Oscar Facts

1) The youngest ever winner of the Best Actor Oscar was Richard Dreyfuss, for 1977's The Goodbye Girl. He was 29. The youngest winner of the Best Actress award was Marlee Matlin, for 1986's Children Of A Lesser God. She was 21. The youngest ever winner of a competitive Oscar was Tatum O'Neal, voted Best Supporting Actress for Paper Moon in 1973. She was 10, a year younger than Anna Paquin when she won for The Piano in 1993. The youngest ever Oscar recipient though was Shirley Temple who was six when handed a Special Award for her contribution during 1934.

2) The oldest winner of a competitive Oscar was Jessica Tandy. She was 80 when she took Best Actress for Driving Miss Daisy in 1989, just pipping George Burns who won in 1975 for The Sunshine Boys. The oldest ever Best Actor was Henry Fonda who was 76 when he won for On Golden Pond in 1981. Oldest male nominee was Richard Farnsworth, 79 when given a nod for The Straight Story.

3) The first actor to receive an Oscar posthumously was Peter Finch who died of a heart attack while leaving the Beverly Hills Hotel to do a pre-Oscar ceremony TV interview with Good Morning America. His wife picked up the Best Actor award he won as Howard Beale, the TV newsman who goes deliriously sane ("I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna TAKE it any more!"). The movie, of course, was 1976's Network.

4) The Oscars are so nicknamed thanks to Margaret Herrick, former librarian for the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences, who commented that the statues looked like her Uncle Oscar (Pierce). The name stuck. The statues themselves (weighing 6 and three-quarter pounds and standing 13 and a half inches tall) were designed in 1928 by MGM art director Cedric Gibbons, who doodled the design during an early meeting of the Academy. Unemployed sculptor George Stanley was paid $500 to knock up the first batch.

5) The 1973 ceremony was disrupted by a streaker, Robert Opal, who burst onto the stage while David Niven was introducing Elizabeth Taylor. Despite Niven's comments about Opal's "shortcomings", streaking only increased in popularity, Ray Stevens having a major hit with The Streak that same year. Sadly, Opal was murdered in his San Francisco sex shop in 1979.

6) Linda Hunt remains the only actress to win an Oscar for playing a man. She appeared as a male photographer, alongside Mel Gibson, in 1981's The Year Of Living Dangerously.

7) Sylvia Miles did the least work ever for an Oscar nomination, appearing onscreen for only six minutes during 1969's Midnight Cowboy. With another two minutes' effort she might have won, as Judi Dench did with her eight-minute performance in 1998's Shakespeare In Love, and Anthony Quinn did with eight minutes' worth of Paul Gauguin in 1956's Lust For Life.

8) Staying on the Dench tip, 1998 was the first time two actresses had been nominated for playing the same role - Dame Judi playing Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare In Love, and Cate Blanchett playing her in Elizabeth.

9) At the 1982 ceremony, Zbigniew Rybczynski, who'd just won for Best Animated Short, stepped out of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for a quick fag. Unfortunately, a super-keen security guard wouldn't let him back in, despite his outraged cry of "I have Oscar!!" It got worse when a frustrated Rybczynski kicked the guard and found himself arrested and thrown in jail.

10) The movie which won the most Oscars without winning Best Picture was Cabaret, which took eight awards in 1972.

11) Biggest ever loser-movies were 1977's The Turning Point and 1985's The Color Purple, both of which were nominated in eleven categories and won zilch. Biggest loser-actors were Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, each nominated seven times with absolutely nothing to show for it. Except millions in the bank, that is.

12) People complain today about studios pressing for votes, but nothing matches the efforts made on behalf of The Alamo before the 1960 awards. Adverts were released describing it as "The George Washington of films, storming the celluloid heights for God and country", and "the most important motion picture ever made". Chill Wills, up for Best Supporting Actor, even put out his own ads, naming every one of the Academy's members and saying "Win, lose or draw, you're still my cousins, and I love you all". Groucho Marx replied with an ad saying "Dear Mr Wills, I am delighted to be your cousin, but I'm still voting for Sal Mineo". Though nominated in 7 categories, The Alamo won only one Oscar - for Best Sound.

13) The biggest loser actress, incredibly, is Meryl Streep, who's been whipped on 10 separate occasions. The whippers, in order, were Maggie Smith (1978), Katherine Hepburn (1981), Shirley Maclaine (1983), Geraldine Page (1985), Cher (1987), Jodie Foster (1988), Kathy Bates (1990), Susan Sarandon (1995), Gwyneth Paltrow (1998) and Hilary Swank (1999).

14) The longest-suffering director in Oscar history was surely Steven Spielberg. He'd made four of the Top Ten biggest-grossing films in history before the Academy deigned to give him a gong, for Schindler's List in 1993. He was first snubbed back in 1975 when he didn't get a nod for Jaws. Having invited a crew over to film his reaction to the announcement of the nominations, Spielberg was caught uttering the incredibly inglorious line "I can't believe it - they went for Fellini instead of me".

15) But Spielberg, O'Toole, Burton and Streep could have no complaints when placed beside the most humongous losers of them all. Composer Alex North and art director Roland Anderson were both nominated 15 times without a win. Randy Newman came close to out-losing them, but then won at the 16th attempt with "If I Didn't Have You" from Monster's Inc. His reaction? "I don't feel it makes the song any better - the grammar in it is very bad".

16) The biggest winner ever was Walt Disney, who picked up a whopping 26 Oscars from 64 nominations, plus another six special trophies.

17) Expecting to be nominated for 1962's Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, Joan Crawford was most put out that she wasn't, and furious that her co-star and deadly rival Bette Davis was. Seeking gloriously malicious revenge, Crawford then wrote to the other four nominees, saying that if they won but were unable to attend the ceremony, she'd happily accept the award on their behalf. So, Anne Bancroft won for The Miracle Worker, couldn't attend, and Crawford went up to claim the prize, leaving Ms Davis seething in her seat.

18) Another great Bette Davis rivalry was with Katherine Hepburn. When Hepburn shared the Best Actress of 1968 Oscar with Barbra Streisand, Davis said "I wanted to be the first to win 3 Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually, it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose". Well, apart from the 8 times she was nominated and didn't win%u2026 How it must have hurt when Hepburn made it 3 and a half in 1982.

19) A few Oscar firsts and onlys. The only silent Best Picture was Wings, in 1927-28. The first Best Picture with sound was The Broadway Melody in 1928-29. The first Best Picture in colour was Gone With The Wind, in 1939. The only sequel to win Best Picture was The Godfather Part 2, in 1974. And the first non-Hollywood Best Picture was Laurence Olivier's Hamlet, in 1948.

20) There was confusion and humiliation back at in 1934 when Will Rogers opened the Best Picture envelope and said "Come on up and get it, Frank!" Up leapt Frank Capra, convinced he'd won it for Lady For A Day. By the time he got to the stage, though, he realised the winner was Frank Lloyd for Cavalcade and had to go and sit down again, wearing the reddest face in Academy history. Capra swore he'd never attend the ceremony again - but he was there the next year to pick up Best Picture for It Happened One Night.

21) The most honoured directors were John Ford who won Best Director four times (for The Informer, The Grapes Of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley and The Quiet Man): Frank Capra who won three times (for It Happened One Night, Mr Deeds Goes To Town and You Can't Take It With You - and NOT his classic It's A Wonderful Life): and William Wyler, another three-time winner (for Mrs Miniver, The Best Years Of Our Lives and Ben-Hur).

22) In 1978, when Vanessa Redgrave won for Julia, she made an impassioned speech supporting Palestinian rights. There was a mighty kerfuffle backstage as everyone battled for a chance to refute her arguments. When Paddy Chayefsky presented the Best Screenplay award, he was so keen to have a go back he forgot to read out the nominees. Outside, demonstrators took it upon themselves to burn Redgrave in effigy.

23) Amazingly, and not a little disconcertingly, the only women to have been nominated as Best Director were Lina Wertmuller, for 1976's Seven Beauties, and Jane Campion, for 1993's The Piano.

24) When, in 1978, Debbie Boone performed the Oscar-winning song You Light Up My Life, she was accompanied by a group of deaf kids signing the lyrics. At least, everyone assumed they were deaf kids. But complaints that their signing was completely incomprehensible led to an admission that they were in fact rounded up from a local school and could all hear perfectly well.

25) The actor with the most performance Oscars is Katherine Hepburn, winner of four statues. Just behind, with three, are Walter Brennan, Ingrid Bergman and Jack Nicholson. Making those four look like the pitiful losers they are, though, is Cedric Gibson, an art director for MGM who won no fewer than eleven Oscars (he also designed the Oscar statuette), and costume designer Edith Head who snapped up a hefty eight.

26) In 1988, for the first and only time, all the Best Director nominations went to non-Americans. Those five infidels were Bernardo Bertolucci (Italy), who won for The Last Emperor: John Boorman (GB, Hope And Glory): Adrian Lyne (GB, Fatal Attraction), Lasse Hallstrom (Sweden, My Life As A Dog) and Norman Jewison (Canada, Moonstruck)

27) The first person to refuse their Oscar was Dudley Nichols, who got Best Writer (Screenplay) in 1935 for The Informer. He was trying to drum up support for the Writers' Guild who had organised a boycott of the Academy Awards in an effort to gain recognition from the studios.

28) The first actor to refuse their Oscar was George C. Scott who turned down the award for Patton: Lust For Glory in 1971. This was part of a long-running feud. Scott was seriously peeved at the 1959 awards when he didn't win for Anatomy Of A Murder, Hugh Griffith taking the gong for Ben-Hur. Two years later, he tried to get his name scrubbed off the ballot, but was still nominated for The Hustler. He tried it again in 1972, but was nominated for The Hospital. "Frankly," he once explained "I resent being put on show like a buffoon". He didn't mind other people looking like buffoons, though. In 1983, he called last minute for seats for himself and his wife. The Academy graciously let him in.

29) Close on Scott's heels was Marlon Brando. In 1972, he refused his award for The Godfather, sending along one Sacheen Littlefeather to make the announcement. His reason? He didn't like "the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry and in television re-runs". A little later in that evening's ceremony Clint Eastwood, there to present the Best Picture Oscar, joked that maybe they should dedicate the award to "all the cowboys shot in John Ford westerns over the years". After the show, it was discovered that Littlefeather was in fact actress Maria Cruz, not a Native American at all.

30) And we end with the dark horses, the only two non-professional actors to have won acting Oscars. They are Harold Russell, who won in 1946 as the handless soldier in The Best Years Of Our Lives, and Dr Haing S. Ngor who won in 1984, reliving his struggle against Pol Pot, in The Killing Fields. We salute them.