The first actor to win an Oscar for a non-English language performance
“Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” Those were the words of Parasite director Bong Joon-ho when his film became the first non-English movie to win Best Picture at the Oscars.
That historic moment happened at the 92nd Academy Awards, meaning that the celebration was nearing an entire century of existence before a non-English film took home the main honour. I specifically don’t say ‘foreign’ here because the Oscars is an international celebration, meaning that there should be no such thing as foreign, or outsider, in the running.
But as we all know, there is. The point Joon-ho was making came because, still, the movie world holds up boundaries to films that aren’t in English. Still, so many viewers are resistant to a film not in English as another classic example of the way British and American people take for granted that the rest of the world knows our mother tongue.
We expect others to adapt to us, and that includes directors, script writers, but especially actors. So often, actors from other countries are forced to not only learn lines in a different language, but also deal with the added task of learning to ask while considering accents and pronunciations and managing a language that isn’t their first one.
However, actors mastered that long before the film world caught up and started properly awarding them. Throughout cinematic history, there are so many foreign-born actors who have delivered showstopping performances, both in their mother tongue and in English.
While it might have taken the Best Picture Oscar a long time to catch up, luckily, the award for ‘Best Actress’ wasted no time. Unable to deny the incredible work from this one performer, the 34th annual awards became the first to celebrate an actress in a non-English role.
The first actor to win an Oscar for a non-English language performance
In 1960, Sophia Loren took home the coveted ‘Best Actress’ award for her role as Cesira, a widowed shopkeeper, in Two Women. In that moment, history was made as Loren became the first actor to win for a role that was fully in a language other than English.
Throughout the film, Loren only speaks Italian, but still, she managed to become a true icon of cinema far and wide. She crossed this boundary first, while the first non-English role from a man to win ‘Best Actor’ wouldn’t come until 1998 with Roberto Benigni in Life is Beautiful.
Still today, it remains a rare thing. Plenty now have won for roles that are bilingual and include another language as well as English, but as Joon-ho’s speech pointed out, there is still a long way to go before non-English films are fully and completely embraced and audiences stop missing out due to their own subtitle-reading laziness.
