Best Picture
OPPENHEIMER (2023)	American Fiction (2023)	Anatomy of a Fall (2023, Fr.)	Barbie (2023)	The Holdovers (2023)
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)	Maestro (2023)	Past Lives (2023)	Poor Things (2023)	The Zone of Interest (2023)

Best Animated Feature Film
THE BOY AND THE HERON (2023)	Elemental (2023)	Nimona (2023)	Robot Dreams (2023)	Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

Actor:
CILLIAN MURPHY in "Oppenheimer," Bradley Cooper in "Maestro," Colman Domingo in "Rustin," Paul Giamatti in "The Holdovers," Jeffrey Wright in "American Fiction"
Actress:
EMMA STONE in "Poor Things," Annette Bening in "Nyad," Lily Gladstone in "Killers of the Flower Moon," Sandra Hüller in "Anatomy of a Fall," Carey Mulligan in "Maestro"
Supporting Actor:
ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. in "Oppenheimer," Sterling K. Brown in "American Fiction," Robert De Niro in "Killers of the Flower Moon," Ryan Gosling in "Barbie," Mark Ruffalo in "Poor Things"
Supporting Actress:
DA'VINE JOY RANDOLPH in "The Holdovers," Emily Blunt in "Oppenheimer," Danielle Brooks in "The Color Purple," America Ferrera in "Barbie," Jodie Foster in "Nyad"
Director:
CHRISTOPHER NOLAN for "Oppenheimer," Jonathan Glazer for "The Zone of Interest," Yorgos Lanthimos for "Poor Things," Martin Scorsese for "Killers of the Flower Moon," Justine Triet for "Anatomy of a Fall"

In this 96th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), with 23 categories of awards, there were 10 nominees for Best Picture.

This was the second straight year in which the # 1 movie at the domestic box office, Barbie, was nominated for Best Picture. (Last year, it was Top Gun: Maverick (2022).) This is a fairly recent phenomenon, since it's rare for the major crowd-pleasing blockbuster of the year to be a major Oscar-awarded or winning film. (Note: In the distant past, there are only a few instances of this happening: My Fair Lady (1964), The Sound of Music (1965), The Godfather (1972), The Sting (1973), Rocky (1976), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Rain Man (1988), Titanic (1997), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).)

The Best Picture Category:

For the first time in Oscar history, three of the Best Picture nominees: Barbie, Anatomy of a Fall, and Past Lives were directed by women. It was also the 5th consecutive year that at least one film was nominated for Best Picture that was directed by a woman. Also, four of the 10 Best Screenplay nominees were written (or cowritten) by women (the most female writers in a single year). There was a mix of genres, films, and diverse performers in this year's nominations.

The tally of studio nominations by releasing company was very competitive: Netflix: 18, Apple Original Films: 13, Searchlight: 13, Universal: 13, Warner Bros: 9, A24: 7, and Neon: 7. In terms of Oscar wins, only four distributors/studios did well -- Universal: 7, Searchlight: 4, A24: 2, and Toho: 2. Many of the big studios were shut out, including: Netflix, Sony, Paramount and Disney.

Although the fantasy comedy Barbie (with 8 nominations) was the box-office favorite for 2023 (and was the most successful film ever directed by a woman), it had mixed results in the race for Oscars with only one Oscar win - Best Original Song.

The Best Picture Winner:

The ultimate Best Picture winner, Christopher Nolan's epic biopic Oppenheimer garnered 7 Oscar wins from its 13 nominations (the biggest total number of nominations since The Shape of Water (2017)), winning in many of the major categories - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actor, plus three others. It joined only six other Best Picture-winning films that are now tied for second place with a whopping 13 nominations, behind the top three leaders with 14 nominations.

Out of the 10 Best Picture nominees (sorted by the number of wins), the Best Picture winner was:

• the biopic and epic WWII saga about the father of the A-bomb, Universal's Oppenheimer (with 13 nominations, and seven wins). Its major wins included Best Picture (represented by Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas), a Best Director win for Christopher Nolan, a Best Actor win for Cillian Murphy as the title character (father of the "atomic bomb"), and a Best Supporting Actor win for Robert Downey, Jr. as Oppenheimer's rival - the US Atomic Energy Comm. member Lewis Strauss. It also won Best Film Editing (Jennifer Lame), Best Original Score (Ludwig Göransson), and Best Cinematography (Hoyte Van Hoytema)

Six other Best Picture nominees with Oscar wins included:

• director Yorgos Langthimos' and Searchlight's fantasy Poor Things (with 11 nominations, and four wins) - was a feminist, coming-of-age version of Frankenstein; it had a Best Actress win for Emma Stone, and three technical wins for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Costume Design and Best Production Design
• Brit director Jonathan Glazer's radically inventive Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest (with five nominations, and two wins), from A24, was also the UK's entry for Best International Feature Film (win), although it was largely in German; it became the first ever British film to win in the category; its plot was a horror story about a Nazi commandant at Auschwitz who lived with his family next-door to the concentration camp; its other win was the Oscar for Best Sound
• American Fiction (with five nominations, and one win), from Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios - it marked the directorial debut of Cord Jefferson, with strong acting performances by black actors Jeffrey Wright (who played an author who decided to write more "black") and Sterling K. Brown (as the author's estranged brother); Cord Jefferson won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar
• Justine Triet's multi-lingual, dramatic courtroom thriller Anatomy of a Fall (with five nominations, and one win) from Neon - was about a mysterious death that occurred at a chalet in the French Alps (and the ensuing investigation and case); Sandra Hüller portrayed German bisexual novelist Sandra Voyter who was on-trial for her husband Samuel's murder; it won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar (for Justine Triet and her co-writer Arthur Harari) - Triet's win was the first for a female in this category; it was the first French screenplay to win since Claude Lelouch’s A Man and A Woman (1966)
• Focus Features' The Holdovers (with five nominations, and one win) received two strong nominations for its two main performers: Da'Vine Joy Randolph as a grieving food service employee won Best Supporting Actress, and Best Actor-nominated Paul Giamatti portrayed a lonely teacher at a prep-school during the holidays who had to supervise "holdovers" during the Christmas holidays
• director Greta Gerwig's and Warner Bros.' fantasy comedy Barbie (with 8 nominations, and one win) told of the travels of Barbie and Ken to the real world to see what it was like to be human; Gerwig was snubbed in the Best Director category, and Margot Robbie was also snubbed for a nomination as the title character - Stereotypical Barbie; it won a single Oscar for Best Original Song ("What Was I Made For?" by Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell) [Note: Billie Eilish's win at the age of 22, with her 26 year-old brother, became the youngest two-time Oscar winners in history - she previously won, with O'Connell, the Best Original Song Oscar award for the Bond theme song for No Time to Die (2021).]

There were three Best Picture nominees that came away completely empty-handed:

• director Martin Scorsese's crime drama from Apple Original Films - Killers of the Flower Moon (with 10 nominations, and 0 wins) was a lengthy historical crime drama (at 206 minutes) about the theft of the Osage Nation's oil wealth in the 1920s, orchestrated by an influential, wealthy cattle rancher William "King" Hale (Robert De Niro)
• actor/director Bradley Cooper's and Netflix's biographical romantic drama Maestro (with 7 nominations, and 0 wins) - told about the relationship between symphony conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) and his wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). [Note: Bradley Cooper joined a small group of other directors who were nominated for Acting, Producing, and Writing for the same film.] The film's nominations included Best Original Screenplay and Cinematography, and acting nominations for both Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan. [Note: One of the film's producers, 3-time Oscar winner Steven Spielberg, made Oscar history with his 13th nomination for Best Picture.]
• South Korean writer/director Celine Song's and A24's emotional, semi-autobiographical romantic drama Past Lives (with two nominations, and 0 wins) received the lowest number of nominations of the top 10 contenders; Celine Song's directorial debut feature film was a heart-wrenching tale about two childhood friends, Na Young/Nora Moon (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), who reunited years later as adults and began to reevaluate their relationship

Other films nominated in various other categories, but without any Oscar wins included Rustin, Nyad, Napoleon, May-December, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, The Color Purple, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. A surprise winner in the Oscar category of Visual Effects was Godzilla Minus One. [Note: It became the first Godzilla film to earn both an Oscar nomination and an Oscar.] Films that were shut-out altogether (without nominations) included Ben Affleck's Air, the British romance All of Us Strangers, Michael Mann's Ferrari, Ava DuVernay's Origin, and Emerald Fennell's Saltburn.

The Best Director Category:

The Best Director winner was:

• 53 year-old British-American director Christopher Nolan, for Oppenheimer with his first Best Director win [Note: Nolan's previous Oscar nominations include Best Original Screenplay for Memento (2000), Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay for Inception (2010), and Best Picture and Best Director for Dunkirk (2017).]

The other nominees were:

• 81 year-old Martin Scorsese became the most-nominated 'living' director of all time, for Killers of the Flower Moon, with 10 nominations
  [Note: The only other director with more Best Director nominations was William Wyler with 12 nominations. Scorsese has only won one Best Director Oscar, for The Departed (2006). He also became the oldest nominee in the category.]
• 45 year-old French director Justine Triet was the sole female nominee in the Best Director category, for the Best-Picture nominated Anatomy of a Fall.
  [Note: Justine Triet's nomination, her first, was the 9th Best Director nomination for a woman. She was the 8th Best-Director nominated woman, since Jane Campion received two similar nominations: The Piano (1993) and The Power of the Dog (2021).]
• 50 year-old Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, for Poor Things
  [Note: Previous nominations include Best Original Screenplay for The Lobster (2016), and Best Director and Best Picture for The Favourite (2018).]
• 58 year-old British film-director Jonathan Glazer, for The Zone of Interest
  [Note: This was a first-time nomination for Glazer, who was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for his Best Picture-nominated film.]

In the acting or performance categories, ten performers were first-time nominees. There were three previous acting winners (Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster and Emma Stone). Three of the 20 nominees in these four categories finally attained 5 acting nominations (Bradley Cooper, Annette Bening, and Jodie Foster). This year marked the first time since 1931 that all of the acting nominees were over 30 years of age.

Among the acting nominees (in all four acting contests), there were seven nominees representing diversity: two African-American actors (Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown), two African-American actresses (Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Danielle Brooks), one Native-American (Lily Gladstone), and two Latinos (American Ferrera of Honduran descent, and Afro-Latino Colman Domingo). Three were openly LGBTQ performers (Jodie Foster, Lily Gladstone and Colman Domingo).

The Best Actor Category:

In this category, there were five nominees, three of whom were first-time nominees. None were previous Oscar winners. The Best Actor winner was:

• 47 year-old Irish-born actor Cillian Murphy (with his first nomination) was nominated for his role as the titular character J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the A-bomb, in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer [Note: He was the first ever Irish-born winner in the category]

The other nominees were:

• 49 year-old Bradley Cooper (with his 5th Best Actor nomination, and no wins) became the fourth individual to direct himself to an Oscar nomination with his role as American composer Leonard Bernstein, in Maestro. [Note: Cooper did not receive a directing nomination, although he was nominated for co-writing the film’s screenplay. Cooper's previous Best Actor nominations were for Silver Linings Playbook (2012), American Hustle (2013), American Sniper (2014), and A Star is Born (2018).]
  Trivia: Bradley Cooper joined three others who directed themselves to an acting nomination in more than one film (Laurence Olivier: Henry V (1944); Hamlet (1948), and Richard III (1955), Warren Beatty: Heaven Can Wait (1978), and Reds (1981), and Clint Eastwood: Unforgiven (1992), and Million Dollar Baby (2004). Bradley Cooper: A Star Is Born (2018), and Maestro (2023).
• 56 year-old Paul Giamatti (with his 2nd career nomination and first as leading actor) was nominated for his role as curmudgeonly, snobby boarding school teacher Paul Hunham, in The Holdovers [Note: Giamatti was previously nominated as Best Supporting Actor for Cinderella Man (2005).]
• 58 year-old Jeffrey Wright (with his first nomination) for his role as underappreciated and frustrated novelist Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison, in American Fiction [Note: It was the first time in Academy history that a black Best Actor (Wright) was nominated alongside a Best Supporting Actor (Sterling K. Brown) for the same film. See below]
• 54 year-old Colman Domingo (with his first nomination) as early 1960s gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr.'s adviser, in Rustin [Note: Domingo was the second openly LGBTQ Best Actor nominee after Ian McKellen in Gods and Monsters (1998). He was also the first Afro-Latino nominated in the category. Colman Domingo, Lily Gladstone, and Jodie Foster made dual Oscar history - it marked the first time three openly LGBTQ actors were nominated for playing LGBTQ characters.]

The Best Actress Category:

In this category, there were five nominees, two of whom were first-time nominees. Emma Stone was the only previous Oscar winner. The Best Actress winner was:

• 35 year-old Emma Stone (with her 4th career acting nomination, now with two wins) for her role as childlike and Frankenstein-like heroine Bella Baxter, in the fantasy Poor Things. It was considered the biggest upset of the 2023 awards season, since Lily Gladstone was the expected favorite.
  [Note: Stone previously won the Best Actress Oscar for La La Land (2016), and was twice nominated for Best Supporting Actress, for Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) and The Favourite (2018).] In addition, Emma Stone became the 2nd woman to be nominated for Acting and Best Picture for the same film, following Frances McDormand in Nomadland (2020).

The other nominees were:

• 65 year-old Annette Bening (with her 5th career acting nomination, with no wins) for her role as competitive 60 year-old swimmer Diana Nyad who achieved her dream of swimming across 110 miles from Cuba to Florida, in Nyad (with only two Oscar nominations overall). [Note: Her three previous Best Actress nominations included American Beauty (1999), Being Julia (2004), and The Kids Are Alright (2010), and one Best Supporting Actress nomination for The Grifters (1990).]
• 38 year-old English actress Carey Mulligan (with her 3rd Best Actress career nomination, with no wins) was nominated for her role as Leonard Bernstein's loyal wife Felicia Montealegre, in the biopic Maestro. [Note: Her two previous nominations were Best Actress for An Education (2009) and Promising Young Woman (2020).]
• 37 year-old Lily Gladstone (with her first nomination) was selected for her role as Osage Mollie Kyle Burkhart whose family owned oil-rights, in Killers of the Flower Moon. [Note: Gladstone became the first Native American (indigenous) acting nominee for Best Actress.]
• 45 year-old German born actress Sandra Hüller (with her first nomination) was nominated for her role as Sandra Voyter - a wife on trial for the murder of her husband, in Anatomy of a Fall [Note: Hüller was the first German-born actress nominated since Luise Rainer was nominated and won Best Actress for The Good Earth (1937).] She also played a major character (the Auschwitz Commandant's wife Hedwig Höss) in Jonathan Glazer's Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest.

The Best Supporting Actor Category:

In this category, there were five nominees, one of whom was a first-time nominee. De Niro was the only previous Oscar winner. The Best Supporting Actor winner was:

• 58 year-old Robert Downey, Jr. (with his 3rd nomination, and first win) for his role as US Atomic Energy Commission member Lewis Strauss, Oppenheimer's rival and nemesis, in Oppenheimer. [Note: Downey's previous nominations were Best Actor for Chaplin (1992) and Best Supporting Actor for Tropic Thunder (2008).]

The other nominees were:

• 80 year-old Robert De Niro (with his 8th nomination, and two previous wins), was nominated for his role as manipulative, murderous cattleman William King Hale, in Killers of the Flower Moon. [Note: De Niro previously won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather Part II (1974), and Best Actor for Raging Bull (1980). His other nominations included Best Actor for Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978), Awakenings (1990), and Cape Fear (1991), and Best Supporting Actor for Silver Linings Playbook (2012). At an elapsed 49 years of time, De Niro surpassed Katharine Hepburn (at 48 years) for the longest period of time between his first and most recent Oscar nomination for acting. He was first nominated and won Best Supporting Actor for The Godfather, Part II (1974) and then 49 years later was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Killers of the Flower Moon (2023).]
• 56 year-old Mark Ruffalo (with his 4th nomination, with no wins) was nominated for his role as the rakish, vain, debauched lawyer Duncan Wedderburn, in the black comedy Poor Things. [Note Ruffalo's previous nominations were all Best Supporting Actor nods for The Kids Are All Right (2010), Foxcatcher (2014), and Spotlight (2015).]
• 43 year-old Canadian-born actor Ryan Gosling (with his 3rd nomination, with no wins) secured a surprise Oscar nomination for his role as Ken, in the fantasy comedy Barbie. [Note: Gosling's two previous nominations were Best Actor for Half Nelson (2006) and for La La Land (2016).]
• 47 year-old black American actor Sterling K. Brown (with his first nomination) for his role as Clifford "Cliff" Ellison, his co-actor Monk's (Jeffrey Wright) estranged and drug-abusing brother, in the satirical comedy American Fiction

The Best Supporting Actress Category:

In this category, there were five nominees, four of whom were first-time nominees. Foster was the only previous Oscar winner. The Best Supporting Actress winner was:

• 37 year-old black actress Da'Vine Joy Randolph (with her first nomination) for her role as a grieving mother and boarding school cook Mary Lamb, in The Holdovers

The other nominees were:

• 61 year-old Jodie Foster (with her 5th career nomination, with two previous Best Actress wins), for her role as Diana Nyad's best friend, one-time lover, and swimming coach Bonnie Stoll, in the biographical sports drama-biopic Nyad; it was Foster’s first lesbian role to date. [Note: Colman Domingo, Lily Gladstone, and Jodie Foster made dual Oscar history - it marked the first time three openly LGBTQ actors were nominated for playing LGBTQ characters.] [Note: Jodie Foster previously won the Best Actress Oscar for The Accused (1988) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for Taxi Driver (1976), and as Best Actress for Nell (1994)].
• 40 year-old British actress Emily Blunt (with her first nomination), for her role as the title character's wife Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer, a biologist and ex-Communist Party member, in Oppenheimer
• 39 year-old American Ferrara (of Honduran descent) (with her first nomination) - with a surprise nomination for her role as Mattel employee Gloria who met Barbie in the real-world, noted for a crucial and inspiring monologue that she delivered to Barbie about double-standards for women, in Barbie [Note: Ferrara became the first-ever nominee of Honduran descent in any Oscars category.]
• 34 year-old black actress Danielle Brooks (with her first nomination), for her role as Sofia, in Blitz Bazawule's film adaptation of the musical The Color Purple [Note: Danielle Brooks played the same part in the 2015 Broadway revival of the musical.]

Snubs or Overlooked Films or Nominees:

• Leonardo DiCaprio was snubbed for a nomination for Best Actor, for his role as Mollie's dim-witted husband Ernest Burkhart, in Killers of the Flower Moon. Also, the film was snubbed in the Best Adapted Screenplay race.
• Alexander Payne was missing from the nominees in the Best Director category, for The Holdovers, as was Cord Jefferson for American Fiction.
• Bradley Cooper was not nominated in the Best Director category, for Maestro.
• Margot Robbie did not acquire a Best Actress nomination for the title role in Barbie, although she did receive a Best Picture nomination as the film’s producer.
• Greta Gerwig didn’t score a Best Director nomination for Barbie. (It was the 9th time in Academy history that a woman was nominated for Best Picture (without a corresponding Best Director nomination); also, Gerwig's first three feature films were nominated in the Best Picture category, beginning with Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019), but Gerwig has only been nominated once for Best Director, for Lady Bird (2017).
• Celine Song was denied a Best Director nomination, despite Past Lives earning a Best Picture nomination.
• Todd Haynes' May December, a grim story inspired by real-life Mary Kay Letourneau, had just one nomination, for Best Original Screenplay. Charles Melton also missed out on a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as Joe Yoo. Todd Haynes has yet to be nominated as Best Director, although his films include Safe (1995), Velvet Goldmine (1998), Far From Heaven (2002), I’m Not There (2007), and Carol (2015).
• Willem Dafoe was not nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category for his role as eccentric Dr. Godwin "God" Baxter, in Poor Things.
• Overall, there was only one nomination for the musical remake The Color Purple - for Danielle Brooks in the Best Supporting Actress category. Fantasia Barrino was overlooked for Best Actress.