| 1.
Who has the most Oscar nominations? The most wins?
The late Walt Disney leads
the pack with 59 nominations and 26 awards, including the Irving
G. Thalberg Award.
Meryl Streep has the most
acting nominations with 16, but won the gold only twice. At
the 75th Academy Awards, her 12th nomination, this time for Supporting
Actress in Adaptation, broke a tie with Katharine
Hepburn. All 12 of Hepburn’s nominations were for performances
in leading roles.
Below, Meryl Streep received
her annual nomination in 2010 for Best Actress in Julie &
Julia (2009).

Katharine Hepburn garnered
the most acting gold, with 4 Oscars for Best Actress. Ingrid
Bergman, Walter Brennan and Jack Nicholson tie for second
with 3 Oscars each.
Ben Hur (1959),
Titanic (1997) and Lord of the Rings: Return of the
King (2003) are tied for film with the most Oscars, at 11
each.
2. What famous director never
won an Oscar®?
Alfred Hitchcock was nominated
for Best Director 5 times for Rebecca (1940), Lifeboat
(1944), Spellbound (1945), Rear Window
(1954) and Psycho (1960), but never brought home the
gold. However, in 1967 he received the Irving G. Thalberg Award
for Lifetime Achievement.
Robert Altman, Clarence Brown,
and King Vidor are in the same fix, batting 0 for 5 at
the Oscars®.
Martin Scorsese was nominated
for Best Director in 2004 for The Aviator, and on
4 previous occasions: Raging Bull (1980), The
Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Good Fellas
(1990) and Gangs of New York (2002), putting him in
the 0 for 5 category. However, he finally took home an Oscar in
2007 for The Departed.

Martin Scorsese finally won his Best
Director Oscar for The Departed in 2007.
Directors with 4 nominations but
no wins include: Federico Fellini, Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet,
and Peter Weir.
3. Which movie won every category
for which it was nominated?
Lord of the Rings: Return
of the King (2003) received 11 awards in every category
in which it was nominated (Best Picture, Best Director, Adapted
Screenplay, Film Editing, Makeup, Original Score, Original Song,
Art Direction, Costume Design, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects).
Other films sweeping their categories
include: Gigi (1958) and The Last Emperor
(1987), both with 9 wins, It Happened One Night (1934)
with 5 and The Matrix (1999) with 4.
4. Which women have been nominated
for Best Director?
Lina Wertmüller for Seven
Beauties (1976), Jane Campion for The Piano
(1993), and Sophia Coppola, for Lost in Translation
in 2003. Coppola didn't win the Best Director Oscar, but
did take home Best Original Screenplay award for that movie.
In 2010, Kathryn Bigelow
became the fifth female director to be nominated, for her picture
The Hurt Locker. However, she also had major imput
into Titanic. She and Cameron were partners at the
time.

5. Who were the youngest actors
to receive an Oscar?
Shirley Temple received
a miniature "junior" Oscar at age 6 years 310 days, and Tatum
O'Neal received one for Paper Moon (1973) at age
10 years, 148 days.
6. Which movies won the Big Five
(Best Picture, Lead Actor, Lead Actress, Best Director, Best Screenplay)?
It Happened One Night
in 1934, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1975,
and Silence of the Lambs in 1991.
7. Name the only two people to
direct themselves to an Oscar-winning performance.
Laurence Olivier, who was
named Best Actor in 1948 for “Hamlet,” also directed
the film. Roberto Benigni directed “Life Is Beautiful,”
for which he was named Best Actor in 1998.

8. How many Oscars are
given out each year?
The number varies with the possibility
of a tie. Fifty awards are cast each year by R. S. Owens and
Company in Chicago. Any unused awards are placed in the Academy's
vault until the next year.
- Jan Snead & RWright
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Oscar Trivia

Disney/Pixar's
UP is just the second fully animated feature to
be nominated for Best Picture. The first was Disney's Beauty
and the Beast (1991).

Mickey Mouse helped bring home many Oscars
for Walt Disney.

Meryl Streep has the most acting
nominations, including Kramer vs. Kramer, above,
for which she won Best Supporting Actress. In 2009, she received
a Best Actress nomination for Doubt (2008), below.


Peter Jackson had plenty of reason
to celebrate at the 76th Academy Awards as
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King swept all
11 of its nominated categories.

Gigi, starring Leslie Caron,
swept its categories in 1958.

Sophia Coppola was nominated for
Best Director for her hit Lost in Translation, but
came away with the Oscar for Best
Original Screenplay.

Craftsmen at R.S.Owens in Chicago gild each
Oscar by hand.
9. Who designed the Oscar
statuette?
MGM art director
Cedric Gibbons designed Oscar in 1929 and Los Angeles sculptor
George Stanley created the figure of a knight standing
on a reel of film, hands gripping a sword. Initially he was solid
bronze, then plaster. Today the gold-plated britannium figure
stands more than a foot high (13.5 inches) and weighs 8.5 pounds.
10. Why do they
call him Oscar?
Nobody exactly knows,
but legend has it that Oscar was named by Margaret Herrick,
the Academy's longtime librarian and later executive director,
who nicknamed him after a favorite uncle. Officially, he's the
Academy Award of Merit.
The name first appeared
in print when Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky used it
in his column about Katharine Hepburn's first Best Actress win
at the sixth Awards Presentation in 1934. The Academy itself didn't
use the nickname officially until 1939.
11. Name the two
most-nominated films and how many nominations they received.
All about
Eve (1950) and Titanic (1997), both with
14 nominations. Eight other motion pictures have received 13 nominations.
Photographs are provided courtesy
of the Academy. Copyright © AMPAS. All rights reserved. Oscar
and Academy Awards are registered trademarks of the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Visit the Academy Awards official website
www.oscars.com
for more information on awards, past and present, as well as the
Academy's many ongoing programs.
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