b. 1949) holds the record for the most acting award nominations (13); Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) remains the only actress to have achieved the feat of four Best Actress Oscars ^® . Bette Davis follows the record holders, with ten nominations and two Oscars ^® . Jack Nicholson holds the Academy record among male actors, with twelve nominations and three Oscars ^® . Laurence Olivier (1907–1989) received ten nominations and one Oscar ^® . As of 2005, forty-seven actors had received five or more Oscar ^® nominations.

Among legendary directors, William Wyler (1902–1981) received twelve nominations, seven in the consecutive years from 1936 to 1942, and three Oscars ^® . However, John Ford (1894–1973) holds the most Best Director Awards, at four out of five nominations. It should be noted that many individuals in other areas (costume design, cinematography, art direction) have received many more nominations; for example, art director Cedric Gibbons received thirty-eight nominations and won eleven times, and costume designer Edith

Head (1897–1981) won eight of the thirty-five times that she was nominated.

Five times the Academy has declared a tie. At the Fifth Awards in 1931–1932, a tie occurred for the Best Actor Award between Wallace Beery for The Champ and Fredric March for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , though technically March received one more vote (at the time, fewer than a three-vote difference equaled a tie). In 1949 A Chance to Live and So Much for So Little tied for the Documentary (Short Subject) Oscar ^® . And in 1968 Katharine Hepburn, for The Lion in Winter , and Barbra Streisand, for Funny Girl, tied for Best Actress. In 1986 the Documentary (Feature) went to Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got and Down and Out in America . And in 1994 Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life and Trevor shared the Short Film (Live Action) Oscar ^® .