Academy Awards
The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are prestigious annual awards presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to honor excellence in the film industry. Established in 1927, the awards recognize outstanding achievements across various categories, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Actress. The first ceremony was held in 1929, and it has since evolved into a globally televised event that attracts millions of viewers annually. The Oscar statuette, nicknamed "Oscar," is a 13.5-inch bronze figure plated in gold.
The Academy consists of over 7,000 industry professionals who participate in the nomination and voting process. While traditionally awarding 24 categories, the Oscars have faced scrutiny over diversity in nominations, prompting movements like #OscarsSoWhite. Recent ceremonies have seen an increase in representation, including historic wins for women and people of color. The Oscars are not just about awards; they also bring significant cultural moments, such as unexpected incidents and memorable performances, enhancing their status as a highlight of the entertainment calendar.
Academy Awards
The Academy Awards are presented annually in the United States by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS or the Academy) to acknowledge excellence in the film industry. Also called the Oscars—after the statuettes handed out during the ceremony—the Academy Awards are widely regarded as the most prestigious awards in the film industry. Every year at a televised awards ceremony, the awards are presented to actors, actresses, and other film industry professionals. Academy Awards are given out in categories including Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Best Actress in a Leading Role.
Brief History
The Academy is responsible for the Academy Awards. The Academy includes more than seven thousand professionals in the film industry. Members of the Academy first vote for Oscar nominations, which fall into various categories. Members then vote for the winners of each category.
The Academy was founded in 1927 in Los Angeles to honor achievements in filmmaking. The Academy decided to hand out annual awards at a ceremony called the Academy Awards. The first ceremony was held on May 16, 1929, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles. The next event, held in 1930, was broadcast live on a Los Angeles radio station. The first televised ceremony took place in 1953, bringing the ceremony to the homes of millions of people in the United States and Canada. The event held in 1969 was the first to be televised internationally, reaching more than two hundred countries. Into the first decades of the twenty-first century, the Oscar ceremony remained one of the most anticipated events of the year.
Overview
Traditionally, the Academy handed out twenty-four Academy Awards in different categories each year. The major categories are Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role (or Best Actor), Best Actress in a Leading Role (or Best Actress), Best Directing, and either Best Writing (Original Screenplay) or Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), which are collectively referred to as the Big Five. Other categories include Best Actor in a Supporting Role (or best supporting actor) and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (or best supporting actress). Each Oscar category typically has five nominations. However, some categories may have more or fewer than five nominations. For example, in 2024, Best Picture had ten nominations.
The winners of the Academy Awards receive a statuette, which is commonly referred to as an Oscar. The Oscar is a 13.5-inch-tall, 8.5-pound bronze statuette that is plated in 24-karat gold. It features a knight holding a sword and standing on a reel of film. The official name of the statuette is the Academy Award of Merit. The nickname Oscar is thought to have originated from a comment made by Margaret Herrick, the librarian and later the executive director of the Academy. Herrick presumably stated that the statuette looked like her Uncle Oscar. However, this story has never been proven. Nevertheless, the nickname stuck, and the Academy Awards ceremony itself often is referred to as the Oscars.
Each year, the winners of the Academy Awards are revealed for the first time at a televised awards ceremony held in Los Angeles. The ceremony typically is hosted by a celebrity. Occasionally, multiple hosts serve as emcees for the event. Other celebrities serve as presenters. The presenter announces the nominees and then reveals the winner, whose name is printed on a card in a sealed envelope, which the presenter opens on stage. The winner then usually takes the stage to receive their Oscar and deliver an acceptance speech.
The Academy Awards ceremony is a wildly popular event, with thousands of film stars and other celebrities in attendance and millions of people around the world tuning in at home. Much attention is given to the arrival of celebrities at the ceremony as they walk down the red carpet in fancy gowns or tuxedoes, give interviews, and pose for pictures. In a departure from that tradition, attendees walked down a champagne-colored carpet at the 2023 ceremony.
Many Oscar ceremonies over the years have produced memorable moments and controversies. In the mid-2010s, the Academy Awards came under fire for demonstrating a lack of diversity among nominations, especially in the highly anticipated acting categories. As a result, some actors and directors supported a boycott of the Oscars and generated the Twitter hashtag #OscarsSoWhite to highlight the Academy's preference for White actors. The movement generated much buzz, and in 2017, seven actors and one director of color received nominations. Some, including Mahershala Ali and Viola Davis, went on to win in their respective categories.
Although the 2017 Oscars ceremony was more inclusive, it ended with one of the most shocking moments in the history of the Academy Awards. During the ceremony, the wrong film was announced as the winner of Best Picture, the final award of the night. Presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were given the wrong envelope before taking the stage to present the award. They received the envelope for Actress in a Leading Role instead of Best Picture. That award had already been presented to the winner, Emma Stone, for her performance in the film La La Land (2016). After opening the envelope and glancing at the card, Beatty began announcing the winner but then hesitated because the card contained Stone's name instead of the name of the winner of Best Picture. He showed the card to Dunaway, who then incorrectly announced that the winner of Best Picture was La La Land. The producers of the film and others involved with the film took the stage to accept their award. As the producers began giving their acceptance speeches, a man wearing a headset approached them with the correct envelope for Best Picture. Shortly afterward, one of the producers announced that La La Land had lost. Another producer announced that the film Moonlight (2016) had won and showed the correct card to the audience. Those involved with Moonlight then went on stage to accept their award. The mistake provided an unforgettable Oscars moment.
In the summer of 2018, largely in response to consistently declining viewership, the Academy announced that three significant changes would be implemented that involved both the awards themselves and the broadcast of the awards ceremony. The changes involved shortening the length of the awards ceremony broadcast to three hours (some categories were to be presented during commercial breaks, with the winner's acceptance shown at a later point in the broadcast), moving the air date for the ceremony up to earlier in February (beginning with the 2020 Oscars), and creating a new category for "outstanding achievement in popular film." The latter change, in particular, was seen by commentators as a response to many audiences' draw to films that are not typically included due to space limitations or subject matter. However, due to significant backlash regarding the decision to announce some of the categories during commercial breaks, the Academy reversed their decision a short time before the ceremony aired.
One of the most memorable moments in Oscars history happened during the 2022 ceremony after comedian Chris Rock, who was that year's host, made a joke regarding actor Jada Pinkett Smith's shaved head. Pinkett Smith's husband, the actor Will Smith, then approached the stage, slapping Rock across the face and yelling to not talk about his wife. Smith apologized for his actions when he won best actor later in the night, and the Academy banned him from any events for the next ten years.
The Academy Awards continued to become more diverse into the 2020s, including regarding women. By 2021, only one woman had ever taken home the award for best director (Kathryn Bigelow in 2008). That year, however, the second woman in history won the award for directing when Chloe Zhao won for her film Nomadland (2020). Zhao was also the first Asian woman to ever win that category. In 2022, Jane Campion became the third woman to win best director for The Power of the Dog (2021). Furthermore, reports showed that the number of people of color receiving Oscar nominations increased to 17 percent in 2023, compared to only 8 percent of Oscar nominees in 2017. The ceremony in 2023 was also notable for its inclusion of Asian nominees, with winners of Asian descent winning in eight categories by the end of the night. The 2024 Oscars, meanwhile, saw the first American Indian woman nominated for Best Actress, Lily Gladstone, and the first Afro-Latino man nominated for Best Actor, Colman Domingo.
Many actors and other professionals in the film industry have won multiple Academy Awards. Katharine Hepburn holds the record for the most Oscar wins for an actor with four. Other notable Oscar winners include Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, and Daniel Day-Lewis with three apiece for acting and John Ford with four for directing. Many films have won multiple Academy Awards. Ben-Hur (1959), Titanic (1997), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) are tied for the most Oscar wins for a single film with eleven apiece.
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