Bradley Cooper (‘Maestro’) could match Emma Thompson’s Oscars record with wins for acting and writing

Jacob Sarkisian
·7 min read
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Only one person has won Oscars for both writing and acting: Emma Thompson. The British performer, who has five total Oscar bids to her name, won Best Actress in 1993 for “Howard’s End.” She then won Best Adapted Screenplay in 1996 for her crafting of a screen version of Jane Austen‘s classic 1811 novel “Sense and Sensibility.”

Among those who’ve reaped Oscar bids for their work on-screen and on the page are: Sylvester Stallone (nominated for Original Screenplay and Best Actor in 1977 for “Rocky”); George Clooney (nominated for Original Screenplay in 2006 for “Good Night and Good Luck” and Adapted Screenplay in 2012 for “The Ides of March”;  nominated for four acting awards including a 2006 Best Supporting Actor win for “Syriana”); and Billy Bob Thornton (won Best Adapted Screenplay in 1997 for “Sling Blade,” which also garnered him a Best Actor bid; he was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 1999 for “A Simple Plan”).

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This year, three men could contend for both acting and writing.

Bradley Cooper is a quadruple Oscar threat for writing, producing, directing and starring in “Maestro,” Netflix’s upcoming Leonard Bernstein biopic. He already has an extensive Oscars history. He’s been nominated for Best Actor three times — in 2013 for “Silver Linings Playbook,” in 2015 for “American Sniper,” and in 2019 for “A Star is Born.” He also has four Best Picture bids to his name — for “American Sniper” in 2015, “A Star is Born” in 2019, “Joker” in 2020, and “Nightmare Alley” in 2022. His other nominations came for Best Supporting Actor (in 2014 for “American Hustle”) and Best Adapted Screenplay (in 2019 for “A Star is Born,” shared with Eric Roth and Will Fetters). He has lost on all nine occasions, so there is a feeling that he is overdue a win. However, he would need to win both Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor to match Thompson. That would be history in and of itself — no one has won awards for both writing and acting in the same year.

Cooper is currently third in our Oscars odds chart for Best Actor and he ticks off many boxes of typical Best Actor wins — he’s an A-list actor, he’s in a drama, he’s portraying a real person, and his movie, “Maestro,” is likely to be nominated for Best Picture. Nine of the last 10 winners for Best Actor (the exception being Brendan Fraser for “The Whale”) have won for films nominated for Best Picture. Cooper could build up some real steam here, so DiCaprio and Murphy, our two frontrunners, should watch out. Cooper is a genuine contender to win Best Actor, no doubt.

Best Original Screenplay, meanwhile, is a little trickier. He co-wrote the script with Josh Singer, who won Best Original Screenplay with Tom McCarthy in 2017 for “Spotlight.” Currently, “Maestro” is just outside of our predicted five nominees in this category, with “May December,” “Saltburn,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” “The Holdovers,” and “Past Lives” all ahead of “Maestro.” Eight out of the last 10 winners have been fictional stories. Only “Spotlight” and “Green Book” (in 2019), both of which went on to win Best Picture, told real-life stories.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won Best Original Screenplay together in 1998 for “Good Will Hunting,” which also earned Damon a Best Actor bid. Since then, they’ve had a separate Oscars history. Damon was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 2010 for “Invictus,” then reaped another Best Actor bid in 2016 for “The Martian.” And, in 2017, he scored a Best Picture nomination for “Manchester by the Sea.” Affleck, meanwhile, has scored only one other Oscar nomination since his “Good Will Hunting” writing win. That was for Best Picture for “Argo” in 2013. He did win that award, though.

The duo reunited earlier this year for “Air,” which tells the story of how Nike marketing executive Sonny Vaccaro (Damon) signed Michael Jordan and made the iconic shoe the Air Jordan. Affleck plays Damon’s on-screen boss, Phil Knight. Damon is in the hunt for a third Best Actor nomination with his lead role in “Air.” However, he is currently outside of our predicted five nominees for Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer”), Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”), Colman Domingo (“Rustin”), and Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”). There are also several contenders also outside of the predicted five who are ahead of Damon, including Barry Keoghan (“Saltburn”), Joaquin Phoenix (“Napoleon”), and Kingsley Ben-Adir (“Bob Marley: One Love”).

There is some hope, however. He’s an A-lister and the academy likes big names in this category, such as recent nominees Colin Farrell (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), Will Smith (“King Richard”), Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”), Andrew Garfield (“Tick, Tick… Boom!”), and Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”). Damon portrays a real person, which we know the academy likes in this category — six out of the last 10 winners in Best Actor have played real people. Plus, recent nominees included Austin Butler (“Elvis”), Garfield (“Tick, Tick… Boom!”), Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”), and Gary Oldman (“Mank”).

Affleck is in the mix for a Best Supporting Actor nomination, although he is also outside of our predicted five nominees in this category: Robert De Niro (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), Ryan Gosling (“Barbie”), Robert Downey Jr. (“Oppenheimer”), John Magaro (“Past Lives”), and Domingo (“The Color Purple”). Affleck is another big name and, again, the academy like to see stars in the Best Supporting Actor roster. Brad Pitt won this award for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and both Tom Hanks (“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”) and Anthony Hopkins (“The Two Popes”) contended. The academy embraces colorful performances in this category: Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan (both “The Banshees of Inisherin”), JK Simmons (“Being the Ricardos”), Sacha Baron Cohen (“The Trial of the Chicago 7”), and last year’s winner Ke Huy Quan (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”).

Affleck could actually be competing against his best pal who turned in a memorable supporting role in Christopher Nolan‘s “Oppenheimer,” which tells the story of how J. Robert Oppenheimer created the atomic bomb. Damon portrayed General Leslie Groves, the fierce and cutting military man who recruited Oppenheimer to the Manhattan Project. Damon’s performance is certainly colorful enough and he is one of the more memorable figures in a stacked cast. He’s on the bubble of breaking into our predicted five nominees for Best Supporting Actor along with several other hopeful contenders including Samuel L. Jackson (“The Piano Lesson”), Charles Melton (“May December”), and Jesse Plemons (“Killers of the Flower Moon”).

However, he will have to compete against his own co-star for a nomination here. But that isn’t necessarily a bad omen for Damon — the academy has shown a willingness to nominate multiple actors from the same film in this category if they like the movie enough. We’ve now had four years in a row where two actors from the same film have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Last year, Keoghan and Gleeson were nominated for “The Banshees of Inisherin” and, the year before that, Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee were nominated for “The Power of the Dog.” Before that, Daniel Kaluuya won for “Judas and the Black Messiah” while his co-star, LaKeith Stanfield, was nominated. And, in 2020, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino were both nominated for “The Irishman.”

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