In the 95-year history of the Academy Awards, 88 films have each received nominations for both Best Actor and Best Actress. Although there have been 19 cases of two or more movies doing so in a single year, there hasn’t been such an occurrence since 1996, when both lead lineups included performers from “Dead Man Walking” and “Leaving Las Vegas.” However, according to Gold Derby’s late-stage 2024 Oscar nominations predictions, that nearly three-decade gap is set to soon be closed by costar pairs from “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Maestro.”
The vast majority of the Oscars prognosticators who’ve been shaping our odds all season agree that Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan (“Maestro”) will all clinch academy mentions for their lead performances. The last such quartet consisted of eventual winners Nicolas Cage (“Leaving Las Vegas”) and Susan Sarandon (“Dead Man Walking”) and their respective costars, Elisabeth Shue and Sean Penn.
That was only the fourth time that a pair of similarly nominated films split the two trophies, following instances in 1940 (Robert Donat, “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” and Vivien Leigh, “Gone with the Wind”), 1952 (Humphrey Bogart, “The African Queen” and Leigh, “A Streetcar Named Desire”), and 1978 (Richard Dreyfuss, “The Goodbye Girl” and Diane Keaton, “Annie Hall”).
In all, the 19 past sets of two or three nominees for both awards produced nine male and 10 female winners. The only two films that took both prizes were “Network” (1977, Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway) and “On Golden Pond” (1982, Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn), leaving “Rocky” and then both “Atlantic City” and “Reds” with neither.
Those 1982 movies were the last trio to jointly pull off this nominations feat, following “The African Queen,” “A Place in the Sun,” and “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 1952 and “Bonnie and Clyde,” “The Graduate,” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” in 1968. There’s virtually no chance of that subset growing this year, unless “Past Lives” stars Teo Yoo and Greta Lee both miraculously land bids alongside the two expected duos.
As of now, our odds indicate that the “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Maestro” leads will ultimately be defeated in both categories by Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer”) and Emma Stone (“Poor Things”). From a historical standpoint, this would make sense given the fully failed attempts of six previous quartets, the last of whom starred in “The Remains of the Day” (Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson) and “What’s Love Got to Do with It” (Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett) and lost in 1994 to Tom Hanks (“Philadelphia”) and Holly Hunter (“The Piano”).
Fortunately, the current hopefuls can take some comfort in the fact that, based on precedent, the most likely outcome of their situation would involve just one film winning one of the two awards. In this regard, Gladstone or Mulligan would follow Best Actress recipients Greer Garson (“Mrs. Miniver,” 1943), Grace Kelly (“The Country Girl,” 1955), Patricia Neal (“Hud,” 1964), and Hepburn (“Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”), while Cooper or DiCaprio would emulate Lionel Barrymore (“A Free Soul,” 1931), James Stewart (“The Philadelphia Story,” 1941), and David Niven (“Separate Tables,” 1959).
Thinking back over the last 27 years, there were many times when a case like this presumably almost happened, such as when DiCaprio’s 1998 snub for “Titanic” kept it from joining “As Good As It Gets” in both lineups and even when 2017 supporting victor Viola Davis (“Fences”) was initially running a lead campaign that might have put her film on the list alongside “La La Land.” Based on the strength of the current quartet this late in the game, one could argue that there’s never been a better opportunity for a 20th addition.
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