Who were the first siblings to win an Oscar in the same year?
There’s nothing worse than when someone overshadows your big day; after all, you should never propose at a wedding or announce a pregnancy at a baby shower. These are the golden rules of life – you have to let other people have their moments, and they’ll let you have yours. Sometimes, though, you’ve got little choice in whether you get the spotlight all to yourself, which has been the case for certain famous families who have seen themselves nominated for Oscars at the same time as a sibling or parent.
The film industry is notoriously nepotistic, so it’s not uncommon to see families boast several Oscar nominees – or winners – among their offspring. The Coppola family is one of the most successful, with Francis Ford Coppola earning five Oscars while his daughter, Sofia, his father, Carmine, and his nephew, Nicolas Cage, all have one each.
In some instances, family members have been nominated for the same films, like Laura Dern and her mother, Diane Ladd, both of whom received nods for their performances in Rambling Rose, while Henry Fonda and his daughter Jane were nominated for On Golden Pond, although only the former walked away with a prize. If you’re a particularly competitive person, however, it must be pretty conflicting to find out that your sibling is nominated at the same time as you, or maybe you’re not that bitter.
There have only been a few occasions when siblings have been nominated at the same time, although it’s predominantly been for projects that they’ve worked on together, such as when the Coen brothers both took home prizes for No Country for Old Men and Fargo, while twins Julius J and Philip G Epstein shared an Oscar for writing the classic love story Casablanca. Yet, there has been one instance in which a pair of siblings have won Oscars in the same year for different projects, which is surely one way to piss each other off.
Who were the first siblings to win an Oscar in the same year?
At the 3rd Academy Awards in 1930, Norma Shearer was honoured with a ‘Best Actress’ accolade for her performance in Robert Z Leonard’s The Divorcee, which also earned him a ‘Best Director’ nomination. It was Shearer who came out on top by winning her first Oscar that night, even though one of the other nominees she was competing against was herself. Alongside Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo, Ruth Chatterton, and Nancy Carroll, Shearer was lucky enough to scoop up two nominations that night, so she likely had no doubts that she was going to win.
Yet, at the same ceremony, her brother, Douglas, three years her senior, stepped into the spotlight, too. He wasn’t an actor, though; he was actually an incredibly talented sound designer. It seemed as though talent ran in the Shearer family’s blood, and he soon went on to win six more Academy Awards during his career for his industry-changing work on films such as San Francisco and The Great Caruso. He was also a visual effects artist, winning two of his Oscars in the ‘Best Special Effects’ category, while earning a nomination for The Wizard of Oz, too.
In 1930, the same year his sister won her first Oscar, he also picked up his first for The Big House, taking home the trophy for ‘Best Sound’. The movie might not be well-known these days, but it was certainly popular at the time, and it paved the way for the prison genre.
