All eyes will be on the Dolby theatre in LA on Sunday night for 87th Academy Awards.
And whether you consider yourself a movie buff or just tune in to see the glitz and glamour of the show the Oscar ceremony has always had a universal appeal.
With that in mind here is our A-Z guide to the Oscars to allow you to flex your movie muscles wherever you choose to watch the show.
A is for actors who’ve never been nominated for an Oscar
This year’s awards sees a host of new faces up for nomination including Eddie Redmayne, Steve Carell and Michael Keating.
But spare a thought for the actors who despite having a long and illustrious career have never even been nominated for the award.
The list of leading ladies snubbed by the academy includes Marilyn Monroe, Mia Farrow, Meg Ryan, Demi Moore, Scarlet Johanson and Cameron Diaz.
While the actors who missed out on being nominated include Richard Gere, Jim Carey, John Cusack, Steve Martin, Brendan Gleeson and Ewan McGregor.
B is for Boyhood
Nominated for six awards including Best Picture Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is the first film to be recorded in real time being filmed over a 12 year period.
The film has already won three BAFTA’s and three Golden Globes for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress.
C is for Couture
Tinstletown is in a flurry this week as last minute preparations are being made to this year’s Oscar ‘looks’.
We tend to think of the actresses battling it out for the best gowns but the reality can often be the reverse with some being paid huge sums of money to be seen in a particular designer’s dress or jewellery.
Anne Hathaway was reportedly paid $750,000 dollars by Tiffany & Co. to wear their jewels on stage in 2011, while Jennifer Lawrence allegedly found herself in the middle of a bidding war at last year’s awards.
D is for the Dolby Theatre
The permanent home of the Oscars since 2002, the theatre was designed by David Rockwell with the awards ceremony in mind.
The entrance hall is enscribed with the names of all past winners of the award.
Until 2012 it was called the Kodak theatre, Kodak Eastman having paid $75 million for the the naming rights.
When the company filed for bankruptcy it was briefly renamed the Hollywood & Highland centre before Dolby Sound stepped in to pick up the sponsorship.
It is the tenth Oscar venue in the awards history.
E is for Envelopes
Tom Hanks has called his envelope design a work of art but did you know that it takes Mark Friedman and his team over 110 hours to create the envelopes for the ceremony.
And this year he has planned something extra special: ‘I felt that there was a great and missed opportunity to create an iconic complement to the statuette,’ he said in a recent interview with Variety.
So he has created a new envelope wrapper which is gold and watermarked with the oscar silhouette with a slip that reads ‘And the Oscar goes to … ‘ and the names of the winner.
‘I would love to create a legacy envelope for all the living Oscar winners,’ Friedland says.
F is for Family wins
Two families in the history of the awards have had Oscar wins over three generations, both with members winning for the same film.
Walter and John Huston both won their Oscars for the Treasure of Sierre Madre in 1949, Walter picked up the Best Supporting Actor award while John won for Best Director.
Anjelica Huston meanwhile picked up the award for Best Supporting Actress for Prizzi’s honour in 1985.
Carmine Coppola won his award for Best Original Score for the Godfather II, his son Francis Ford Coppola won Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Writing also for the Godfather.
Sofia Coppola won the Oscar for Best Screenplay for Lost in Translation in 2004
G is for Golden Globe predictions
The Golden Globes track record for predicting Oscar wins has been much maligned over the past few years.
But the awards are actually more accurate than most people think with 9/10 Best Actors/Actresses picking up both awards in the past decade.
The Globes record for predicting Best Picture is lower with 4/ 10 wins but three of those have been in the past three years… which bodes well for Boyhood and the Grand Budapest Hotel.
H is for highest number of nominations
Unsurprisingly Meryl Streep leads the pack when the it comes to Oscar nominations, the actress has racked up an incredible 18 nominations over the years.
Jack Nicholson and Katherine Hepburn are tied for second place with 12 nominations.
Bette Davis and Laurence Oliver come in third place with 10 nominations.
The person with the most overall nominations without a win is Kevin O’Connell, the sound mixer has been nominated 20 times since 1983 but never walked away with the golden statue.
I is for the number of Irish wins
Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea is in the running this year and should the animated flick win the gold statue it will bump the number of Irish wins up to 27.
Cedric Gibbons holds the record for most wins notching up an amazing 11 awards for Best Set Design between 1930 and 1956 followed by Daniel Day Lewis with 3 wins.
Barry Fitzgerald won the Best Supporting Actor award for Going My Way (The only actor to be nominated for Best Actor and Supporting Actor for the same film)
Brenda Fricker won the Best Supporting Actress award for My Left Foot while Glen Hansard won the award for Best Song for Once in 2008.
Both Peter O’Toole and Maureen O’Hara have both been awarded honourary Oscars
Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game and George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion have both won for Best Screenplay.
We’ve also won awards for Best Makeup, Best Visual Effects, Best Documentary and Best Short Film.
J is for Julianne Moore
All signs are indicating that this may finally be Julianne Moore’s year, the actress is hotly tipped to win the Best Actress Award for Still Alice.
She has previously been nominated for the Best Supporting Actress for Boogie Nights, The End of the Affair and The Hours and Best Actress for Far from Heaven.
Her performance in Still Alice has already netted her a BAFTA and Golden Globe Award .
K is for Katherine Hepburn
Hepburn holds the record for most Oscars wins by an actor/actress, winning for Morning Glory, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner’, The Lion In Winter and On Golden Pond.
Only five other actors have come close to her record with three wins, those are:
Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Ingrid Bergman, Walter Brennan and Daniel Day Lewis.
L is for Longest Oscar speech
At 5.5 minutes English actress Greer Garson holds the record for the longest Oscar speech for Mrs. Miniver in 1943.
Gwyneth Paltrow isn’t far behind with an acceptance speech that ran to 365 words, Olivia de Havilland meanwhile thanked a whopping 27 people in her speech.
In 2010 the academy introduced a rule stating that Oscar speeches should be no longer than 45 seconds.
M is for Money spent on the awards show
It costs a lot to put on the world’s biggest awards show, according to the Hollywood Reporter the Academy spent an estimated $21.8 million on the show in 2012.
Of this the producers are ‘gifted’ with a $100,000 cheque as a thank you for all their hard work.
Security comes in at an estimated $250,000 while the Oscar statues cost around $45,000.
The host can be paid anything between $15,000 and $25,000 while the singers fees total around $14,000.
N is for Neil Patrick Harris
Neil Patrick Harris will host this year’s awards but wasn’t the producer’s first choice.
They reportedly begged last year’s host Ellen to return but the presenter refused.
American comedian Bob Hope has hosted the ceremony more than anyone else fronting 19 shows with Billy Crystal coming in second having hosted it nine times.
O is for Oscar statue
Dubliner Cedric Gibbons is responsible for designing the coveted gold statue.
Each Oscar winner must sign a contract offering to sell their award back to the Academy for a dollar before offering it to anyone else.
The statues are delivered wrapped in styrofoam which is then destroyed to stop it being used as a mould for fake Oscars
Emil Jannings was the first person to recieve the award, he was named Best Actor in 1929 for ‘The Last Command’ and ‘The Way of All Flesh’
P is for Posthumous awards
Seventy Seven Posthumous Oscars have been handed out over the years.
James Dean, Spencer Tracy and Heath Ledger all won Oscars for their performances posthumously.
A further fourteen honorary awards were handed out including to Audrey Hepburn, Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope who have all been awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian award.
Q is for Queueing
The red carpet walk is without doubt one of the highlights of the show and what could be better than getting a birds eye view of the action as it unfolds.
Each year the Academy allows seven hundred fans to queue outside the Dolby Theatre and watch the arrivals.
The fans are chosen by a lottery draw and must apply six months in advance
R is for the red carpet
The world’s most famous red carpet is 500ft long, 33ft wide and flanked by seven -foot-tall Oscar statues.
Private estimates indicate that it costs $25,000 to roll out the carpet each year which works out as $1.50 per square foot.
S is for Swag
The Academy stopped providing nominees with goodie bags in 2006 after the IRS threatened to start taxing actors for them.
That didn’t put a stop to the swag though as marketing company Distinctive Assets started handing out non academy affiliated bags.
This year’s bag is said to be worth over $125,00 and contains a $20,000 gift voucher for Enigma Life, A three nights stay in Tuscany and a $14,500 train ride through the Canadian Rockies.
T is for it’s a Tie
There have been only two ties in the history of the awards.
The first between Frederic March for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Wallace Beary for the Champ in 1932.
And then again in 1969 when Katherine Hepburn and Barbra Streissand both won the Best Actress Award.
Hepburn won for The Lion in Winter and Streissand for Funny Girl.
U is for Upsets
When Leonardo Di Caprio famously lost out on the Best Actor award for the Wolf of Wall Street Last Year the internet exploded in fury.
Fans accused the Academy of blacklisting the actor who has delivered numerous outstanding performances over the years.
Other famous upsets included Stephen Spielberg’s The Colour Purple which was nominated for 11 awards but didn’t win any.
V is viewers
The 1998 Academy Awards are the most viewed awards on record as 55.25 people tuned in to watch Titanic sweep the boards and two unknown actors win with a screenplay they wrote themselves.
The second highest was in 1983 when Ghandi won Best Picture and Liza Minelli, Dudley Moore, Richard Pryor and Walter Matthau hosted the event.
The least viewed ceremony was in 1974.
W is for Walt Disney
Walt Disney is the person with the highest number of overall Oscar wins.
The Disney mogul has racked up an astonishing 22 wins over the past 87 years .
He was also presented with four honorary awards and holds the record for the most wins by one person in same year (four).
X is for X-Rated
Midnight Cowboy is the only X-rated movie to ever win the Best Picture award.
Both of the film’s stars Jon Voight and Dustan Hoffman were both nominated for Best Actor the same year but lost out to John Wayne .
Y is for Youngest actor to win
Tatum O’Neal remains the youngest person ever to win an Oscar.
She took the title in 1973, winning the Best Actress Award at the age of ten for Paper Moon.
Driving Ms. Daisy’s Jessica Tandy is the oldest actress to win the award and Christopher Plummer the oldest actor.
Z is for Zero
The number of Best Director awards won by some of the world’s most acclaimed directors.
Stanley Kubrick has been nominated five times but never managed a win while Sydney Lumet missed out on the award four times and only one of Alfred Hitcock’s films was even given the Best Picture nod.
The film that took the world by storm Citizen Kane netted Orson Wells three Oscar nominations and while he won for Best Screenplay, the Best Director award eluded him.
The grandfather of moving Pictures, Charlie Chaplin has never even been nominated for a Best Director award. He holds two honorary awards and one for Best Musical Score.
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