Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, America Ferrera, and More Become First-Time Oscar Nominees

Nearly a dozen actors will now have an Academy Awards section added to their Awards and Nominations page on Wikipedia. Bright and early on Tuesday morning, Zazie Beetz and Jack Quaid announced the 2024 Oscars nominations live from Los Angeles. With 20 nominees across four acting categories, some names were past nominees and winners — like Jodie Foster, Emma Stone, and Bradley Cooper. But 10 nominees saw their names announced for the first time in their careers.

Cillian Murphy became a first-time Academy Awards nominee for his performance in the titular role in Christopher Nolan’s Best Picture-nominated film Oppenheimer. The 47-year-old actor has appeared in dozens of films since the late nineties, even a few that have been recognized at the Oscars, including the Nolan-directed Batman trilogy. But none that earned accolades for his particular acting role. He is nominated for Best Actor at the 2024 Academy Awards.

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Oppenheimer has also made way for Emily Blunt to become a first-time Oscar nominee, an achievement she has been owed since delivering a scathing performance in The Devil Wears Prada in 2006. Blunt acted opposite Murphy as Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer. The performance she delivers in an intense interrogation scene in the film likely sealed the deal for the Academy, much as it did for cinephiles online who endlessly raved and meme’d about it. She is nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

Speaking of scene-stealing women, America Ferrera — whose viral monologue from Greta Gerwig’s Best Picture-nominated film Barbie sparked nuanced debates about the entry points of feminism — is now an Academy Award-nominated actress. She juggled motherhood with existentialism on-screen and became an emotional guide for Margot Robbie’s Barbie. More than 20 years after making her feature film debut, Ferrera is nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

Actually, only one of this year’s five Best Support Actress nominees has been nominated for an Academy Award in the past. In addition to Blunt and Ferrera, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Danielle Brooks are also first-time nominees at the ceremony.

With the supporting nomination, Brooks has earned The Color Purple its sole nomination at the 2024 Oscars. The actress appeared in the musical edition of the film as Sofia, who Oprah Winfrey portrayed in the original 1985 film. Between 2015 and 2017, Brooks played that same role on stage, starring in the Broadway production of The Color Purple at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.

Randolph similarly made the move from the theater to the big screen just over a decade ago. Last year, she stormed Hollywood with performances in both George C. Wolfe’s Rustin and Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers. She’s nominated in the supporting category for her role in the latter, delivering an emotional performance as the grieving Mary Lamb, a cafeteria administrator who lost her son in the Vietnam War.

Brooks and Randolph, though in separate films, both shared sets and screen time with another first-time Oscar nominee: Colman Domingo. But his performance as civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in Rustin earned him a nomination for Best Actor. Now 54, Domingo has been acting professionally since the Nineties, appearing in the Academy Award-nominated films Selma, Lincoln, If Beale Street Could Talk, and more. Domingo also delivered a remarkably chilling performance in the Euphoria special episode “Trouble Don’t Last Always.”

Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction sparked two first-time nominations, with Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown earning nods for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively. The pair portrayed brothers in the Best Picture-nominated film. Just last year, Wright also appeared in Rustin and Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City. Meanwhile, Brown has delivered Emmy-awarded performances in The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story and This Is Us.

The class of first-time nominees at this year’s Oscars also includes a history-making nomination for Lily Gladstone. The actress became the first Native American woman to be nominated for Best Actress at the Academy Awards on Tuesday for her role as Osage woman and historical figure Mollie Burkhart in Martin Scorsese’s Best Picture-nominated Killers of the Flower Moon. Even in scenes shared with Leonardo DiCaprio, who wasn’t nominated for his leading role as her husband Ernest Burkhart, Gladstone had a magnetizing presence.

Sandra Hüller rounds out the collection of first-time nominated actors and actresses. The German actress appeared in Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest and Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall — and both are up for Best Picture — but her leading role in Anatomy of a Fall scored her a nod for Best Actress. She’s nominated for the award alongside Gladstone, Stone, Annette Bening, and Carey Mulligan.

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