Multiple Oscar Nominations in One Year
Receiving an Oscar is one of the highest honors someone in the world of movies can achieve. So much so that even a single nomination will live on someone’s resume forever. And sometimes someone can achieve a rare feat of garnering multiple Oscar nominations in the same year and those are the folks we’ll look at on this list. For the purposes of this list I will ignore the dozen performers that received both lead & supporting nominations in the same year, instead focusing on nominees in other Oscar categories. I’m also excluding those that earned Actor/Director nominations in the same year as that’s a list of its own.
Sean Baker - Our first entry is the newest addition to this bunch & is the first person to ever individually win 4 Oscars in a single ceremony for the same film. Baker pulled off this feat for ‘Anora’ for which he won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, & Best Film Editing. It was almost funny listening to Baker speak by his fourth speech, and my favorite fun fact from the ceremony is that all of his speeches combined were still shorter than Adrien Brody’s travesty of an acceptance speech.
Kenneth Branagh - Sir Branagh is no stranger to Oscar nominations. Throughout his career Branagh has achieved a total of 8 nominations. His most recent batch of nominations came for his 2021 film ‘Belfast’ for which he was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, & Best Original Screenplay, the last of which became his first Oscar win. That feat on it’s own is impressive, but even more impressive to Branagh’s career is that his 8 nominations came across 7 different categories, making him the individual with nominations in the most categories. Along the three previously mentioned he has been nominated for Best Actor (‘Henry V’ which also earned him his first Best Director nomination), Best Live Action Short Film (‘Swan Song’), Best Adapted Screenplay (‘Hamlet’), & Best Supporting Actor (‘My Week with Marilyn’).
George Clooney - Like Branagh, George Clooney has 8 total Oscar nominations with 2 wins, with his nominations coming across 6 categories. He has two separate years that could’ve earned a spot here. More recently, in 2012 he was nominated for Best Actor for ‘The Descendants’ & Best Adapted Screenplay for ‘The Ides of March.’ Back in 2006 he was nominated for Best Director & Best Original Screenplay for ‘Good Night, and Good Luck’ and won Best Supporting Actor for ‘Syriana.’ His other career nominations include Best Actor for both ‘Michael Clayton’ & ‘Up in the Air,’ as well as a Best Picture win for ‘Argo.’
Francis Ford Coppola - Another individual who is no stranger to the Academy Awards, Coppola had already amassed 2 Oscars on 4 nominations prior to the year in question. At the 47th Academy Awards, Coppola won Best Picture, Best Director, & Best Adapted Screenplay for ‘The Godfather Part II.’ This is already quite the achievement, but Coppola bolstered the night even more so, because he also received Best Picture & Best Original Screenplay nominations for ‘The Conversation.’
Neil Corbould - In 2023 Corbould pulled off something very rare by garnering three nominations in the same category. This isn’t the first time this has happened, with other examples coming to mind for me being songwriters that received three nominations in the Best Original Song category before the 2 song per movie cap was put on that award. But what makes Corbould’s more interesting is that his three nominations were for three different movies. He was nominated for Best Visual Effects for ‘The Creator,’ ‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning,’ & ‘Napoleon.’ Many predicted that the first of these would win the award, but ‘Godzilla Minus One’ shockingly winning the award, meaning Corbould went 0/3. But fret not, because Corbould has 2 previous wins in the category on 5 previous nominations (winning for ‘Gladiator’ & ‘Gravity).
Alfonso Cuarón - In a situation very similar to Sean Baker’s ‘Anora’ success, Cuarón received 4 nominations for his 2018 film, ‘Roma’ though he only won 2 of his nominations. He went home with the awards for Best Director & Best Cinematography, losing in the Best Picture & Best Original Screenplay. This isn’t the first time he’d take home 2 Oscars in one year, because he won Best Director & Best Film Editing for ‘Gravity,’ losing a Best Picture nomination for that film. Cuarón has a total of 11 nominations in his career, with the most recent being Best Live Action Short for 2022’s ‘Le pupille’ meaning he has nominations in 6 different categories.
Walt Disney - As I was typing this article, I put ‘the most well known person on this list’ in Clooney’s blurb before remembering that Disney was here. Disney has the record for most Oscar wins & nominations for an individual with 22 wins on 59 nominations. At the 26th Academy Awards Disney won an Oscar for all 4 categories he was nominated in, Best Documentary (Feature), Best Documentary (Short), Best Short (Cartoon), & Best Short (Two-reel), earning two nominations a piece in the last two categories. I also want to mention one of Disney’s many special achievement Oscars was a statuette with 7 mini statues behind it to represent ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,’ which is incredibly cool to me.
Steven Soderbergh - At the 73rd Academy Awards in 2001, Soderbergh pulled something off that hadn’t been done since 1938. He was dual nominated for Best Director for ‘Erin Brockovich’ & ‘Traffic,’ winning for the latter. Both films were also nominated for Best Picture.
Oliver Stone - At the 59th Academy Awards, Stone did something very similar to Soderbergh when he was nominated for Best Original Screenplay for both ‘Platoon’ & ‘Salvador.’ Unfortunately he lost the award and both nominations to Woody Allen for ‘Hannah and Her Sisters,’ but he redeemed himself by winning Best Director that same night for ‘Platoon.’ Stone also pulled off triple nominations of Best Picture, Best Director, & Best Adapted Screenplay twice for ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ & ‘JFK,’ winning Best Director for ‘Born on the Fourth of July.’
John Williams - Right behind Mr. Disney in terms of nominations is John Williams, with 54 nominations to his name. Williams is no stranger to receiving multiple nominations in a year, having competed against himself 8 different times. Williams first nomination came in 1968, and his most recent came in 2024, marking a 56 year gap, so I think there was no one better to end the list with than the legend himself.
