59 Fun Facts About Oscars 2023

Which 2023 Best Picture nominee starred Cate Blanchett as a celebrated conductor accused of misconduct?

Tár follows the fictional Berlin maestro Lydia Tár; the film went into Oscar night with six nominations and left without a single win.

Which Hollywood venue hosted the 2023 Oscars ceremony?

The Dolby Theatre opened in 2001 as the Kodak Theatre; it took its present name in 2012, after Eastman Kodak's bankruptcy ended the naming-rights deal.

Which comedian hosted the 2023 Oscars, his third time in the job?

Jimmy Kimmel had hosted in 2017 and 2018; his first show ended in chaos when the wrong film was announced as Best Picture.

Which film was mistakenly announced as Best Picture at the 2017 Oscars, the 2023 host's first as emcee?

La La Land's producers were already giving speeches when the mistake was caught: the presenters had been handed a duplicate Best Actress envelope, and Moonlight was the real winner.

Which film won Best Picture at the 2023 Oscars?

Everything Everywhere All at Once was first written as a Jackie Chan vehicle; directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert then rewrote the lead as a woman.

The 2023 Best Picture winner's seven Oscars were the most since which 2013 space thriller?

Gravity won seven Oscars in 2014, including Best Director for Alfonso Cuarón, yet lost Best Picture to 12 Years a Slave.

At the 2023 Oscars, David Byrne performed wearing which prop from the Best Picture winner?

Hot dog fingers nodded to one of the film's stranger universes; his duet partner was actor Stephanie Hsu, who took the part Mitski sang on the film's soundtrack.

The 2023 Best Picture winner was the first film of which genre to win the top prize?

Science fiction had never won Best Picture: voters passed over Star Wars for Annie Hall and E.T. for Gandhi before the multiverse comedy broke through.

Which 1976 film also won three acting Oscars, as the 2023 Best Picture winner did?

Network won Best Actor, Actress and Supporting Actress in 1977, the first posthumously for Peter Finch, yet lost Best Picture to Rocky.

Who won Best Actor at the 2023 Oscars for playing a reclusive, 600-pound English teacher?

Brendan Fraser won Best Actor as Charlie, a role director Darren Aronofsky spent years trying to cast, saying he had considered 'every single movie star on the planet'.

The 2023 Best Actor winner became the first person from which country to win the category?

Canada got its first Best Actor winner: born in Indianapolis to Canadian parents, he holds dual citizenship, and Aronofsky cast him after seeing a trailer for an obscure Brazilian film.

For the first time since 1935, the 2023 Best Actor field of five shared what distinction?

None had been nominated before, so a first-time winner was guaranteed; the 1935 field had only three names, and Clark Gable won for It Happened One Night.

Which 2023 Oscar nominee played a dying civil servant in the drama Living?

Bill Nighy earned his first nomination in a script by Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, who moved Kurosawa's Japanese classic Ikiru to post-war London and was nominated for the screenplay himself.

Who won Best Actress at the 2023 Oscars for playing a laundromat owner facing a tax audit?

Michelle Yeoh won for a part the Daniels first wrote for Jackie Chan, then reworked with a wife and mother as the hero of the story.

Who was the first woman of color to win Best Actress, before the 2023 winner?

Halle Berry won Best Actress in 2002 for Monster's Ball, the first woman of color to do so, and she was among the presenters of the lead acting awards in 2023.

Ana de Armas earned a 2023 Best Actress nomination for Blonde, playing which figure?

Marilyn Monroe's life was fictionalised in Netflix's Blonde, which was named Worst Picture at the Razzies two days before de Armas competed for the Oscar.

Whose surprise 2023 Best Actress nod for To Leslie triggered an Academy review of campaigning?

Andrea Riseborough's nomination for To Leslie followed no conventional campaign; the film's director and his wife rallied celebrities to host screenings and post online, and the Academy reviewed but kept the nomination.

Who won Best Supporting Actor at the 2023 Oscars after nearly two decades away from acting?

Ke Huy Quan quit acting for lack of roles and worked behind the camera until the success of Crazy Rich Asians in 2018 persuaded him to audition again.

The 2023 Best Supporting Actor winner became the first actor born in which country to win an Oscar?

Vietnam was his birthplace: his family fled a few years after the war, and he spent about a year in a Hong Kong refugee camp before reaching Los Angeles.

The 2023 Best Supporting Actor winner played Short Round as a child in which 1984 film?

Temple of Doom cast him at 12 after he went along to an open casting call where his younger brother was auditioning; he then played Data in The Goonies.

Who won Best Supporting Actress at the 2023 Oscars for playing IRS auditor Deirdre Beaubeirdre?

Jamie Lee Curtis, winning on her first nomination, thanked 'all of the people who have supported the genre movies' she had made, telling them 'we just won an Oscar together'.

The 2023 Best Supporting Actress winner's mother, Janet Leigh, earned her only Oscar nomination for which Hitchcock thriller?

Psycho brought Janet Leigh her only nomination and The Defiant Ones brought one for her then-husband; neither won, so their daughter's 2023 Oscar was a family first.

Before the Daniels won in 2023, which duo last shared the Best Director Oscar?

The Coen brothers shared it for No Country for Old Men in 2008; the only earlier pair, Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, won for West Side Story although Robbins was fired mid-shoot.

Before their feature films, the Daniels directed the music video for which 2013 hit?

Turn Down for What, by DJ Snake and Lil Jon, got a video starring Daniel Kwan himself, and it earned the Daniels a Grammy nomination.

Which studio distributed the 2023 Best Picture winner, then its highest-grossing film?

A24 opened the film in just ten theaters, and it went on to gross about $143 million worldwide, overtaking Hereditary as the studio's biggest hit to that point.

Which film won Best International Feature at the 2023 Oscars?

All Quiet on the Western Front took 16 years to reach the screen: co-writer Lesley Paterson, a champion triathlete, kept the book rights alive with her race winnings.

Which film lost all nine 2023 Oscar nominations?

The Banshees of Inisherin lost all nine, two months after winning three Golden Globes, including best comedy or musical film.

Which composer won Best Original Score in 2023 for Netflix's First World War film?

Volker Bertelmann, who records as Hauschka and made his name placing objects between piano strings to alter the sound, won for the war film's score, beating John Williams.

John Williams' 2023 Best Original Score nomination, at age 90, was for which film?

The Fabelmans came as Williams, 90, was planning to retire from film scoring; before the ceremony he changed his mind, saying he had '10 more years to go'.

Judd Hirsch's 2023 supporting nomination came a record 42 years after his first, for which 1980 film?

Ordinary People brought his first nomination; the 42-year gap to his second was the longest between two acting nominations, and he lost both times, in 1981 to co-star Timothy Hutton.

Which stop-motion film won Best Animated Feature at the 2023 Oscars?

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, a dark stop-motion take set in Fascist Italy, had been in development since 2008 before Netflix backed it; del Toro shared the award with co-director Mark Gustafson.

Which song won Best Original Song at the 2023 Oscars?

Naatu Naatu, the first song from an Indian film to win, staged its dance-off outside the Mariinskyi Palace in Kyiv, the Ukrainian president's official residence.

RRR, whose song won an Oscar in 2023, was made outside Bollywood in which South Indian language?

Telugu is the language of RRR, whose title began as a working label that stuck: director S. S. Rajamouli said it became so popular the team had to adopt it.

Which song did Rihanna perform at the 2023 Oscars?

Lift Me Up was written as a tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman, and director Ryan Coogler said Rihanna agreed to record her first solo single in six years in the actor's honour.

Lady Gaga nearly skipped singing 'Hold My Hand' at the 2023 Oscars because she was filming which movie?

Joker: Folie à Deux was shooting, and the show's producer had announced she would not perform; her appearance was only reported on the day of the ceremony.

Which film won Best Documentary Feature at the 2023 Oscars?

Navalny shows the Russian opposition leader prank-calling a member of the squad he blamed for poisoning him and coaxing out details of the plot.

Which cable news channel's film arm co-produced the 2023 Best Documentary Feature winner?

CNN Films produced the winner with HBO Max, and it was shot in secret while its subject recovered in Germany from the 2020 Novichok poisoning.

Which Netflix film won Best Documentary Short at the 2023 Oscars?

The Elephant Whisperers, the first Indian production to win the category, follows a couple raising orphaned calves in a forest the wife had feared since a tiger killed her former husband.

The 2023 Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor winners had both appeared in which 1992 comedy?

Encino Man starred one as a thawed-out caveman and gave the other a small part; 31 years later the two won their first Oscars on the same night.

The 2023 Best Actor winner played Rick O'Connell in which 1990s adventure film?

The Mummy was his biggest hit of the 1990s, taking over $400 million worldwide, but he later spent about a decade out of the spotlight before the comeback role that won him the Oscar.

The 2023 Best Animated Short winner is titled after a boy, a mole, a fox and which other animal?

A horse completes The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, which Charlie Mackesy adapted from his own bestseller, a book that grew out of drawings he posted on Instagram.

Ruth E. Carter won her second Oscar in 2023 for Costume Design on which film?

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever made Carter the first Black woman to win two Oscars; she dedicated the award to her mother, who had died the week before at 101.

Ruth E. Carter, a double Oscar winner by 2023, earned her first nomination for which Spike Lee film?

Malcolm X brought the nomination; Lee had met Carter while she was working on the Los Angeles stage and hired her for his second film, School Daze.

Which film won Best Visual Effects at the 2023 Oscars?

Avatar: The Way of Water had its cast act underwater on held breath, and Kate Winslet held hers for more than seven minutes.

Sarah Polley won Best Adapted Screenplay in 2023 for which film?

Women Talking adapts Miriam Toews's novel, which she called 'an imagined response to real events': attacks on the women of a Mennonite colony in Bolivia.

Which film with six 2023 Oscar nominations was 2022's biggest hit at the US box office, taking about $719 million?

Top Gun: Maverick out-earned every 2022 release in US cinemas, even James Cameron's blockbuster sequel, which made far more worldwide; its six nominations brought one win, for sound.

What color was the 2023 Oscars arrivals carpet, the first non-red one in over 60 years?

Champagne and a sienna tent were meant to evoke watching a sunset from a sandy beach with a glass of champagne in hand, consultant Lisa Love said; the carpet had been red since 1961.

Why did the Academy hire a 'crisis team' for the 2023 ceremony?

The Will Smith slap in 2022 led Academy chief Bill Kramer to say it now had 'a whole crisis team, something we've never had before' and had 'run many scenarios'.

The 2023 host's press release called being invited back 'either a great honor' or what?

A trap, he said, adding he was grateful the Academy asked 'so quickly after everyone good said no'; he had hosted twice before.

The 2023 Best Actress winner starred opposite Pierce Brosnan in which James Bond film?

Tomorrow Never Dies made her name outside Asia in 1997 and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon followed, yet her first Oscar nomination came only at 60.

Which action star presented the Best Picture award at the 2023 Oscars?

Harrison Ford presented Best Picture to a cast that included his one-time sidekick Short Round, who had won Best Supporting Actor earlier in the night.

Which singer performed 'Calling All Angels' during the 2023 In Memoriam segment?

Lenny Kravitz performed his own 'Calling All Angels', a single from his 2004 album Baptism, not the 2003 Train hit that shares its title.

Roughly how many US viewers watched the 2023 Oscars on ABC?

19 million, near enough: Nielsen's 18.75 million was a second straight rise from the record-low 10.4 million of 2021, yet it was then the third-smallest Oscars audience on record.

Who received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Governors Awards ahead of the 2023 Oscars?

Michael J. Fox was honored for his Parkinson's advocacy; the foundation he started in 2000 had raised more than $1 billion for research by then.

Which songwriter received an Honorary Oscar for 2023 while also being nominated that year for 'Applause'?

Diane Warren got the honorary statuette after 13 nominations without a win; she performed 'Applause' on the show with Sofia Carson, then lost a 14th time.

Which blockbuster directing duo were among the producers of the 2023 Best Picture winner?

The Russo brothers produced the Daniels' film through their company AGBO, though the Best Picture statuettes went only to the Daniels and producer Jonathan Wang.

Which film won Best Makeup and Hairstyling at the 2023 Oscars?

The Whale won for the prosthetics that turned its star into the 600-pound Charlie; he said they forced him 'to learn to move in a new way'.

Which presenter, then an eight-time nominee without a win, pulled out of the 2023 Oscars after a positive COVID-19 test?

Glenn Close withdrew on the day of the show; her eight nominations without a win tie the acting record of Peter O'Toole, who at least collected an honorary Oscar.

Who introduced the In Memoriam segment at the 2023 Oscars?

John Travolta introduced the tribute, choking up as he remembered his Grease co-star Olivia Newton-John, who had died in August 2022.