40 Fun Facts About Oscars 2018

Which NBA star won an Oscar in 2018 for Dear Basketball, a short based on his farewell letter?

Kobe Bryant wrote the letter in 2015 to announce his retirement, then had veteran Disney animator Glen Keane draw it and John Williams score it.

Which Cold War fantasy led the 2018 Oscars with 13 nominations and went on to win Best Picture?

The Shape of Water was only the second fantasy film to win Best Picture, following The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

What prize did the 2018 Oscars host offer to the winner with the shortest acceptance speech?

A jet ski, with a stay at a Lake Havasu resort thrown in, went to costume designer Mark Bridges, who won for Phantom Thread.

Which actor won Best Actor at the 2018 Oscars for playing Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour?

Gary Oldman spent more than 200 hours in the makeup chair for the role and smoked over 400 cigars during filming.

Which late-night comedian hosted the 2018 Oscars, his second in a row after the envelope mix-up?

Jimmy Kimmel was the first person to host back-to-back ceremonies since Billy Crystal in 1997 and 1998.

Coco, a double winner at the 2018 Oscars, is set during which Mexican holiday?

Day of the Dead inspired the whole concept, and Coco became the first film with a nine-figure budget to feature an all-Latino principal cast.

Which film was wrongly named Best Picture a year before the 2018 Oscars, whose poster joked about it?

The La La Land producers were already giving speeches when the mistake was caught: the presenters had the Best Actress envelope, and Moonlight had won.

Margot Robbie was a Best Actress nominee at the 2018 Oscars as which scandal-hit figure skater?

To play Tonya Harding, Margot Robbie trained on the ice for four months and filmed with a herniated disc in her neck.

Which actress won Best Actress at the 2018 Oscars as a grieving mother who rents roadside billboards?

Frances McDormand had first won the award 21 years earlier, as the pregnant police chief in Fargo.

Which actor earned a 2018 Oscar nomination after replacing Kevin Spacey in All the Money in the World?

Christopher Plummer was 88, the oldest acting nominee the Oscars had seen, and reshot the role's 22 scenes about a month before the film opened.

Which sketch comedian won Best Original Screenplay at the 2018 Oscars for his horror debut, Get Out?

Jordan Peele was the first African American winner in the category, for a script whose first draft took him about two months.

Which filmmaker won Best Director at the 2018 Oscars for the monster romance that took Best Picture?

Guillermo del Toro is one of the Three Amigos of Mexican cinema, alongside his close friends Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu.

The 2018 Oscars moved from late February to early March to avoid clashing with which sporting event?

The Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, ran until 25 February, so the ceremony was held on 4 March instead.

Which actor rejoined Faye Dunaway to present Best Picture at the 2018 Oscars, a year after their mix-up?

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway had first been paired as presenters in 2017 to mark 50 years since Bonnie and Clyde.

Which actor won Best Supporting Actor at the 2018 Oscars as a racist, bullying small-town police officer?

Sam Rockwell beat his own co-star Woody Harrelson, nominated in the same category as the police chief in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Which actress won Best Supporting Actress at the 2018 Oscars as a figure skater's fearsome mother?

Allison Janney had the part of LaVona Golden written for her, and the screenwriter refused to sell his script until she was cast.

Meryl Streep earned her 21st Oscar nomination at the 2018 ceremony for which newspaper drama?

The Post cast Streep as publisher Katharine Graham and Tom Hanks as editor Ben Bradlee, racing to print the leaked Pentagon Papers in 1971.

Which Second World War epic won three awards at the 2018 Oscars, all of them for sound or editing?

Dunkirk tells its evacuation story on three clocks at once: a week ashore, a day at sea and an hour in the air.

Icarus, a documentary winner at the 2018 Oscars, exposed state-sponsored doping in which country?

Russia was not the original subject: amateur cyclist Bryan Fogel was doping himself as an experiment when his adviser, the head of Moscow's anti-doping lab, fled and turned whistleblower.

This Is Me, a Best Original Song nominee at the 2018 Oscars, was written for which big-screen musical?

The Greatest Showman stars Hugh Jackman as circus creator P.T. Barnum; its anthem won the Golden Globe, and Keala Settle sang it live on Oscar night.

Which Lady Bird filmmaker became only the fifth woman nominated for Best Director, at the 2018 Oscars?

Greta Gerwig was making her solo directorial debut, and it also earned her a nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

Which actor appeared in two Best Picture nominees at the 2018 Oscars, Lady Bird and Call Me by Your Name?

Timothée Chalamet, then 22, was also the youngest Best Actor nominee since 19-year-old Mickey Rooney for Babes in Arms.

Which actor was a Best Actor nominee at the 2018 Oscars as an obsessive dressmaker in 1950s London?

Daniel Day-Lewis announced his retirement before Phantom Thread even opened; he had quit once before, in the late 1990s, to train as a shoemaker.

Which R&B star was the first person nominated for acting and songwriting in one year, at the 2018 Oscars?

Mary J. Blige earned both for Mudbound: a supporting turn as the mother of the Jackson family and the film's song Mighty River.

Call Me by Your Name, a four-time nominee at the 2018 Oscars, is set in 1983 in which European country?

Italy also hosted the shoot, mainly in the Lombardy town of Crema, where part of the script was written at the director's kitchen table.

Which British actor was a Best Actor nominee at the 2018 Oscars for the horror hit Get Out?

Daniel Kaluuya went on to win the supporting-actor award three years later as Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.

Which song from Coco beat This Is Me to win Best Original Song at the 2018 Oscars?

Remember Me made co-writer Robert Lopez the first double EGOT winner, with at least two each of the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony.

The Disaster Artist, a screenplay nominee at the 2018 Oscars, recounts the making of which cult film?

The Room is Tommy Wiseau's 2003 melodrama, widely considered one of the worst films ever made; James Franco both directed The Disaster Artist and played Wiseau.

John Williams earned a Best Original Score nomination at the 2018 Oscars for which blockbuster sequel?

Star Wars: The Last Jedi added to a tally that makes John Williams the second-most-nominated person in Oscar history, behind only Walt Disney.

Which director of photography won a first Oscar in 2018 for Blade Runner 2049, on his 14th nomination?

Roger Deakins had gone home empty-handed for The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, No Country for Old Men and Skyfall, among others.

Mudbound's Rachel Morrison made history at the 2018 Oscars as the first woman nominated in which category?

Cinematography had gone 89 ceremonies without a female nominee; Rachel Morrison also shot Marvel's Black Panther, which was in cinemas on Oscar night.

A Fantastic Woman won Best Foreign Language Film at the 2018 Oscars for which South American country?

In Chile, activists used the win to push a gender identity bill, and the law was approved later in 2018.

Which 89-year-old became the oldest competitive Oscar winner in 2018 for adapting Call Me by Your Name?

James Ivory had been nominated three times as a director, for Merchant Ivory dramas such as Howards End, but his first win came as a writer.

Which reigning Best Actor winner withdrew from presenting Best Actress at the 2018 Oscars?

Casey Affleck withdrew amid the MeToo movement, so Jodie Foster and Jennifer Lawrence presented the award together in his place.

Which Girls Trip star announced the 2018 Oscar nominations alongside motion-capture actor Andy Serkis?

Tiffany Haddish read out the nominees at 5:22 a.m. in Beverly Hills, months after Girls Trip became the first comedy of 2017 to take $100 million in North American cinemas.

Which composer won his second Oscar in 2018 for scoring the night's Best Picture winner?

Alexandre Desplat had won his first three years earlier for The Grand Budapest Hotel, one of five major scores he wrote in 2014.

Which rock singer performed a Tom Petty song during the In Memoriam segment of the 2018 Oscars?

Eddie Vedder had history with the late star: in 2006 he joined Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on stage to sing The Waiting.

Which French New Wave filmmaker, nominated for Faces Places, was the oldest nominee at the 2018 Oscars?

Agnès Varda had collected an honorary Oscar only months earlier, the first ever given to a female director.

The Best Picture winner at the 2018 Oscars is set around a secret government laboratory in which US city?

Baltimore was recreated in Canada, with the cameras rolling in Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario, in 2016.

Which star of A Fantastic Woman became the first openly transgender presenter at the Oscars, in 2018?

Daniela Vega first joined the film as a cultural consultant on its script, before the director asked her to play the lead, Marina.