Without consulting imdb, I’m going to guess Elizabeth I. I know that Judy Dench won for it (SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE), I’m almost positive that Bette Davis won for it (FIRE OVER LONDON), and I know that Glenda Jackson won an Oscar for something and that she played the role in MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS as well as the great miniseries. (Cate Blanchett was also nominated the same year as Dench but thankfully didn’t win).
Historically speaking, Sampiro, you are very, very close.
I went to imdb.com to confirm/refute- neither Jackson nor Davis was nominated for playing Liz I, though I’m sure somebody else must have been over the years… it’s going to drive me nuts til somebody gets it.
Everybody knows that Hattie McDaniel was the first black actor to win an Oscar. At least three other actors have won Oscars for playing slaves (or at least people who have at some point in their life possibly been slaves). Name these three (and any others you can think of).
Who was the first actor to win the award for playing an openly gay character? Who was the first nominated for such a role?
The easy easy one- who’s the only actor to win the Oscar for playing somebody of the opposite sex?
Which Best Actor winner was a member of the Nazi Party during WW2?
Name at least three non-Asian actors who won for playing Asians. (Again, there may be more, but I know of three.)
**
No fair going to the IMDB, right? What’shername, in Year of Living Dangerously
Red Buttons, Sayonara?
Does Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur count?
Linda Hunt. The lightbulb just went on.
Yes, I counted him.
Paul Newman is of course the correct answer for my question.
About the non-Asian/Asian question does Kingsley for Gandhi count? He is half-Indian.
No, he played an American GI in love with an Asian woman. One of the performances was from a man in the late 1950s, though.
I didn’t count him, but it did occur that one of the ones I was thinking had Asian ancestry (though only about 1/8 percent, just slightly more than Russell Crowe’s Maori ancestry), so I’ll disqualify that one- it was Yul Brynner. One of the other non-Asians has been mentioned in the past few replies, and the third was a German Jew who fled Hitler and won back to back Oscars in the 1930s.
(Thankfully, Mickey Rooney was ignored for B’FAST AT TIFFANYS.)
Paul Muni, Bitter Tea of General Yen?
Yul Brynner in The King and I. Linda Hunt is another. Luise Rainer is the third for The Good Earth.
Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington played slaves or former slaves.
Emil Jannings
Answer to Asian question:
Yul Brynner, Linda Hunt, and Luise Rainer
Slaves:
Charlton Heston/Ben Hur, Denzel Washington/Glory, Luise Rainer/The Good Earth. You could make an argument that Meryl Streep would qualify from Sophie’s Choice, but it could go either way.
I’m off to find out who the other Elizabeth I nominee was…
BTW, I did some research on birth years. The first-born Oscar nominee from the performing categories was born in 1868; the latest born was born in 1982.
Russell Crowe, Gladiator
My first guess involved Spartacus, but the only Oscar went to Peter Ustinov, who did not, I believe, play a slave.
Oh, good call- I didn’t even think about Crowe/Gladiator.
I could have sworn that Chief Dan George won an Oscar, incidentally, but nope. Walter Brennan on the other hand won three. (I also checked to see if Quentin Crisp was nominated for playing Good Queen Bess, but alas, no.)
William Hurt, Kiss of the Spider Woman?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by jsc1953 *
**William Hurt, Kiss of the Spider Woman? **[/QUOTE
Yes. I’ve actually seen publications as big as USA Today give the distinction to Tom Hanks for PHILADELPHIA (which I still think he won because it was such a PC film; it was a good performance but the character was too one-dimensional).
Cher’s character in SILKWOOD a few year’s before was the first openly gay character whose sexuality was discussed rather than implied.
What was the first picture to win best picture?
Actually, when I said historically, I was probably too vague. The character is not Elizabeth I, but it is one of her relations…
Actually, I think it goes back even farther. If you don’t want to approach the orientation minefield of the Al Pacino and Chris Sarandon characters in Dog Day Afternoon, you still have to contend with the very gay James Coco character in Only When I Laugh.
For the record, I hope nobody is using this book as a reference for this thread. It is so overwhelmed by factual errors, they average one every 2-3 pages. Pathetic.