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1. Cate Blanchett, who received her first Academy Award nomination in 1998 for her leading role as Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth, is the fifth performer (and first woman) nominated for playing the same role in two different films. She was nominated again for her portrayal of the Virgin Queen in Elizabeth: The Golden Age in 2008. The same year she was also nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category for a very different role. Name the movie.

Blanchett was nominated for her performance in a supporting role in I'm Not There, below.

2. Who is the youngest performer to accumulate 5 acting nominations?

In 2006, Kate Winslet, at 31, became the youngest performer to have received 5 nominations. The previous record holder was Olivia de Havilland, who was 33 when she received her fifth nomination for The Heiress (1949).

Winslet received her 6th nomination and first Oscar in 2009 for The Reader.

2. Seven men but only one woman have won three or more Academy Awards in a single year. Who is she?

Fran Walsh won three Oscars for her work on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003): Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay and Original Song.

Bonus points: Name the two other women who have taken home more than one competitive award in a single year.

Edith Head was the first at the 1950 (23rd) Awards, winning in both the color and black-and-white costume design categories for Samson and Delilah and All about Eve, respectively; and Catherine Martin at the 2001 (74th) Awards won in both the art direction and costume design categories for her work on Moulin Rouge.

Penelope Cruz won the Oscar for actress in a supporting role in 2009 for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, below.

Cruz and Meryl Steep are the only 2010 nominees to be in contention for a second straight year. This time Cruz was nominated for her role in the musical Nine, below.

3. Name the youngest Best Actress nominee to date.

Keisha Castle-Hughes, at 13, for “Whale Rider” in 2003.

4. Name the eight foreign-language films that have been nominated in the Best Picture category.

Grand Illusion (1938), Z (1969), The Emigrants (1972), Cries and Whispers (1973), The Postman (Il Postino) (1995), Life Is Beautiful (1998), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006).

5. What is the only song from a documentary film to win in the Original Song category?

I Need to Wake Up (music and lyric by Melissa Etheridge) from An Inconvenient Truth, in 2006. The film also won in the Feature Documentary category.

Bonus points: Name the only other song from a documentary to be nominated.

More from Mondo Cane (1963).

6. Which four performers have won Academy Awards for performances spoken in languages other than English?

Sophia Loren (1961, Best Actress in Two Women); Robert De Niro (1974, Supporting Actor in The Godfather Part II); Roberto Benigni (1998, Best Actor in Life Is Beautiful); Benicio Del Toro (2000, Supporting Actor in Traffic). In addition, Marlee Matlin won the 1986 Leading Actress award for her performance in Children of a Lesser God in American Sign Language.

With Sofia Coppola’s win in 2003 for her original screenplay for Lost in Translation, the Coppolas became the second family to have three generations of Oscar winners, with Carmine, Francis Ford and Sofia having won. The first were the Hustons: Walter, John and Anjelica.

8. Name the only two pairs of performers nominated for playing the same character in the same film.

Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater and Gloria Stuart as Old Rose in Titanic (1997) and Kate Winslet as Young Iris Murdoch and Judi Dench as Iris Murdoch in Iris (2001).

10. Who was the first black performer to win an Oscar?

Hattie McDaniel, for her supporting performance in 1939’s “Gone with the Wind.”

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