94th Academy Awards: First-Time Nominees At The Oscars

The nominations for the 94th Academy Awards were released last evening, with actress Kirsten Dunst and actress Kristen Stewart among those nominated for the very first time. There were numerous others who have been nominated for this golden opportunity in their lives at the prestigious award ceremony for the very first time. 

Stewart received her first-ever nomination at the Oscars that too in the best actress category for her work as Princess Diana in ‘Spencer’. The best-supporting actress category features as many as four first-timers this year. This includes Dunst for ‘The Power Of The Dog’, which was a dramatic film by filmmaker Jane Campion. The film ended up receiving the most nominations overall this year, which is 12. Other first-time candidates for this category were actress Jessie Buckley for ‘The Lost Daughter’, actress Aunjanue Ellis for ‘King Richard’, and actress Ariana DeBose for ‘West Side Story’. For the unversed, the character of Anita played by DeBose is the same part for which actress Rita Moreno won the Oscar back in 1962.

Actor Kodi Smit-McPhee (‘Power Of The Dog’), actor Troy Kotsur (‘CODA’), actor Ciarán Hinds (‘Belfast’), and actor Jesse Plemons (‘Power Of The Dog’) are all nominated for the very first time in the best supporting actor category. It’s interesting to such a wide gamut of actors being nominated for the first time and that too, in such diverse kinds of roles.

Producers Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi, and Patrick Wachsberger all earned their first nominations for ‘CODA’ in the best picture category, while ‘Drive My Car’ producer Teruhisa Yamamoto also received his first nomination. The inclusion of ‘Licorice Pizza’ in the best picture category at this year's Oscars does not represent director Paul Thomas Anderson's first nomination, but it does for producers Sara Murphy and Adam Somner.

‘Drive My Car’, an international film, set a Japanese record with the most number of nominations, including filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi's first-time mention, which was a dual nomination. He received nominations for best director and for best adapted screenplay, the latter of which he shared with co-writer and fellow nominee for the first-time Takamasa Oe.

Writer-director Siân Heder also won her first nomination this year for best adapted script for ‘CODA’, which made history with Troy Kotsur's nomination for best supporting actor, a first for a Deaf male actor. In the same category, ‘Dune’ co-writer Jon Spaihts received his first Academy Award nomination, joining previous nominees and co-writers Denis Villeneuve and Eric Roth.

Journalist David Sirota and filmmaker Adam McKay were nominated for original screenplay for their work on the apocalyptic black comedy ‘Don't Look Up’. Writer Zach Baylin, who wrote ‘King Richard’, and writers Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier, who wrote ‘The Worst Person In The World’, both got their first-ever nominations in the category.

‘Tick, Tick... Boom!’ film co-editor Myron Kerstein, along with ‘The Power Of The Dog’ editor Peter Sciberras, received their first Oscar nominations.

Bhutan received its first nomination as a country with filmmaker Pawo Choyning Dorji's international movie ‘Lunana: A Yak In The Classroom’.

‘Encanto’ co-director Jared Bush and producer Yvett Merino, ‘Luca’ producer Andrea Warren, and ‘The Mitchells Vs. the Machines’ director Michael Rianda and producer Kurt Albrecht won the first-ever nods for best animated feature film.

In the best documentary feature category, Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson received his first Oscar nomination for ‘Summer Of Soul’, along with producers David Dinerstein, Robert Fyvolent, and Joseph Patel. The others in the list included Jessica Kingdon, Kira Simon-Kennedy, and Nathan Truesdell (‘Ascension’), Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry (‘Attica’), Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Monica Hellström, and Charlotte De La Gournerie (‘Flee’), Sushmit Ghosh, and Rintu Thomas (‘Writing with Fire’).

Costume designer Paul Tazewell of ‘West Side Story’ won his first Oscar nomination for best costume design. Like the supporting actor nominations this year, the makeup and hairstyling category was dominated by first-timers, including Mike Marino, Stacey Morris, and Carla Farmer (‘Coming 2 America’), Nadia Stacey and Julia Vernon (‘Cruella’), Donald Mowat (‘Dune’), and Linda Dowds, Stephanie Ingram, and Justin Raleigh (‘The Eyes Of Tammy Faye’). House of Gucci nominees, hair and beauty stylists, Anna Carin Lock and Frederic Aspiras were both nominated, with Japanese-born American Aspiras being only the second Asian American to do so.

When it comes to music nominations, composer Germaine Franco received her first Academy Award nomination for ‘Encanto’ in the best score category. Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and songwriter DIXSON received their first nominations in the best song category for King Richard's ‘Be Alive’. Also receiving nominations were composer Van Morrison for ‘Belfast’s ‘Down To Joy’, and composer-singer Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell for ‘No Time To Die’, the theme music for actor Daniel Craig's farewell outing as James Bond.

Zsuzsanna Sipos (‘Dune’), Tamara Deverell (‘Nightmare Alley’), and Stefan Dechant (‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’) were among the first-time candidates for best set design. Brian Chumney (‘West Side Story’), Simon Chase and James Mather (‘Belfast’), Richard Flynn and Tara Web (‘The Power Of The Dog’) were among those receiving their first nominations in the best sound category.