Has a movie ever won all four acting Oscars?
The most prestigious – and therefore one of the rarest – accolades in Oscars history is to sweep the board and claim the elusive ‘Big Five’, but has any movie been packed so full of awards-worthy performances that it’s managed to win all four of the acting prizes?
Since It Happened One Night made history by claiming ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Actor’, ‘Best Actress’, and ‘Best Screenplay’, only two more films have taken home the quintet. It would be more than 40 years before One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest joined the illustrious club, with The Silence of the Lambs the third and so far final movie to claim the ‘Big Five’.
Dozens of pictures have been nominated in all five categories without sniffing the ultimate glory, although only four films have managed it this century, which indicates that the competition at the Academy Awards has grown so fierce that even being shortlisted for the ‘Big Five’ is becoming exponentially more difficult.
Of course, those five nods are reflective of multiple aspects of production, not just acting. Only four performances can be rewarded by the Academy each year, and any casting director responsible for a movie that won the Oscars for ‘Best Actor’, ‘Best Actress’, ‘Best Supporting Actor’, and ‘Best Supporting Actress’ at once would be entitled to a hefty raise.
However, it’s never happened. Several films have come within a whisker of making Oscars history, but no feature has ever delivered a clean sweep of acting winners. As mentioned above, with only four movies since the turn of the millennium having been shortlisted for the ‘Big Five’, it’ll take something pretty special for a single flick to even earn four acting nods, never mind winning them all.
As mind-blowing as it sounds, arguably the single most influential performance in American history prevented it from happening. Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire earned Vivien Leigh, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter trophies for ‘Best Actress’, ‘Best Supporting Actor’, and ‘Best Supporting Actress’, respectively, but Marlon Brando’s seminal turn as Stanley Kowalksi lost ‘Best Actor’ to The African Queen‘s Humphrey Bogart.
Sidney Lumet’s Network stood the best chance after being nominated five times across the four categories, with Peter Finch beating co-star William Holden to ‘Best Actor’. Faye Dunaway and Beatrice Wright were named ‘Best Actress’ and ‘Best Supporting Actress’, only for Ned Beatty to let the side down when All the President’s Men‘s Jason Robards nabbed ‘Best Supporting Actor’.
To date, those are the only two films nominated for all four acting Oscars that managed to win three, and it turns out that it’s pretty difficult to even make the list these days.
How many movies have been nominated for all four Oscars?
There have been quite a few: 15, to be exact. 1936’s screwball comedy My Man Godfrey was the first, and it was fairly regular for the next five decades. Once again, though, the increased competitiveness of the Oscars has made it rarer than ever in the modern era.
Mrs Miniver, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Johnny Belinda, Sunset Boulevard, A Streetcar Named Desire, From Here to Eternity, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Network, Coming Home, and Reds all achieved it by 1981, which meant that a movie was nominated for all four acting Oscars on average every dozen years or so.
In a remarkable coincidence, only two features have been nominated for the entire acting quartet since 1981. Not only that, but they were also both in the running for the ‘Big Five’, directed by the same person, and released in consecutive years.
David O Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook won Jennifer Lawrence a ‘Best Supporting Actress’ Oscar, but Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, and Jackie Weaver left with nothing. The following year, American Hustle didn’t end up with Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Cooper, or Lawrence taking the stage to collect an Academy Award, but it did make Russell the first person to achieve some history.
In doing so, he went one better than Frank Capra and Elia Kazan to become the first filmmaker to direct two movies that were nominated for the ‘Big Five’ and the four acting Oscars, even if a return of a solitary gong for Lawrence from those 14 nominations isn’t great.
