50 Fun Facts About Oscars 2019

Which film beat Roma to Best Picture at the 2019 Oscars even though its director was not nominated?

Green Book took its name from a travel guide listing the motels and restaurants that would serve Black motorists in the segregated South.

Which actor won Best Actor at the 2019 Oscars for playing Freddie Mercury, false teeth and all?

Rami Malek became the first actor of Egyptian heritage to win Best Actor; his parents had emigrated from Egypt to California.

Which British actress won Best Actress at the 2019 Oscars as an ailing, rabbit-keeping Queen Anne?

Olivia Colman went straight on to another royal role, taking over as Elizabeth II in The Crown later the same year.

Which comedian quit as host of the 2019 Oscars over old tweets, leaving the show without an emcee?

Kevin Hart stepped down two days after taking the job, and the Oscars ran without a host for the first time since 1989.

Which pop star was nominated at the 2019 Oscars for both Best Actress and Best Original Song?

Lady Gaga won for the song and lost for the acting, only the second person ever nominated for both on a single film. Mary J. Blige had done it a year earlier.

Black Panther, the first superhero Best Picture nominee, is set in which fictional African nation?

Wakanda's costumes, sets and score each won an Oscar in 2019, three wins from seven nominations and the first ever for Marvel Studios.

Which American Idol runner-up fronted Queen when the band opened the host-free 2019 Oscars ceremony?

Adam Lambert and Queen played We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions, and the audience of film stars gave them a standing ovation.

Christian Bale earned a 2019 Best Actor Oscar nomination for playing which vice president in Vice?

Dick Cheney was played by a shaven-headed Christian Bale who put on 40 pounds, and the makeup team won the film's only Oscar.

Which director, once nominated for writing Do the Right Thing, won his first competitive Oscar in 2019?

Spike Lee won for co-writing BlacKkKlansman, having already been handed an honorary award by the Academy in 2015.

Roma, joint leader in nominations at the 2019 Oscars, was released by which streaming company?

Netflix gave Roma a limited cinema run three weeks before streaming it, and the film won three Oscars on the night.

Which film won the most Oscars at the 2019 ceremony, four in all, yet missed out on Best Picture?

Bohemian Rhapsody won for its lead actor, its editing and both sound categories, though its director had been fired two weeks before filming ended.

Which film tied with Roma on ten nominations at the 2019 Oscars but went home with only one award?

The Favourite turned its ten nominations into a single win, for its lead actress, while two of her co-stars competed against each other.

Which actor won a second Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2019 for playing pianist Don Shirley?

Mahershala Ali had won the same award two years earlier for Moonlight, becoming the first Black actor to win twice in one category.

Which actress won Best Supporting Actress at the 2019 Oscars for If Beale Street Could Talk?

Regina King had already won three Emmys for television, and she added a fourth for Watchmen the year after her Oscar.

Which filmmaker won Best Director at the 2019 Oscars for Roma, a drama drawn from his own childhood?

Alfonso Cuarón based the story on Liboria Rodríguez, the maid who had worked for his family for years, and it brought him a second directing Oscar.

Which song won Best Original Song at the 2019 Oscars after its two stars sang it at a shared piano?

Shallow had already won two Grammys a fortnight earlier, and the ceremony performance sent it back up the charts.

Which star of The Wife lost Best Actress at the 2019 Oscars, her seventh nomination without a win?

Glenn Close had won the Golden Globe and the Screen Actors Guild award for the role, and left as the most-nominated actress never to win.

Which first-time director of A Star Is Born missed a Best Director nomination at the 2019 Oscars?

Bradley Cooper still left with three nominations for the film, as its lead actor, co-writer and producer.

Willem Dafoe's 2019 Best Actor Oscar nomination came for playing which painter in At Eternity's Gate?

Vincent van Gogh's final years are the film's subject, and it dramatizes the theory that his death was manslaughter rather than self-inflicted.

Which Supreme Court justice was profiled in a Best Documentary Feature nominee at the 2019 Oscars?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's film, titled simply with her initials, was also nominated for Best Original Song for a Diane Warren ballad.

Roma gave which country its first win for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2019 Oscars?

Mexico finally won with a black-and-white film named after Colonia Roma, the neighbourhood of the capital where its director grew up.

Roma's Best Director winner made Oscar history in 2019 by also winning which craft award for the film?

Cinematography had never before gone to a film's own Best Director winner; he shot Roma in colour and converted it to black and white afterwards.

Free Solo, the documentary winner at the 2019 Oscars, follows a ropeless climb of which rock face?

El Capitan is a 3,000-foot rock wall in Yosemite National Park, and Alex Honnold climbed it alone in June 2017 with no ropes or protection.

Which teenager is the hero of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, a winner at the 2019 Oscars?

Miles Morales carried the film to the first Best Animated Feature win from outside Disney and Pixar since Rango seven years earlier.

Which Pixar short, the studio's first directed by a woman, won an Oscar at the 2019 ceremony?

Bao follows a lonely Chinese-Canadian mother whose steamed bun comes to life, giving her a second chance at motherhood.

Which film beat Avengers: Infinity War to win Best Visual Effects at the 2019 Oscars?

First Man recreated the Apollo 11 Moon landing for director Damien Chazelle, and visual effects was the only one of its four nominations it won.

Which Black Panther costume designer became her category's first Black winner at the 2019 Oscars?

Ruth E. Carter had first been nominated for Malcolm X in the early 1990s, and she later won the same award again for the Black Panther sequel.

Which rapper was nominated for Best Original Song at the 2019 Oscars for a Black Panther track?

Kendrick Lamar never got to perform it on the night: of the five nominated songs, his was the only one left out of the ceremony.

Which trainee teacher with no acting experience earned a 2019 Best Actress Oscar nomination for Roma?

Yalitza Aparicio won the role of Cleo just before qualifying as a teacher, and became the first Indigenous American woman nominated for Best Actress.

Which director of Dumb and Dumber made the Best Picture winner at the 2019 Oscars?

Peter Farrelly took home two Oscars that night, as a producer and a co-writer, without even being nominated for directing the film.

Sam Rockwell earned a 2019 Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for playing which president in Vice?

George W. Bush gave Sam Rockwell back-to-back nominations: he had won the same award a year earlier for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Which actor was Oscar-nominated in 2019 as Tony Lip, a bouncer hired to drive a touring pianist?

Viggo Mortensen, best known as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, was on his third Best Actor nomination, after Eastern Promises and Captain Fantastic.

Which actress was Oscar-nominated in 2019 as Abigail, a scheming servant at Queen Anne's court?

Emma Stone was up against her own co-star Rachel Weisz in the Best Supporting Actress category, and neither of them won.

Which comedy star was Oscar-nominated in 2019 as a literary forger in Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Melissa McCarthy played a struggling biographer who fakes letters from dead writers, and in the same awards season was named Worst Actress at the Razzies for two other films.

Which Best Actress winner from 2001 presented Best Picture as the final award of the 2019 Oscars?

Julia Roberts won her own Oscar for Erin Brockovich; with no host that year, the last award of the night fell to her to present.

Which tennis champion took the stage at the 2019 Oscars to introduce nominee A Star Is Born?

Serena Williams was one of several stars from outside film given that job; talk-show host Trevor Noah did the same for Black Panther.

Which veteran singer performed the nominated song from Mary Poppins Returns at the 2019 Oscars?

Bette Midler sang The Place Where Lost Things Go only after the Academy dropped a plan to stage just two of the five nominated songs.

Which singer starred in the 1976 version of A Star Is Born, whose remake won an Oscar in 2019?

Barbra Streisand's version won an Oscar too, for its love theme Evergreen, which spent three weeks at number one in the United States.

Which veteran of screen Westerns earned his first Oscar nomination in 2019 for A Star Is Born?

Sam Elliott played the rock star's older half-brother and long-suffering manager, and the nomination was the first of his long career.

Which actor earned a first Oscar nomination in 2019 as detective Flip Zimmerman in BlacKkKlansman?

Adam Driver was nominated again a year later for Marriage Story, while John David Washington, the film's lead, was passed over.

If Beale Street Could Talk, a three-time nominee at the 2019 Oscars, adapts a novel by which writer?

James Baldwin published the novel in 1974, and Barry Jenkins wrote his screenplay in 2013, three years before his film Moonlight came out.

Shoplifters, a Palme d'Or winner up for a foreign-language Oscar in 2019, came from which country?

Japan's entry lost the Oscar to Roma, but it had been the country's first Palme d'Or winner since The Eel in 1997.

The 2019 Oscar-winning documentary short follows village women making sanitary pads in which country?

India is the setting: women in Hapur learn to run a pad-making machine, an idea inspired by the activist Arunachalam Muruganantham.

Which director was nominated at the 2019 Oscars for the stop-motion animated film Isle of Dogs?

Wes Anderson took inspiration from the films of Akira Kurosawa, and Alexandre Desplat's score earned the film a second nomination.

Which actress played the title nanny in Mary Poppins Returns, a four-time nominee at the 2019 Oscars?

Emily Blunt had the screen to herself after Julie Andrews turned down a cameo, feeling her presence would pull attention away from the new star.

Which proposed Oscar category, announced in August 2018, was shelved a month later after a backlash?

Popular Film was pitched as a way to honour blockbusters and lift TV ratings, but critics said it implied artistic films were not popular with audiences.

Which star of Sounder collected an honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards ahead of the 2019 ceremony?

Cicely Tyson became the first African-American woman to receive an honorary Oscar, more than four decades after that film brought her a Best Actress nomination.

Which star of The Big Sick announced the 2019 Oscar nominations alongside Tracee Ellis Ross?

Kumail Nanjiani had been a nominee himself a year earlier, for writing that film with his wife about their own courtship.

Which Withnail and I star earned an Oscar nomination in 2019 for Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Richard E. Grant played Jack Hock, the forger's charming accomplice, more than 30 years after that cult comedy gave him his film debut.

Which Childish Gambino collaborator won Best Original Score at the 2019 Oscars for Black Panther?

Ludwig Göransson travelled to Senegal to study traditional instruments for the score, having also scored the director's two earlier films.