Box office smash Barbie has received eight Oscar nominations – but its star Margot Robbie and director Greta Gerwig were snubbed in some major categories.
Gerwig missed out on being recognised in best director, but a nomination for Anatomy of a Fall's Justine Triet meant the line-up was not entirely male. This is also the first year women have directed three best picture nominees.
Oppenheimer scored the most nominations overall, followed by Poor Things and Killers of the Flower Moon. There were nods for Barbie's star and director elsewhere – Robbie was recognised as a producer in the best picture line-up, while Gerwig was nominated for best adapted screenplay.
Barbie's best picture nod also means Gerwig is the first woman to direct three films which have been nominated for the top prize, following Lady Bird and Little Women. However, as Barbie was the highest-grossing film of 2023, taking $1.44bn (£1.14bn) worldwide, many expected Gerwig and Robbie to show up in the best director and best actress categories.
While Robbie missed out on a best actress nod, her co-star America Ferrera scored a surprise supporting actress nomination.
Fellow Barbie star Ryan Gosling was nominated for best supporting actor, while a track he performs in the film, I'm Just Ken, was nominated for best original song. It will face competition from another song from the same film – What Was I Made For? by Billie Eilish. Barbie's other nominations are for production design and costume design.
But it was Oppenheimer that led the field with 13 nominations. Christopher Nolan's three-hour epic about theoretical physicist J Robert Oppenheimer was both acclaimed by critics and a huge success at the box office.
Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt and Robert Downey Jr were nominated for acting prizes, and Nolan for best director. Poor Things, about an infant whose brain has been transplanted into the body of a grown woman, was the second most nominated film, with 11 nods.
The film's star, Emma Stone, said the nominations felt like a “surreal dream”, adding she was “beyond grateful” to the Academy. Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, about the murder of members of the Osage Indian tribe by white settlers who are after their oil, scored 10 nominations.
Maestro, a biopic about the composer Leonard Bernstein starring Bradley Cooper, received seven nominations. Jimmy Kimmel will host the Oscars ceremony from Los Angeles on 10 March.
For the first time in Oscar history, three of the best picture nominees were directed by women: Past Lives (directed by Celine Song), Barbie (Gerwig) and Anatomy of a Fall (Triet). This is partly because the best picture category has been expanded in recent years, and there are now 10 slots available every year.
In a statement, Song said: “Thank you so much to the Academy for this tremendous recognition – it's such an unbelievable honour. I am overwhelmed with emotion and gratitude. And for my first film… crazy.”
In a video posted on social media, Triet was seen celebrating and becoming emotional as she found out about her nominations.
The nominations also saw Killers of the Flower Moon star Lily Gladstone become the first ever Native American actress to be recognised, while Jodie Foster received her first nomination in nearly three decades for Nyad.
Her co-star Robert De Niro broke the record of longest time between first and most recent Oscar nominations – 49 years – overtaking Katharine Hepburn's previous record of 48. A best international feature nomination for The Zone of Interest, which follows a German family who live next to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp, marks the UK's first appearance in the category in 24 years.
Half of this year's acting nominees are nominated for the first time. Scorsese secured his 10th nod for Killers of the Flower Moon, a record for a living director. But he has only won the award once, for 2007's The Departed.
Meanwhile, 91-year-old composer John Williams achieved his 54th nomination for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. He is the second most-nominated person in Oscar history after Walt Disney, but has said the film will be his last major work.
Snubs and surprises
In the leading actress category, there was recognition for Nyad star Annette Bening – whose nomination had been seen as an outside bet.
America Ferrera‘s surprise supporting actress nomination for Barbie suggests her monologue in the film about what it means to be a woman clearly connected with Academy voters.
But May December struggled – receiving one nomination for original screenplay but missing out on acting nominations for its stars Julianne Moore, Charles Melton and Natalie Portman. And there were no nominations whatsoever for All of Us Strangers or Saltburn, despite their strong performance at the Bafta nominations last week.
Far less surprising, but still notable, were Leonardo DiCaprio‘s absence from best actor for his role in Killers of the Flower Moon, and Poor Things star Willem DaFoe‘s miss in best supporting actor.
— CutC by bbc.com
