2024 Oscars: Half of the acting nominees contend for portraying real-life people

In terms of how many biographical performances they each include, the 2023 and 2024 acting Oscar lineups are staggeringly different. Whereas only two portrayals of real people (Austin Butler as Elvis Presley in “Elvis” and Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in “Blonde”) were recognized last year, a whopping 10 are presently nominated, constituting the highest such rate (50%) in five years. What’s more, this is only the third time in almost a century of Oscars history that real-life characters aren’t outnumbered by fictional ones.

This year’s near-record biographical performance rate ranks only behind the 60% ones of 2016 and 2019. Unsurprisingly, three of the four eventual winners in both previous cases belonged to those majorities. This includes leads Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass (“The Revenant,” 2016), Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury (“Bohemian Rhapsody,” 2019), and Olivia Colman as Queen Anne (“The Favourite,” 2019) as well as supporting players Mark Rylance as Rudolf Abel (“Bridge of Spies,” 2016), Alicia Vikander as Gerda Wegener (“The Danish Girl,” 2016), and Mahershala Ali as Don Shirley (“Green Book,” 2019).

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This is also only the second time ever (after 2019) that there are at least two biographical nominees in each of the four acting categories. The year’s overall nominations leader, “Oppenheimer,” produced three of said 10 contenders: Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer (lead actor), Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss (supporting actor), and Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer (supporting actress).

Murphy’s fellow fact-based challengers are Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein (“Maestro”) and Colman Domingo as Bayard Rustin (“Rustin”), while the three biographical Best Actress nominees are Annette Bening as Diana Nyad (“Nyad”), Lily Gladstone as Mollie Burkhart (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), and Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre (“Maestro”). Rounding out the general list are Bening and Gladstone’s respective supporting cast mates, Jodie Foster as Bonnie Stoll and Robert De Niro as William King Hale.

Of the six nominees from this group who have competed for Oscars before, only three were previously recognized for portrayals of real people. This includes 1981 Best Actor champ De Niro as Jake La Motta (“Raging Bull”) as well as lead contenders Downey as Charlie Chaplin (“Chaplin,” 1993) and Cooper as Chris Kyle (“American Sniper,” 2015). Whereas Cooper’s fact-based performance was passed over for another (Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking in “The Theory of Everything”), Downey lost to a portrayer of a fictional character (Al Pacino, “Scent of a Woman”).

This year’s unusually high biographical performance rate perfectly illustrates that, despite a few conversely exceptional years like 2023, such acting strongly appeals to the modern academy. Indeed, 23% of all nominations of this type occurred within the last decade alone, leading to 13 such wins so far. Although Gold Derby’s odds currently indicate that Downey will be the only victor to emerge from the 2024 bunch, precedent dictates that he won’t end up standing alone.

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