Oldest, Youngest, And Most Diverse: All The Stats On Today’s Oscar Nominations

The 2018 Academy Award nominations were announced this morning, with a heaping side order of surprises and snubs. Here are some of the most interesting facts, milestones, and context Fast Company has discovered about this year’s nominees–with a spotlight on diversity.

• • Greta Gerwig, a Best Director nominee for Lady Bird, and only the fifth woman ever nominated, ends an eight-year all-male streak in the category.
  • The Post is Steven Spielberg’s 11th directorial effort to be nominated for Best Picture. He has directed the most nominated films of any living filmmaker and comes in second only to Ben-Hur director William Wyler, who had 13 nominations. Truly, Spielberg is the Meryl Streep of living directors. Speaking of which . . .
  • Meryl Streep once again broke her own record for most-nominated actor of all time, with her 21st nomination, this one for The Post. While a tribute to Streep’s smart underplaying in the film, the nomination is also a testament to the tiny talent pool of Academy-approved favorites like Dame Judy Dench, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and Cate Blanchett, who tend to get nominated with every performance. Perhaps it’s time The Establishment expanded.
  • Mary J. Blige is the only person ever to be nominated for a performance and original song in the same year, for the same film, Mudbound.
  • Rachel Morrison is the first woman ever to be nominated for Best Cinematography, for the film Mudbound.
  • Timothée Chalamet is the youngest Best Actor nominee (for Call Me By Your Name) in almost 80 years, at 22 years old.
  • Christopher Plummer is the oldest acting nominee ever (for All the Money in the World), at 88 years old.
  • James Ivory, 89 years old and nominated for Call Me By Your Name, is the second-oldest nominee ever–after Agnes Varda, who is 18 days older.
  • Jordan Peele is only the third person to receive Best Picture, Director, and Writing nominations for his first feature film. He’s also only the fifth black man to get a Best Director nomination. Should he win, he would be the first black director to receive that honor in history.
  • Overall, this year’s Best Director category, traditionally dominated by white men, is its most diverse group ever, featuring a woman (Gerwig), a black man (Peele), and a Latino (Guillermo del Toro).
  • Yance Ford, nominated for Best Documentary Feature for Strong Island, is the first trans director nominee.
  • Octavia Spencer ties Viola Davis as the most-nominated black actress in Oscars history, with her third nomination, The Shape of Water.
  • Overall acting nominations for nonwhite actors was down from seven in 2017 to four this year: Daniel Kaluuya for Get Out, Octavia Spencer for The Shape of Water, Mary J. Blige for Mudbound, and Denzel Washington for Roman J. Israel, Esq. No people of color were nominated in Best Actress or Best Supporting Actor this year. The#OscarsSoWhite hashtag galvanized online following zero nonwhite acting nominations in both 2015 and 2016, and the Academy responded with a diversification initiative in its voting pool.
  • For the first time since 2004, four women picked up nominations for screenwriting honors: Emily V. Gordon (The Big Sick), Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), and Vanessa Taylor (The Shape of Water) for Best Original Screenplay, and Dee Rees (Mudbound) in the Adapted category.
  • Dee Rees is the first black female to be nominated for Adapted Screenplay (for Mudbound), joining Suzanne de Passe (for Lady Sings the Blues) as the only African-American females nominated for screenwriting.