The only actors to appear in three ‘Best Picture’ nominees in the same year
There’s nothing quite like an actor getting to say they were in a movie nominated for ‘Best Picture’ at the Academy Awards, a signal that the movie is the cream of the cinematic crop, but how many can actually say that they’ve been in more than one ‘Best Picture’ nominee in one year?
Well, the answer is a small handful, like John Cazale and Robert Duvall both appearing in The Conversation and The Godfather Part II, or when Mahershala Ali and Janelle Monaé appeared in both Moonlight and Hidden Figures, which were nominated for ‘Best Picture’, with Moonlight winning, in 2017.
But more impressive are the two actors who hold the Guinness World Record for ‘Most Oscar-nominated Best Picture films starred in – single year’, something that has only happened twice, many decades apart, but clearly, they both had good agents; some actors evidently need to take note.
In both instances, each actor was in three ‘Best Picture’-nominated movies in one year, with one of these being the winner, a phenomenon so remarkable that it has not reccurred since 2002.
Actors to appear in three ‘Best Picture’ nominees in the same year
The first time this record was set was in 1940, when the 12th Academy Awards nominated ten films for ‘Best Picture’, with Gone with the Wind unsurprisingly taking home the prize. It was a pretty stacked year, with The Wizard of Oz, Ninotchka, Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach, and Mr Smith Goes to Washington also among the nominees, but what’s truly impressive here is that actor Thomas Mitchell appeared in three of them, with Gone with the Wind being perhaps his most famous role.
He played Gerald O’Hara, the father of Vivien Leigh’s Scarlett, although it was his role as Doc Josiah Boone in John Ford’s Stagecoach that would land him the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ golden statuette.
Mr Smith Goes to Washington was the other movie he lent himself to from the category, playing Diz Moore alongside the likes of James Stewart and Jean Arthur, the latter with whom he also starred in another movie that year, Only Angels Have Wings. That, along with The Hunchback of Notre Dame, were the only two movies from 1939 that Mitchell starred in that were not ‘Best Picture’ nominees. That’s not bad going.
Fast forward several decades, and John C Reilly came for Mitchell’s record, which they now share. In 2002, he appeared in the time-spanning period film The Hours, Martin Scorsese’s epic period crime drama Gangs of New York, and the crime musical Chicago, cementing his status in Hollywood as one of the most reliable supporting stars on offer. All three were up for ‘Best Picture’, as were Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, but it was Chicago that won big at the Oscars that year, earning the ‘Best Picture’ award, while Reilly would be nominated for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his performance as Amos Hart, Roxie’s husband.
No one else has yet joined this very small club that Mitchell and Reilly are a part of, even sharing a Guinness World Record for the extraordinary feat, or maybe it’ll only be a short matter of time before someone else joins their ranks.
