Academy Awards are presented annually for outstanding achievements in filmmaking. Winners of an Academy Award receive a gold-plated statue commonly called an Oscar, shown here. Credit: © Richard Levine, Alamy Images

On Sunday, March 12, the 95th Academy Awards—commonly known as the Oscars—were held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. The Oscars celebrate the past year’s achievements in filmmaking. In 2023, late night talk show host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel hosted the show. A variety of celebrities introduced and handed out the awards.

Michelle Yeoh stars as a woman who suddenly develops the power to leap between parallel universes in the action-adventure-fantasy Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Credit: A24

Everything Everywhere All at Once swept the Oscars, picking up awards in 7 of its 11 nominated categories, the most of any film nominations this year. Among those was the most coveted Best Picture award going to the directing pair Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, affectionately called the Daniels, and Jonathan Wang. Best Film Editing went to Paul Rogers. The Daniels also share the Best Director and Best Original Screenplay trophies. Kwan became the second Asian director to win best picture, director, and screenplay at the Academy Awards. The first was Joon Ho for Parasite (2019).

The sci-fi, multiverse-traveling, action adventure truly covered everything and everywhere. Michelle Yeoh won Best Actress for her role as Evelyn Wang in Everything Everywhere All at Once. The film beautifully portrayed the connection between Evelyn and her daughter Joy, and Joy’s powerful alter-ego Jobu Tupaki. Stephanie Hsu portrayed Joy and Jobu as they hopped realities. Ke Huy Quan won Best Supporting Actor as Waymond Wang, Evelyn’s goofy husband. Jamie Lee Curtis won Best Supporting Actress as the IRS auditor threatening to shut down the Wang’s laundromat.

Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win Best Actress. Quan made his return to acting after 30 years and became the second Asian actor to win Best Supporting Actor. As a child actor, he worked with legendary director Steven Spielberg on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and was cast by Spielberg for The Goonies (1985). This year, Spielberg became the first person nominated for Best Director in six different decades. Both with their first Oscars, Yeoh and Quan became the first actors to win the award portraying a character speaking Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese.

In another standout film, Brendan Fraser took home Best Actor for the psychological drama The Whale. It also won for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. The German-language film All Quiet on the Western Front, adapted from the book by Erich Maria Remarque, had nine nominations, winning four Academy Awards. The film took home Best International Film, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, and Best Production Design.

“Naatu Naatu” from the adventure film RRR became the first Indian film song to win an Oscar with Best Original Song. The upbeat, Telugu-language song was composed by M. M. Keeravani and written by Chandrabose. The Elephant Whisperers became the first Indian film to win Best Documentary Short.

Navalny, about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, won Best Documentary Feature. Women Talking won Best Adapted Screenplay. Best Animated Feature went to Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.

Jennifer Hudson is a popular American singer and actress. She gained fame in 2004 as a finalist on the singing competition television show “American Idol.” In 2007, Hudson won an Academy Award as best supporting actress for her motion-picture debut in the musical Dreamgirls, based on a hit Broadway musical.
Credit: © Shutterstock

Jennifer Hudson hit that high note and reached EGOT status. Only 16 other people have the honor of being called an EGOT, the elite group of artists who have won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards. Hudson is a popular singer and actress and the second Black woman to collect all four prestigious awards. She completed her award collection after winning a Tony award for co-producing the musical A Strange Loop.

Hudson gained fame in 2004 as a finalist on the singing competition television show “American Idol.” In 2007, Hudson won an Academy Award as best supporting actress for her motion-picture debut in the musical motion picture Dreamgirls (2006), based on a hit Broadway musical. In the film, Hudson portrayed a singer in a 1960’s female vocal group. The film was based on the story of the popular vocal group the Supremes. In 2009, Hudson won a Grammy Award for her best-selling debut album, Jennifer Hudson (2008).

Jennifer Kate Hudson was born on Sept. 12, 1981, in Chicago, Illinois. She sang in gospel choirs as a child. She also acted in community theater and performed on cruise ships. Community theater is a type of nonprofessional, local theater.

Hudson’s second album, I Remember Me, was released in 2011. It also became a hit. Her other films include the crime drama Fragments and the drama The Secret Life of Bees (both 2008); the comedy The Three Stooges (2012); the musical drama Black Nativity (2013); and the drama Chi-Raq (2015). In the biographical film Winnie (2011), she portrayed the South African politician and political activist Winnie Mandela. Hudson has also acted on a number of television shows. In 2013, she portrayed a Broadway star on the musical drama “Smash.” She wrote an autobiography, I Got This (2012). In 2021, Hudson won a Daytime Emmy award for producing Baba Yaga (2020), a virtual reality animated and interactive film.

Hudson has joked about reaching EGOT status after she won an Oscar award after naming a pet dog Oscar, and she won a Grammy award after naming a dog Grammy. She now needs to bring two more dogs into her home and name them Emmy and Tony!

Hudson joins the ranks of Mel Brooks, John Gielgud, Whoopi Goldberg, Marvin Hamlisch, Helen Hayes, Audrey Hepburn, John Legend, Robert Lopez, Alan Menken, Rita Moreno, Mike Nichols, Tim Rice, Richard Rodgers, and Andrew Lloyd Webber. What an impressive group of artists!

New Zealand screenwriter and director Jane Campion.
Credit: © Kathy Hutchins, Shutterstock

Jane Campion, a New Zealand motion-picture screenwriter and director, won the best director for The Power of the Dog (2021) at the 2022 Academy Awards hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards on Sunday. The Power of the Dog (2021) is a psychological western set in Montana in 1925. The awards are better known as the Oscars. Campion’s win made history as the first time women have won best director two years in a row. Last year, Chinese filmmaker Chloé Zhao became the first Asian woman to win an Academy Award for best director, for the motion picture Nomadland (2020).

Campion is also the only woman to be nominated for best director twice. She was first nominated for best director for the film The Piano in 1993, which she wrote and directed. It tells the story of a mute young Scottish woman who is sent to colonial New Zealand to marry a stranger. The Piano won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival in France. Campion was the first woman ever to receive this prestigious award. She also won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay for The Piano.

Campion was born on April 30, 1955, in Wellington, New Zealand. During the 1970′s, she earned a degree in anthropology at the Victoria University of Wellington, and an arts degree at the Sydney College of the Arts in Sydney, Australia, where she majored in painting. Campion began making short films in the late 1970′s. One of the films, the dark comedy Tissues, resulted in her being accepted in the Australian Film and Television School in 1981. Campion’s first notable short film, Peel (1982), won the Short Film Palme d’Or award at Cannes in 1986.

Campion’s first feature film was Sweetie (1989), which she co-wrote and directed. A sharp comedy about family discord, it won several international prizes. Campion’s next film, An Angel at My Table (1990), won awards at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival. It is a drama based on the autobiography of the New Zealand writer Janet Frame.

Campion’s other films include Portrait of a Lady (1996), based on a novel by the American author Henry James; Holy Smoke (1999); In the Cut (2003); Bright Star (2009), about the English poet John Keats; and The Power of the Dog (2021), for which she won a Golden Globe Award. Campion also co-wrote and co-directed the television miniseries Top of the Lake (2013).

Frances McDormand as Fern in the film “Nomadland” (2020).
Credit: © Searchlight Pictures

On April 25, 2021, the 93rd Academy Awards—commonly known as the Oscars—were held in a ceremony split between Los Angeles’ Union Station and the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. (Because of the ongoing pandemic [global outbreak] of the coronavirus disease COVID-19, several nominees gathered at other venues in such cities as Sydney, Australia, and London, England.) For the third year in a row, the ceremony went without a host. A variety of comedians, actors, and musicians introduced and handed out the awards.

The drama Nomadland took home the coveted best picture award. The film tells the story of a widow named Fern who travels across the United States in a van. The film’s director, Chloé Zhao, became the first woman of color to win the award for best director. The American actress Frances McDormand, who plays Fern, won her third award for best actress in a leading role.

Many people expected McDormand’s win. However, the British actor Anthony Hopkins took the award for best actor in a leading role, surprising many. The American actor Chadwick Boseman—who died last August—was expected to win for his performance as a trumpet player named Levee Green in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Hopkins won for his role as a man suffering from dementia in The Father. At age 83, he became the oldest actor to win an Oscar.

As for other top awards, the British actor Daniel Kaluuya won for best actor in a supporting role for Judas and the Black Messiah. Kaluuya portrayed Fred Hampton (1948-1969), an African American civil rights activist and leader of the Black Panther Party. The actress Yuh-Jung Youn became the first Korean to take home the award for best actress in a supporting role, for the film Minari. She played Soon-ja, the grandmother in a Korean-American family that moves from California to Arkansas in pursuit of a better life.

The winners used their speeches to bring attention to such themes as racism and police brutality. The American actress, author, and deaf activist Marlee Matlin presented an award in American Sign Language. Her remarks called attention to a teenager named Darnella Frazier who, in May 2020, used her cellphone to capture the death of George Floyd. (Former Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder after kneeling on the neck and back of Floyd, an unarmed Black man, for more than nine minutes leading up to his death on May 25, 2020.) Frazier’s video of the killing was perhaps the most-watched film of 2020, inspiring millions of people around the world to protest racism and to demand justice.

February 12, 2020

On Sunday, February 9, the 92nd Academy Awards—commonly known as the Oscars—were held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. The Oscars celebrate the past year’s achievements in filmmaking. As happened in 2019, the award ceremony went without a host. Instead, the comedians Steve Martin and Chris Rock opened the show, and a variety of celebrities introduced and handed out the awards.

Parasite, which won best picture at the 2020 Academy Awards, stars (from left) Choi Woo Shik, Song Kang Ho, Chang Hyae Jin, and Park So Dam. Credit: CJ Entertainment

The biggest headline on Oscars night was the naming of the South Korean black comedy Parasite as best picture. Black comedy is characterized by bizarrely or morbidly humorous plots and situations. Directed by Bong Joon Ho, Parasite is the first movie in a language other than English to win best picture. Parasite also won best original screenplay and best international film. Bong too made history as the first South Korean to win best director. The World War I drama 1917—the favorite to win best picture before the ceremony—missed out on the top award but took home the best cinematography, best sound mixing, and best visual effects Oscars.

Renée Zellweger won the best actress award for her portrayal of the former Hollywood star Judy Garland in the biopic Judy. Joaquin Phoenix earned best actor for his leading role in the origin story of the Batman villain Joker. Brad Pitt won best supporting actor for his stuntman sidekick role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Laura Dern was named best supporting actress as a divorce lawyer in Marriage Story. Toy Story 4 won best animated feature, and American Factory won best documentary. American Factory, the story of a Chinese-run glass factory in Ohio, was the first film made by Higher Ground Productions, a company run by former United States President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama. The World War II satire Jojo Rabbit earned the Oscar for best adapted screenplay.

Each trophy given out at the ceremony (there were a total of 24 this year) is officially called an Academy Award of Merit, but the small golden statues have been known as “Oscars” since the 1930′s. The origin of the nickname is uncertain, but most histories center on Margaret Herrick, a former director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Apparently, upon seeing the statuettes for the first time in 1931, Herrick remarked that they looked a lot like her Uncle Oscar. Oscar came into common usage for the award soon after.

February 27, 2019

On Sunday, February 24, the 91st Academy Awards—commonly known as the Oscars—were held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. The Oscars celebrate the past year’s achievements in filmmaking. For the first time since 1989, the award ceremony went without a host. Instead, a variety of celebrities introduced and handed out the awards. The comedy drama Green Book took home the coveted best picture award, and Alfonso Cuarón won best director for his film Roma.

Viggo Mortensen (left) and Mahershala Ali starred in Green Book, the best picture winner at the 2019 Academy Awards in Hollywood. Credit: © Universal Pictures

Hollywood’s biggest night began with a rousing performance by the rock group Queen, the subject of the best picture-nominated film Bohemian Rhapsody. Later in the ceremony, that film’s star, Rami Malek, became the first Arab American to win best actor for his charismatic portrayal of former Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury. British star Olivia Colman won best actress for her role as Queen Anne in the period dark comedy The Favourite. Anne was the first queen of Great Britain, which was formed when the Kingdom of Scotland united with the Kingdom of England and Wales in 1707.

Roma, a Mexican film that follows the life of an indigenous domestic worker, lost out on the best picture award, but it did top the best foreign language film category. Green Book told the story of a black musician and his white driver and bodyguard on a tour of the American south in 1962. The film’s title was taken from the The Negro Motorist Green Book, a guidebook that once helped African American travelers navigate dangerous racial discrimination in the southern United States. African American actor Mahershala Ali won the best supporting actor award for his role in the film, which also won best original screenplay.

As for the other top awards on Sunday, Regina King won  best supporting actress for her role in If Beale Street Could Talk, a movie based on a 1974 novel by African American author James Baldwin. Director Spike Lee’s  BlacKkKlansman earned the best adapted screenplay award. That film told the story of a black detective who investigated the Ku Klux Klan hate group in the 1970′s. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse won best animated feature film, and Free Solo won best documentary.

Each trophy given out at the ceremony (there were a total of 24 this year) is officially called an Academy Award of Merit, but the small golden statues have been known as “Oscars” since the 1930′s. The origin of the nickname is uncertain, but most histories center on Margaret Herrick, a former director of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Apparently, upon seeing the statuettes for the first time in 1931, Herrick remarked that they looked a lot like her Uncle Oscar. Oscar became common usage for the award soon after.

March 6, 2018

The 90^th Academy Awards, held on March 4, 2018, proved to be a celebration of diversity. Ending an awards season that showcased the “Time’s Up” and “#MeToo” movements spurred by multiple allegations of sexual misconduct in Hollywood, the show spotlighted the contributions by women, minorities, and immigrants to the motion-picture industry.

Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out (2017).
Credit: © Universal Pictures

The diversity of nominees from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences proved better than years past. The 2017 Oscars made history with a record number of nominations and wins for African Americans. Among the nominees was director Jordan Peele, who became the first African American to be awarded an Oscar for Original Screenplay with his horror film, Get Out.

Last year’s Oscars might be best known for the blunder by presenters Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty in announcing the wrong winner for the Oscar for best picture. This year the pair from Bonnie and Clyde gave it another attempt—and got it right. The winner was director Guillermo Del Toro’s The Shape of Water. The Best Picture Oscar was the fourth of the night for the science fiction film. Del Toro also won the Oscar for Best Director, making him the fourth Mexican director in five years to earn that honor.

Doug Jones, and Sally Hawkins in The Shape of Water (2017).
Credit: © Fox Searchlight Pictures

Another record-breaker came from the Best Animated Feature winner, Coco. Songwriter Robert Lopez earned Coco a second award for Best Original Song, “Remember Me.” This Oscar made Lopez the first person to ever achieve a double EGOT (when a person wins an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony — the ‘double’ meaning Lopez did it twice.) Kobe Bryant, a former star of the National Basketball Association (NBA), surprised everyone with an Oscar win for his and Glen Keane’s animated short, Dear Basketball.

Late night TV personality Jimmy Kimmel hosted. Among other jokes, Kimmel said the person with the shortest acceptance speech would win a free Jet Ski. Cut to later, Mark Bridges got to ride the Jet Ski that turned out to be very real. Bridges’ 36-second speech was for Best Costume Design, Phantom Thread. Kimmel also thanked the moviegoers that make filmmaking worth it. In one of the show’s highlights, he took some stars to a nearby theater screening Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time. Emily Blunt, Ansel Elgort, Gal Gadot, Mark Hamill, Lin Manuel-Miranda, and other stars passed out snacks to surprise the audience, even shooting hot dog cannons at them.

Academy Award Winners in 2018:

Best Picture: The Shape of Water
Best Actress: Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best Actor: Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
Best Supporting Actress: Allison Janney, I, Tonya
Best Supporting Actor: Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best Director: Guillermo Del Toro, The Shape of Water
Best Original Screenplay: Jordan Peele, Get Out
Best Adapted Screenplay: James Ivory, Call Me by Your Name
Best Animated Feature: Coco
Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins, Blade Runner 2049
Best Film Editing: Lee Smith, Dunkirk
Best Original Score: Alexandre Desplat, The Shape of Water
Best Original Song: “Remember Me,” Coco
Best Foreign-Language Film: A Fantastic Woman (Chile)
Best Production Design: Paul D. Austerberry, Jeffrey A. Melvin, and Shane Vieau, The Shape of Water
Best Costume Design: Mark Bridges, Phantom Thread
Best Sound Mixing: Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker, and Gary A. Rizzo, Dunkirk
Best Sound Editing: Alex Gibson and Richard King, Dunkirk
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski, Lucy Sibbick, Darkest Hour
Best Visual Effects: John Nelson, Paul Lambert, Richard R. Hoover, and Gerd Nefzer, Blade Runner 2049
Best Animated Short Film: Dear Basketball
Best Live-Action Short Film: The Silent Child
Best Feature Documentary: Icarus
Best Short-Subject Documentary: Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405

February 23, 2015

The 87th Academy Awards were presented at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California, last night. Award winners in some of the major categories included Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), which won for the best picture of the year. The film’s director, Mexico’s Alejandro G. Iñárritu, won the Oscar as best director. The film starred Michael Keaton as a washed-up superhero actor trying to revive his career by directing and starring in a Broadway play. British actor Eddie Redmayne won the Academy Award as best actor for his portrayal of the British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in the biographical picture The Theory of Everything. Julianne Moore received the Academy Award as best actress for her performance as a professor facing early-onset Alzheimer’s disease in Still Alice. J. K. Simmons won the best supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of a sadistic jazz band instructor in Whiplash. The Academy Award for best supporting actress went to Patricia Arquette for her performance as a divorced mother trying to make a life for herself and her two children in Boyhood. Filmed over the course of 12 years, the film, directed by Richard Linklater, was notable for documenting the real-life aging of the actors in the film. Actor Neil Patrick Harris hosted the awards for the first time.

In a still photograph from the movie Birdman, Michael Keaton plays an actor shadowed by the superhero character he once played. (Credit: © Fox)

The Academy Awards are supervised by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, with headquarters in Beverly Hills, California. Last evening’s broadcast reached viewers in more than 100 countries. But the original ceremony on May 16, 1929, was a small affair attended by only 270 guests at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, at $5 a ticket. Unlike the highly anticipated event it is today, the first ceremony held little suspense when the awards were presented, as the winners had been announced three months earlier. In 1930, the Academy kept the results secret until the ceremony, but it gave a list in advance to newspapers for publication at 11 p.m. on the night of the awards. This policy continued until 1940, when the Los Angeles Times published the names of the winners ahead of the ceremony in its evening edition. In 1941, the Academy adopted the sealed-envelope system that is still in use today. In 1953, the Oscar ceremony was televised for the first time, reaching millions of viewers in Canada and the United States. Since 1969, the ceremony has been broadcast internationally.

Other World Book articles:

• Motion Picture

• See also Back in time articles for Motion picture from 1922 through 2014

Feb. 27, 2012

The Artist, a mostly silent, black-and-white motion picture about a silent-film actor who can’t make it in “talkies,” swept the 84th Annual Academy Awards presented in Los Angeles on February 26. The film’s star, well-known French actor Jean Dujardin, won for best actor. The film also collected the awards for best picture, best director, best costume design, and best score. American actress Meryl Streep, who had won Oscars in 1979 and 1982, collected the best-actress award for her performance as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.

Heavily favored actress Octavia Spencer won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in The Help, about African American maids working in the South during the Civil Rights Era of the 1960′s. The Oscar for best supporting actor went to British actor Christopher Plummer for his performance in Beginners, the story of the relationship between a father and son, told in flashbacks. Plummer also became the oldest actor or actress to win a performance Academy Award.

Additional World Book articles:

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
• Back in Time (Motion Picture 1932)
• Hollywood