Music

With his Oscar nomination, announced Tuesday (Jan. 24), for playing Elvis Presley in Elvis, Austin Butler joins an impressive list of actors who have been nominated for playing real-life music personalities.

Twelve of these actors went on to win Oscars. The first to do so was James Cagney for playing entertainer George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). The most recent was Jessica Chastain for playing televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker (who frequently sang on her TV programs and released at least 15 studio albums) in The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021).

We’ll find out if Butler joins their ranks when the 95th Academy Awards are presented on March 12. If he does, this would be the second time in four years that someone has won best actor for playing a real-life rock star. Rami Malek won four years ago for playing Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody.

The first woman to win an Oscar for playing a real-life music personality was Barbra Streisand for playing comedian, singer and actress Fanny Brice in Funny Girl (1968).

Two actresses have been nominated for best actress for portraying legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday: Diana Ross was nominated for the 1972 film Lady Sings the Blues; Andra Day for the 2020 film The United States vs. Billie Holiday.

Here are 33 actors who have been nominated for Oscars for playing real-life music personalities. The list doesn’t include fictional characters inspired by real-life stars, such as Rose in The Rose (1979), which was loosely based on the life of Janis Joplin, or Effie White in Dreamgirls (2006), which drew on the life story of Florence Ballard of The Supremes.

Rihanna, who is set to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show on Feb. 12, may well perform on a second mega-platform exactly one month later – the 95th annual Academy Awards. She received her first Oscar nomination for best original song on Tuesday (Jan. 24) for co-writing “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

If, as expected, Rihanna performs on the Oscars, she would be the first person to perform on the Super Bowl halftime show and at the Oscars in the same calendar year since Phil Collins in 2000.

Lady Gaga received her fourth Oscar nomination – her third in the best original song category – for co-writing “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverick. She was previously nominated for co-writing “Til It Happens to You” from The Hunting Ground (2015) and “Shallow” from A Star Is Born (2018), which won the award. “Take My Breath Away” from the original Top Gun won the 1986 award in this category.

Composer John Williams and songwriter Diane Warren added to their considerable Oscar legacies. Williams received his record-extending 48th nomination in a scoring category for The Fabelmans. Warren received her 14th nomination for best original song, a total matched by only seven songwriters in history – Sammy Cahn (26 nods), Johnny Mercer (18), Paul Francis Webster (16), Alan Bergman (15), Marilyn Bergman (15), Alan Menken (14) and James Van Heusen (14).

Williams has now received scoring nods in seven consecutive decades – each decade since the 1960s. Should he win, Williams, 90, would become the oldest winner, topping James Ivory who was 89 when he won best adapted screenplay for Call Me By Your Name. Williams’ overall total of 53 nominations (including five for best original song) is the most for any living person, and is second only to Walt Disney at 59.

Warren is nominated for best original song for “Applause” from Tell It Like a Woman. This is the sixth consecutive year that Warren has had a nominated song. She is the first songwriter or songwriting team to be nominated six years running since Marilyn & Alan Bergman’s 1968-1973 streak. Though Warren has yet to win an Oscar in competition, she received a Governor’s Award from the Academy on Nov. 19.

Ryan Lott is this year’s only double nominee for best original song and best original score. He is nominated for both awards for his work on Everything Everywhere All at Once. He is up for best song for co-writing “This Is a Life” with David Byrne and Mitski; and for best score along with his colleagues in Son Lux, Rafiq Bhatia and Ian Chang.

This is Byrne’s second Oscar nomination. He shared the award for best original score 35 years ago for The Last Emperor, on which he collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Cong Su.

Carter Burwell was nominated for scoring The Banshees of Inisherin. This is Burwell’s third nomination in this category, following Carol (2015) and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017). 

“Naatu Naatu” from RRR is nominated for best original song. This Indian Telugu-language song is vying to become the first foreign-language tune to win this category since “Jai Ho,” the festive Hindi song from Slumdog Millionaire that took the prize 14 years ago.

Ryan Coogler, nominated for best original song for co-writing “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, was nominated four years ago as a producer of Black Panther. He joins a small group of individuals with nominations in both the best picture and best original song categories (not necessarily in the same year or for the same film). Others include Arthur Freed, Quincy Jones, Spike Jonze, James Schamus, Barbra Streisand, Fran Walsh and Pharrell Williams. To date, only Walsh has won in both categories.

THE NOMINEES

Here’s a closer look at the nominees in the two music categories. In both cases, the nominated works are listed alphabetically by film title.

Best Original Song

“Lift Me Up”; Music by Ryan Coogler, Ludwig Göransson, Rhianna, Tems; Lyric by Coogler and Tems; Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Marvel Studios

“This Is a Life”; Music by David Byrne, Ryan Lott, Mitski; Lyric by Lott and Byrne; Everything Everywhere All at Once, A24

“Naatu Naatu”; Lyric by Chandrabose, Music by M. M. Keeravani; RRR, Variance Films

“Applause”; Music and lyric by Diane Warren;Tell It Like a Woman, Samuel Goldwyn Films

“Hold My Hand”; Music and lyric by BloodPop (Michael Tucker) and Lady Gaga; Top Gun: Maverick, Paramount Pictures

Best Original Score

All Quiet on the Western Front, Netflix; Volker Bertelmann

Babylon, Paramount Pictures; Justin Hurwitz

The Banshees of Inisherin, Searchlight Pictures; Carter Burwell

Everything Everywhere All at Once, A24; Son Lux

The Fabelmans, Universal Pictures; John Williams

SHORTLISTED BUT NOT NOMINATED

On Dec. 21, 15 songs and 15 scores were shortlisted for Oscars.

Here are the 10 songs that were shortlisted but passed over for nominations.

“Time”; Drake, Giveon Evans, Jahaan Akil Sweet, Daniel Pemberton; Amsterdam, 20th Century Studios

“Nothing Is Lost (You Give Me Strength)”;The Weeknd, Steve Angello, Sebastian Ingrosso, Axel Hedfors, Simon Franglen; Avatar: The Way of Water, 20th Century Studios

“Ciao Papa”;Alexandre Desplat, Roeban Katz, Guillermo del Toro; Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Netflix

“Til You’re Home”; Rita Wilson;A Man Called Otto, Sony Pictures

“My Mind & Me”; Amy Allen, Jonathan Bellion, Selena Gomez, Jordan K Johnson, Stefan Johnson, Michael Pollack;Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, Apple Original Films

“Good Afternoon”; Khiyon Hursey, Sukari Jones, Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, Mark Sonnenblick; Spirited, Apple Originals

“Stand Up”;Dernst “D’Mile” Emile II, Jazmine Sullivan; Till, Orion/United Artists Releasing

“Dust & Ash”;J. Ralph;The Voice of Dust and Ash, Matilda Productions

“Carolina”;Taylor Swift; Where the Crawdads Sing, Sony Pictures

“New Body Rhumba”; Pat Mahoney, James Murphy, Nancy Whang; White Noise, Netflix

“Vegas,” the biggest hit from Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, had previously been ruled ineligible because it borrows so heavily from “Hound Dog,” the 1950s classic co-written by Mike Stoller and the late Jerry Leiber.

Here are the 10 scores that were shortlisted but passed over for nominations.

Avatar: The Way of Water, 20th Century Studios; Simon Franglen

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Marvel Studios; Ludwig Göransson

Devotion, Sony Pictures; Chanda Dancy

Don’t Worry Darling, Warner Bros.; John Powell

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Netflix; Nathan Johnson

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Netflix; Alexandre Desplat

Nope, Universal Pictures; Michael Abels

She Said, Universal Pictures; Nicholas Britell

The Woman King, Sony Pictures; Terence Blanchard

Women Talking, MGM/United Artists Releasing; Hildur Guðnadóttir

Two high-profile scores – Tár (composed by Hildur Guðnadóttir) and Top Gun: Maverick (composed by Hans Zimmer, Harold Faltermeyer, Lorne Balfe and Lady Gaga) had earlier been ruled ineligible.

The telecast, hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, will take place on Sunday, March 12, 2023, airing live on ABC from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood.

NON-MUSIC NOMINATIONS

Austin Butler was nominated for best actor for his performance as Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. It’s his first nomination. Remarkably, 16 of the 20 acting nominees are first-time nominees.

Elvis is nominated for best picture, giving Luhrmann his second nomination in that category (as a producer), following Moulin Rouge!. He has yet to be nominated for best director.

Steven Spielberg received his 12th nomination for best picture for The Fabelmans, a record for an individual producer since 1951 when producers were first named as nominees. He ties the late William Wyler, at 13 films each, as the director of the most films nominated for best picture.

Spielberg was nominated for best achievement in directing for the ninth time. That puts him in a tie for second place in this category with Martin Scorsese. Wyler is the long-time leader in this category, with 12 nods.

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert were nominated for best achievement in directing for Everything Everywhere All at Once. This marks the fifth time two directors have been nominated for the same film. The Daniels follow Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins, who won for West Side Story (1961); Warren Beatty and Buck Henry, who were nominated for Heaven Can Wait (1978); and Joel and Ethan Coen, who won for No Country for Old Men (2007), and were nominated for True Grit (2010).

All Quiet on the Western Front (Germany) was nominated for both best picture and best international feature (formerly known as best foreign-language film). It’s the eighth film in Oscar history to be nominated in both categories. It follows Z (1969), The Emigrants (1971/72), Life is Beautiful (1998), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Amour (2012), Roma (2018) and Parasite (2019).