Getting nominated for one Oscar is already a big deal; most actors never get to enjoy that privilege throughout their careers. But getting nominated for two Oscars on the same night? That’s the kind of recognition that makes an actor’s colleagues stare in envy at the after-party.
Only a handful of actors, including the five on this list, have managed that rare feat. Some of them went home empty-handed. Others split the difference, winning one and losing the other. And one man in particular accidentally broke the rules so badly that the Academy had to rewrite them for everyone who came after.
Sigourney Weaver (1989)
Only four actors before Sigourney Weaver had scored a Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress nomination in the same year. But she became the first to lose both. Weaver’s portrayal of real-life gorilla researcher Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist earned her the Best Actress nomination.
She then turned right around and played one of the all-time great office villains, Katharine Parker in Working Girl. That got her the Best Supporting Actress nod. She’d already survived a Xenomorph on screen, so losing twice in one night just felt like more character development for her. Jodie Foster won Best Actress for The Accused and Geena Davis took home Best Supporting Actress for The Accidental Tourist. It remains one of the most brutal Oscar nights of the 1980s, if only because both of Weaver’s performances genuinely deserved a trophy.
Al Pacino (1993)
By 1993, Al Pacino not winning an Oscar had become some sort of a running joke in Hollywood. The veteran actor had racked up five nominations and zero wins, going all the way back to The Godfather in 1973. People were starting to wonder if it would ever happen. Then he played Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman, the blind Colonel who yells “hoo-ah” and dances the tango, and that was that. Best Actor was finally his.
That night he was also in the running for Best Supporting Actor for Glengarry Glen Ross. But he lost that one to Gene Hackman, who picked it up for playing the brutal Sheriff Little Bill Daggett in the 1992 Western Unforgiven. So the same night that solved his two-decade-long problem also reminded him of how tough the competition can be.
Jamie Foxx (2005)
Jamie Foxx was still mostly known for comedy sketches when he pulled off something no Black actor had done before: landing two acting nominations in the same year. He earned a Best Actor nomination for channelling Ray Charles in Ray, a performance so committed that Foxx, already an accomplished pianist, retrained his fingers to match Charles’ exact playing style. And he did all that while wearing prosthetic eyelids that left him blind for up to 14 hours a day on set.
He won Best Actor easily, and also bagged a Best Supporting Actor nomination for playing a cab driver held hostage by a contract killer (played by Tom Cruise) in Collateral. He ultimately lost that trophy to Morgan Freeman for Million Dollar Baby. Three years earlier, Denzel Washington and Halle Berry had both won lead-acting Oscars in the same ceremony. Foxx’s double Oscar nod felt like one more chapter in a genuinely historic run for Black actors at the Oscars.
Scarlett Johansson (2020)
Scarlett Johansson is the most recent name on this list, and she played two mothers in two different movies in 2019. Both mothers could not have been more different from each other if they tried. In Marriage Story, she’s stuck in a divorce saga so brutal it spawned countless memes of Adam Driver punching through a wall. In Jojo Rabbit, she’s hiding a Jewish girl from the Nazis while raising a son who worships Hitler.
That range helped her get a Best Actress nomination for Marriage Story, and a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Jojo Rabbit. Renée Zellweger won Best Actress for Judy. Ironically, Laura Dern won Best Supporting Actress that same night for playing the divorce lawyer representing Johansson’s character in Marriage Story.
Barry Fitzgerald (1945)
Barry Fitzgerald played the kindly old priest, Father Fitzgibbon, in Going My Way. He got nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for that one performance. The voting rules back then never accounted for one performance somehow qualifying for two different categories, so Fitzgerald slipped right through the cracks.
He won Best Supporting Actor. The Best Actor accolade went to his co-star Bing Crosby, for playing the younger priest in the same movie. The Academy closed that loophole by changing the rules immediately after that, which means that Fitzgerald remains the only actor in Oscar history to be nominated twice in one year for a single performance.
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