Oscars 2014: Notable facts and historic records that could be broken at 86th Academy Awards
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Four people will be hoping that their hatfuls of nominations finally come good with their first win this evening:
Roger Deakins earns his 11th nomination for cinematography, for Prisoners
Thomas Newman earns his 12th best original score nomination, for Saving Mr Banks
Alexandre Desplat earns his sixth best original score nomination, for Philomena
Patricia Norris earns her sixth nomination for best costume design, for 12 Years a Slave
SLIM CHANCE
It's the Academy's all-time dieters' club awards! In third place is Robert De Niro, who cast off 35lb (as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, nominated for Best Actor 1976)
Next up, Matthew McConaughey, who dropped a skinnytastic 51lb (to play Ron Woodroof in Dallas Buyers Club, nominated for best actor 2014)
But our winner, by a quarter of an Oscar statuette, is Tom Hanks who shed a whopping 53lb for Castaway (2000, nominated for Best Actor)
X DOESN'T MARK THE SPOT
Captain Phillips is the first pirate film – at a push – to be nominated for Best Picture since Captain Blood in 1935. That didn't win either…
JUDI HEARTS HARVEY
Without Harvey Weinstein, Judi Dench is nothin'. Six of her seven nominations have come from Weinstein-distributed films, including Philomena, for which she is nominated for Best Actress this year
GLOBAL BOX-OFFICE TAKE OF THE BEST PICTURE NOMINEES:
Gravity: $701,848,128
The Wolf of Wall Street: $338,260,447
Captain Phillips: $218,123,763
American Hustle: $216,418,815
12 Years a Slave: $117,564,723
Philomena: $74,032,578
Dallas Buyers Club: $34,439,576
Her: $28,078,751
Nebraska: $17,894,665
IT'S A CUMBERS GAME
Benedict Cumberbatch (pictured above) is this year's lucky charm, popping up in four films with nominations: August: Osage County, 12 Years a Slave, Star Trek Into Darkness and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
THIRD TIME LUCKY?
Sadly, in the 21st century, this is something to be noted: Steve McQueen, nominated for the Best Director award for 12 Years a Slave, is only the third black director to be nominated in the category, following John Singleton (Boyz n The Hood, 1991) and Lee Daniels (Precious, 2009)
THE TRANSGENDER EXPRESS
For his turn as an HIV-positive transgender woman in Dallas Buyers Club, Jared Leto (pictured above) joins a select club of actors nominated for trans roles:
Jaye Davidson (The Crying Game, 1992)
Hilary Swank (Boys Don't Cry, 1999, won)
Felicity Huffman (Transamerica, 2005)
Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs, 2011)
A VINTAGE YEAR
Let's hear it for the olds. If Bruce Dern, 77, wins in the Best Actor category (for Nebraska) he'll be nearly a year older than the current wrinkliest winner, Henry Fonda (On Golden Pond, 1981). And should 84-year-old June Squibb totter home with the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, she'll have seven years on Peggy Ashcroft (A Passage to India, 1985)
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