50 Fun Facts About Oscars 2015

Which film, shot a few weeks a year for 12 years, was a Best Picture nominee at the 2015 Oscars?

Boyhood was nearly called 12 Years, until 12 Years a Slave came out a year earlier and forced director Richard Linklater to rename it.

Eddie Redmayne won Best Actor at the 2015 Oscars for playing which physicist in The Theory of Everything?

Stephen Hawking liked the finished film enough to let its makers use his own synthesised voice, after their attempts to recreate it fell short.

Which animated hit was left out of Best Animated Feature at the 2015 Oscars, though one of its songs was nominated?

The Lego Movie's absence was widely called a snub, and the ceremony's host joked about it on air just before the animation award was handed out.

Which Broadway star presented an award at the 2015 Oscars with John Travolta, a year after he mangled her name on air?

Idina Menzel got her own back by introducing him under a nonsense name, and later called his slip one of the best things to happen to her career.

Which dark comedy about a faded superhero actor staging a Broadway play won Best Picture at the 2015 Oscars?

Birdman is staged to look like one continuous take, an idea its director had from the start because, as he saw it, people live their lives with no editing.

Citizenfour, Best Documentary Feature winner at the 2015 Oscars, was filmed in Hong Kong with which whistleblower?

Edward Snowden was filmed there over eight days in 2013, and the title is the codename he used when he first emailed the director.

Which pop star marked The Sound of Music's 50th anniversary at the 2015 Oscars with a medley of its songs?

Lady Gaga sang four of the musical's numbers as a tribute to Julie Andrews, who then took the stage herself to present Best Original Score.

Which actress won Best Actress at the 2015 Oscars as a linguistics professor with early-onset Alzheimer's?

Julianne Moore researched the disease for months to play the lead in Still Alice, a film based on a novel written by a neuroscientist.

Which actor hosted the 2015 Oscars, having already fronted the Tony Awards four times?

Neil Patrick Harris had also hosted the Emmys twice, and ran a gag all night about his Oscar predictions sitting in a locked box on the stage.

John Legend and Common won Best Original Song at the 2015 Oscars for a song from which civil rights drama?

Selma's song Glory was performed at the ceremony on a set built to resemble the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and it also won a Golden Globe and a Grammy.

Which actor won Best Supporting Actor at the 2015 Oscars as an abusive jazz bandleader in Whiplash?

J. K. Simmons had already played the bandleader in an 18-minute short version, shot to win over investors for the full film.

Benedict Cumberbatch was a Best Actor nominee at the 2015 Oscars as which mathematician in The Imitation Game?

Alan Turing devised ways to decrypt German military messages during the Second World War, and received a posthumous royal pardon in 2013.

Which Clint Eastwood war film, starring Bradley Cooper, out-earned every other Best Picture nominee at the 2015 Oscars?

American Sniper passed Saving Private Ryan as the top-grossing war film worldwide, yet its only win from six nominations was for Best Sound Editing.

Which Disney film about a boy and his inflatable healthcare robot won Best Animated Feature at the 2015 Oscars?

Big Hero 6 was the first Disney animated film to feature Marvel Comics characters, made after Disney bought the comics company in 2009.

Which former Batman star was a Best Actor nominee at the 2015 Oscars for playing a washed-up superhero actor?

Michael Keaton won his first Golden Globe for the part, a faded star chasing a comeback much like his own, but Eddie Redmayne took the Oscar.

Which comedy caper, set in the fictional country of Zubrowka, tied for the most wins at the 2015 Oscars?

The Grand Budapest Hotel won four awards from nine nominations, and Wes Anderson shaped its world from the writings of Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig.

Which actress was nominated at the 2015 Oscars for Wild, playing a woman hiking the Pacific Crest Trail alone?

Reese Witherspoon also produced the film, based on Cheryl Strayed's memoir, and it brought her a second nomination after a career downturn.

Rosamund Pike was a Best Actress nominee at the 2015 Oscars for which thriller directed by David Fincher?

Gone Girl was adapted by Gillian Flynn from her own 2012 novel, and Pike's nomination was the only one the film received.

Which actress earned a 2015 Oscar nomination as the Witch in the Disney musical Into the Woods?

Meryl Streep holds the record for the most Oscar nominations of any performer, and Rob Marshall's take on the Sondheim show added a singing role to the list.

Which Christopher Nolan space epic won Best Visual Effects at the 2015 Oscars, its only win from five nominations?

Interstellar's wormhole and black hole were rendered from equations worked out by physicist Kip Thorne, who also conceived the film.

Which actress won Best Supporting Actress at the 2015 Oscars for playing a single mother across twelve years of filming?

Patricia Arquette shot the part in yearly instalments from 2002, fitting it around her Emmy-winning lead in the television drama Medium.

Which star of The Office earned a Best Actor nomination at the 2015 Oscars as millionaire murderer John du Pont?

Steve Carell's turn in Foxcatcher marked his move from comedy into dramatic roles, playing an heir who shot dead an Olympic champion he had hired.

Foxcatcher, a five-time nominee at the 2015 Oscars, is set in the world of which Olympic sport?

Wrestling gold medallists Mark and Dave Schultz were recruited by a du Pont family heir in the 1980s to help coach American hopefuls.

Which actress directed Unbroken, a three-time nominee at the 2015 Oscars about Olympic runner Louis Zamperini?

Angelina Jolie worked from a script co-written by the Coen brothers, about a man who survived 47 days on a raft and then prisoner-of-war camps.

Maleficent, a Best Costume Design nominee at the 2015 Oscars, retells which fairy tale from the villain's side?

Sleeping Beauty reached cinemas as a Disney cartoon in 1959, and the live-action retelling's costumes earned the film its only nomination.

Which Marvel space adventure was nominated at the 2015 Oscars for both its visual effects and its makeup?

Guardians of the Galaxy was the biggest North American box-office hit among all the nominated films when the list was announced, but it went home empty-handed.

Which Japanese animator, the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, received an Honorary Oscar ahead of the 2015 ceremony?

Hayao Miyazaki accepted it at the Governors Awards in November 2014, though he had skipped the 2003 ceremony where Spirited Away won, in protest at the Iraq War.

Which actress earned her first Oscar nomination in 2015 as a faded actor's daughter, fresh out of rehab?

Emma Stone lost the supporting award that night, but won Best Actress two years later as an aspiring actress in the musical La La Land.

Which Hollywood Boulevard venue, which carried Kodak's name until 2012, staged the 2015 Oscars ceremony?

The Dolby Theatre sits inside a shopping mall, so its storefronts are hidden behind red drapery whenever the ceremony comes to town.

Which country star earned a Best Original Song nomination at the 2015 Oscars for the last song he ever recorded?

Glen Campbell co-wrote it for a documentary about his Alzheimer's diagnosis and farewell tour, and Tim McGraw sang it at the ceremony.

Which band's frontman starred in Begin Again and performed its nominated song Lost Stars at the 2015 Oscars?

Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine took his first film role in Begin Again, and declined to be paid for appearing in it.

Which fantasy film series ended with a single Best Sound Editing nomination at the 2015 Oscars for its final chapter?

The Hobbit trilogy closed with The Battle of the Five Armies, a prequel to the Lord of the Rings films Peter Jackson had made a decade earlier.

In Whiplash, a three-time winner at the 2015 Oscars, which instrument does Miles Teller's music student play?

Drums were nothing new to Teller, who taught himself at fifteen and did much of the film's playing, with a professional double for certain scenes.

Ida, a drama filmed in black and white, won Best Foreign Language Film at the 2015 Oscars for which country?

Poland had never won the award before, and director Paweł Pawlikowski, who left the country at fourteen, saw the film as a way to recover his childhood home.

Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Best Director win at the 2015 Oscars was the second in a row for filmmakers from which country?

Mexico's streak began with Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity, and Iñárritu stretched it to three by winning again a year later for The Revenant.

Which cinematographer won his second consecutive Oscar in 2015, a year after winning for the space thriller Gravity?

Emmanuel Lubezki, known as Chivo, won yet again a year later for The Revenant, becoming the first cinematographer to take the award three times running.

Which actor, nominated in 2015 for The Judge, was at 84 the oldest Best Supporting Actor nominee to that point?

Robert Duvall earned it opposite Robert Downey Jr., more than forty years after his first nomination for The Godfather, and Christopher Plummer later took the record.

Which composer beat himself at the 2015 Oscars, winning Best Original Score while nominated for two films?

Alexandre Desplat wrote five major scores during 2014, and the win was his first, eight years after his first nomination for The Queen.

Which actor presented Best Picture at the 2015 Oscars to a director he had worked with on a 2003 thriller?

Sean Penn starred in 21 Grams for the same filmmaker, opposite Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro, and had already won Best Actor twice himself.

Which actress was a Best Supporting Actress nominee at the 2015 Oscars as Bletchley Park cryptanalyst Joan Clarke?

Keira Knightley's second nomination came for The Imitation Game, nine years after her first, for playing Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice.

Which French star was a Best Actress nominee at the 2015 Oscars for the Belgian drama Two Days, One Night?

Marion Cotillard became the first actor nominated for a Belgian film, playing a factory worker with one weekend to save her job.

Which actress was nominated at the 2015 Oscars for playing Cheryl Strayed's mother in flashbacks in Wild?

Laura Dern's nomination was her second, more than two decades after Rambling Rose, and she later won as a divorce lawyer in Marriage Story.

Virunga, a Best Documentary Feature nominee at the 2015 Oscars, follows rangers guarding the last of which great apes?

Mountain gorillas in Congo's Virunga National Park face war, poaching and the threat of oil exploration, and the film reached viewers through Netflix.

Vivian Maier, subject of a Best Documentary nominee at the 2015 Oscars, shot her street photos while working as what?

A nanny to Chicago families for most of her life, Maier was unknown until a box of her negatives sold at a 2007 auction and the images went online.

Leviathan, a Golden Globe winner nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2015 Oscars, was which country's entry?

Russia's entry was a crime drama from director Andrey Zvyagintsev, in which one character quotes the Book of Job to its struggling hero.

Which comic actor joined Anna Kendrick in the host's opening musical number, Moving Pictures, at the 2015 Oscars?

Jack Black appeared in a song composed for the night by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, an Oscar-winning husband-and-wife songwriting team.

Which 2014 blockbuster topped the worldwide box office yet received no nominations at all at the 2015 Oscars?

Transformers: Age of Extinction was the first worldwide box-office champion left without a single nomination since Mission: Impossible 2.

Which young writer-director was nominated at the 2015 Oscars for adapting his own short film about a jazz student?

Damien Chazelle expected to compete for original screenplay, but the Academy moved his script because the short had premiered a year before the feature.

Which Dublin-raised star of The Quiet Man and Miracle on 34th Street received an Honorary Oscar in November 2014?

Maureen O'Hara, nicknamed the Queen of Technicolor, had never been nominated for a competitive Oscar in her long career.

Which calypso singer and civil rights activist received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award ahead of the 2015 Oscars?

Harry Belafonte's breakthrough album Calypso, released in 1956, is credited as the first LP by a single artist to sell a million copies.