Winning an Oscar is already a monumental occasion but making history with your Oscar win? Well, that’s the cherry on top. The last few years have seen some historic Academy Awards: Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win Best Actress for Everything Everywhere All At Once in 2023; Frances McDormand became the first female performer to win for both acting and producing Nomadland in 2021; Parasite was the first non-English speaking movie to win Best Picture in 2020—to name a few. This year’s ceremony has a handful of nominations that represent history in the making, so ahead of the 96th annual Academy Awards, here’s a few for the record books.
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The lead actor category has some potential firsts as frontrunners: a Cillian Murphy Oppenheimer win would make him the first Irish-born performer to win Best Actor. (Previous winner Daniel Day-Lewis, who holds dual British-Irish citizenship, was born in England.). Meanwhile, Killers Of The Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone is the first Native American woman nominated for a Best Actress award. If she wins, she’ll become the first Native American person to win an acting Oscar ever, as well as the first Indigenous performer to win Best Actress. (Previous Indigenous nominees include Yalitza Aparicio, who is Native Mexican, and Keisha Castle-Hughes and Merle Oberon, both of Maori descent).
The Killers Of The Flower Moon crew is not lacking for potential record-breakers. Martin Scorsese became the most-nominated living director for his Killers Of The Flower Moon nod, and should he win, he’ll be the oldest Best Director winner ever at 81. (The title is currently held by Clint Eastwood at 74 for Million Dollar Baby.) His longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, could win a record-breaking fourth Best Film Editing award, breaking a tie she currently holds with Ralph Dawson, Daniel Mandell, and Michael Kahn. Elsewhere in the “old pros” division, Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny composer John Williams, the oldest Oscar nominee ever and the most-nominated person alive with 54 nods (a number only beaten by Walt Disney), could become the oldest Oscar winner, full stop, at age 92. (That title currently belongs to James Ivory, who won Best Adapted Screenplay for Call Me By Your Name at age 89.)
Some straggler possible firsts: Anatomy Of A Fall’s Justine Triet would be the first French woman to win Best Director or Best Original Screenplay.The Zone Of Interest win Best International Feature Film, it will be the first winner from the United Kingdom (as a co-production between the UK and Poland). Robot Dreams would be the first dialogue-free Best Animated Feature winner, according to USBets.com. And in the unlikely event of a clean sweep for either movie, Poor Things (11 nominations) and Oppenheimer (13 nominations) could tie or break the record for most overall Oscar wins, which is currently held by Ben-Hur, Titanic, and Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King with 11 wins each.
There are a few other wins that would be notable, if not strictly historic. Emma Stone could be the second female performer, after Frances McDormand, to win as both an actor and producer if Poor Things took the Best Actress and Best Picture categories. Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy And The Heron would be the second non-English movie to win Best Animated Feature (after his own Spirited Away). Should they win, Robert DeNiro and Jodie Foster would be amongst just seven other performers to win three or more Oscars; Mark Johnson and Steven Spielberg would be among nine producers to win Best Picture awards two or more times; and Triet, of course, would be just the fourth female director ever to win Best Director. You can tune in on Sunday, March 10, to see just how much history gets made.