Oscars 2024: best actor frontrunner Cillian Murphy secures first nomination

Nominations for the 96th Academy Awards in summary

• Cillian Murphy on hearing about his Oscar nomination: ‘We were just having a cup of tea, and then my mum brought out the cake’
• Oscars 2024: Cillian Murphy’s best actor nomination leads a strong showing for Irish film
• 12 Irish nominations this year, with 11 for Element Pictures film Poor Things – the most ever for an Irish production – plus the expected best actor nod for Cillian Murphy for his lead role as the father of the atomic bomb in Oppenheimer. Tommy Shelby would approve.
• The 11 nominations for Poor Things include best picture (with Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone the named producer nominees), best director for Lanthimos, best actress for Stone, best supporting actor for Mark Ruffalo, best cinematography for Irishman Robbie Ryan and best adapted screenplay for the terribly funny Tony McNamara.
• Anatomy of a Fall director Justine Triet becomes just the eighth woman to be nominated for a best director Oscar, but Barbie director Greta Gerwig – one of the previous seven nominees – misses out in this category this year.
• Margot Robbie is also snubbed for her lead role in Barbie, but the mega-hit comedy does pick up an adapted screenplay nomination for Gerwig and Noah Baumbach plus supporting nods for America Ferrera and Ryan Gosling, so there’s still a party at the Mojo Dojo Casa House.
• Oppenheimer leads the field with 13 nominations, including best director for Christopher Nolan, who was previously nominated in this category for Dunkirk. He scored his first of what is now a total of eight Oscar nominations back in 2000 – bonus marks if you can remember that was for the screenplay for Memento.
• The 11 nominations for Poor Things is the second-highest tally, while Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon scored 10 – though Leonardo DiCaprio was outrun in the best actor race – and Barbie a respectable eight. Lily Gladstone has become the first Native American acting nominee, while Scorsese is now the most-nominated living director.
• Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal – outside bets for best actor and best supporting actor respectively – were overlooked for All of Us Strangers, while Saltburn star Barry Keoghan also didn’t make the cut. Mescal and Keoghan were both nominated last year, however, and everyone paying attention knows Scott is an incredible actor.

It’s almost time to wrap up our live coverage today, as it’s in danger of clocking in longer than Killers of the Flower Moon (206 minutes).

But here’s some more industry reaction, courtesy of Désirée Finnegan, chief executive of Screen Ireland:

“Our sincere congratulations to the Irish talent nominated at this year’s Academy Awards, from Cillian Murphy’s best actor nomination to the 11 nominations for the Element Pictures-produced Poor Things,” she says.

“These extraordinary achievements are testament to the hard work of the Irish creative talent consistently producing powerful stories that resonate both at home and on an international scale.”

Side note: my favourite part of Poor Things is when two forlorn, abandoned men hope out loud that Bella (Emma Stone) is all right, then it cuts straight to her having the absolute best time it is possible to have with at least some of your clothes off.

Here’s a quick recap of the best picture nominees:

American Fiction

In Cord Jefferson’s comedy-drama skewering of the publishing industry, Jeffrey Wright plays a black novelist so frustrated by the market’s apparent demand for stereotypical “black” stories, he writes a satire of them – only for it to become a wild success. It looks great and is out here on February 2nd.

Anatomy of a Fall

Justine Triet’s riveting French courtroom drama about a writer (Sandra Hüller) whose husband falls to his death under mysterious circumstances at their chalet in the French Alps will have you rooting for her regardless of whether or not you think she did it. Winner of the Palme D’or (and the Palme Dog for best film canine) at Cannes.

Barbie

From “hey, do you guys ever think about dying?” to its wonderfully set up final joke, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is really too amazing for the Oscars. Gerwig and star Margot Robbie both missed out today, but Universal Pictures – and Mattel – will happily take this best picture nomination and the seven others it received as the cherry to go with its $1.5 billion box office receipts. A pink smash.

The Holdovers

Snow, whiskey, grief, disappointment, Duffel coats, loneliness and connection in early 1970s Massachusetts, courtesy of director Alexander Payne and screenwriter David Hemingson. What have I forgotten? Oh yes, the Christmas of it all. This is the last film I saw and the closest to perfection – I’d have loved to have seen Dominic Sessa make the best supporting actor cut. Da’Vine Joy Randolph is the deserving favourite for best supporting actress.

Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Scorsese’s epic, based on a book by David Grann, is Apple’s horse in the race this year. According to Donald Clarke, it demands patience of its audience. Or, as a friend has just messaged me, “the idea that it is nominated for film editing when an hour and 20 minutes could have been lobbed off it is a farce”. Lily Gladstone – superb, says Donald – remains the woman to beat to the best actress gong.

Maestro

This Netflix film overcame a minor controversy about Bradley Cooper’s “problematic” prosthetic nose to claim its place on the best picture list. Cooper also directed this film about composer Leonard Bernstein and his relationship with actor Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), although he “only” secured the acting nod. Oscar loves a biopic.

Oppenheimer

The box office for Christopher Nolan’s film was helpfully swelled by the Barbenheimer phenomenon (and also the fact that my teenage nephew went to see it twice). Cillian Murphy, it goes without saying, excels as “destroyer of worlds” J Robert Oppenheimer and may still clinch best actor over highly acclaimed American veteran Paul Giamatti. Robert Downey Jr is the favourite in the best supporting actor category.

Past Lives

Celine Song’s touching Past Lives didn’t manage to score acting nominations for its leads Greta Lee and Teo Yoo, but never mind. It still received Academy recognition here and in original screenplay and many cinemagoers will find its portrayal of the instinct to search for people from “home” or simply from your childhood – and the complicated feelings it triggers when you do – a highly relatable one. The Dublin Film Critics Circle named it their best film of 2023.

Poor Things

Yorgos Lanthimos’s film, produced by Dublin’s Element Pictures, must be “inhaled with gusto, like life itself” – and like pastéis de nata, as per the advice offered to Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) by Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) in this eye-poppingly bizarre adventure replete with “furious jumping”. Both are nominated, with Stone the second-favourite to win behind Gladstone, while cinematographer Robbie Ryan, through his nod, has scored a victory for lovers of the fisheye lens.

The Zone of Interest

Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest previewed in selected Irish cinemas last weekend and there are more previews to come before its full release on February 2nd. Adapted from the 2014 novel by the late Martin Amis, it’s a “devastating Holocaust drama like no other”, says Donald Clarke. Even the trailer is a tough, shudder-inducing watch as you realise with horror what is being depicted.

Reaction has come in from Dublin-headquartered Element Pictures:

Staff at Element Pictures are celebrating today, they say, after Poor Things received 11 Academy Award nominations for best picture, best actress, best supporting actor, best director, best adapted screenplay, best editing, best cinematography (for Irishman Robbie Ryan), best production design, best original score, best hair and make up and best costume design.

This is the highest number of Academy Award nominations ever received by an Irish produced film.

Poor Things, produced and developed by Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe and the team at Element Pictures, has already won two Golden Globes and scored 11 nominations at the Baftas.

Amazingly, this brings to 26 the number of Academy Award nominations garnered by Element films since the company was founded by Guiney and Lowe in 2001. Those films have won two Oscars to date – best actress for Brie Larson in Room and best actress for Olivia Colman in The Favourite.

Guiney and Lowe said:

“We are thrilled with the news today, and with the ongoing success of Poor Things. This is a phenomenal achievement for Yorgos, Emma and our incredible cast and crew of the film, including of course Irish cinematographer Robbie Ryan. It’s also a huge tribute to all of the Element Pictures team in Dublin, Belfast and London who have been across every detail of this production from its inception to its worldwide release. We are also very grateful to the amazing team at Film 4 and to our brilliant distributors Searchlight.”

Here is Donald Clarke’s review of Poor Things. Hint: he liked it.

Although women have been directing films since the birth of Hollywood, before today only seven women had been nominated for best director (for eight films) throughout Oscar history.

They are Lina Wertmüller for Seven Beauties (1975), Jane Campion for The Piano (1993), Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation (2003), Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker (2009), Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird (2017), Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman (2021), Chloe Zhao for Nomadland (2021) and Campion a second time for The Power of the Dog (2022). Bigelow and Zhao won.

While Gerwig has been deprived of a second directorial nomination for Barbie, Frenchwoman Justine Triet has earned her place as the eighth woman to receive a best director nomination – making it nine nominations for female directors in total – for her compelling film Anatomy of a Fall. She is not, sadly, predicted to win.

Snap reaction from chief film correspondent Donald Clarke, who is posting on X, includes these takeaways:

First up, on best actor: “Yeah, looked like a stretch for Andrew Scott. And a biiiiig stretch for Barry Keoghan. Colman Domingo takes the ‘fifth spot’ (for Rustin).”

On best actress: “Bad news for Margot Robbie. Good news for Bening (nominated for uplifting Netflix drama Nyad).”

On best director: “A baddish day for Barbie. A good one for Anatomy of a Fall. Triet arguably takes Gerwig’s ‘fifth spot’.”

The best picture list is, he says, “as predicted”, as is best supporting actor, though it’s a good result for America Ferrera, who is nominated for Barbie in the best supporting actress category. Well, she did nail that monologue.

And finally...

Best picture

• American Fiction
• Anatomy of a Fall
• Barbie
• The Holdovers
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Maestro
• Oppenheimer
• Past Lives
• Poor Things
• The Zone of Interest

Best actor

• Bradley Cooper, Maestro
• Colman Domingo, Rustin
• Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
• Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
• Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction

Best actress

• Annette Bening, Nyad
• Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
• Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall
• Carey Mulligan, Maestro
• Emma Stone, Poor Things

Best director

• Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest
• Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
• Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
• Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
• Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall

Best editing

• Anatomy of a Fall
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• The Holdovers
• Oppenheimer
• Poor Things

Best sound

• The Creator
• Maestro
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
• Oppenheimer
• The Zone of Interest

Best visual effects

• The Creator
• Godzilla Minus One
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
• Napoleon

Best cinematography

• El Conde
• Oppenheimer
• Maestro
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Poor Things

Best international feature

• Io Capitano (Italy)
• Perfect Days (Japan)
• Society of the Snow (Spain)
• The Teachers’ Lounge (Germany)
• The Zone of Interest (UK)

Best animated feature

• The Boy and the Heron
• Elemental
• Nimona
• Robot Dreams
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Best production design

• Barbie
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Napoleon
• Oppenheimer
• Poor Things

Best original song

• What Was I Made For? – Barbie
• I’m Just Ken – Barbie
• The Fire Inside – Flamin’ Hot
• It Never Went Away – American Symphony
• Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People) – Killers of the Flower Moon

Best original score

• American Fiction
• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Oppenheimer
• Poor Things

Best documentary feature

• Bobi Wine: The People’s President
• The Eternal Memory
• Four Daughters
• To Kill a Tiger
• 20 Days in Mariupol

Best supporting actress

• Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
• Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple
• America Ferrera, Barbie
• Jodie Foster, Nyad
• Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Best adapted screenplay

• American Fiction
• Barbie
• Oppenheimer
• Poor Things
• The Zone of Interest

Best original screenplay

• Anatomy of a Fall
• The Holdovers
• Maestro
• May December
• Past Lives

Best costume design

• Barbie
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Napoleon
• Oppenheimer
• Poor Things

Best hair and make-up

• Golda
• Maestro
• Oppenheimer
• Poor Things
• Society of the Snow

And we’re off...

Best supporting actor

• Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction
• Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
• Robert Downey Jr, Oppenheimer
• Ryan Gosling, Barbie
• Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things

So, it’s almost time. Who will make the Oscars cut? Whose names will be butchered in the pronunciation right at their moment of career glory? Whose sad destiny is to be sent “it’s wrong to judge art like this” and “it’s all just politics, darling” messages by their consoling friends?

And which Hollywood actors will pretend to have slept through the announcement?

German-American actor Zazie Beetz – who was in Joker and will also be familiar to viewers of the series Atlanta – and The Boys star Jack Quaid, the son of Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan, will be announcing the nominations in just over 20 minutes.

But what about the March 10th ceremony itself? That looks like it will be a little trickier to view live from this part of the world this year.

Last summer, Sky decided to call its quits after 20 years of holding the broadcast rights in this part of the world. ITV subsequently acquired the rights for the UK and intends to show the live ceremony exclusively on ITV1 and streaming service ITV X. But most viewers in the Republic don’t have access to ITV, nor can they pay to access it.

Virgin Media Television hasn’t got Irish rights, alas, and although RTÉ has scheduled Monday night highlights on RTÉ2 as usual, it won’t be showing the ceremony live, its press office tells me. So there is no universally available – or even available-to-purchase – live Irish broadcaster of the 96th Academy Awards.

That’s a shame for us Oscar nerds, especially as Jimmy Kimmel is scheduled to begin his opening monologue in this time zone at the historically early – almost civilised – time of 11pm.

Often the headline after the Oscar nominations is about which film or films racked up the most nods, which doesn’t always say much about which ones are likely to clean up the “main” awards.

This year, however, current best picture favourite Oppenheimer could wind up competing in a baker’s dozen of categories, give or take, while Academy voters are also likely to reward Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and the aforementioned Poor Things with a broad sweep of recognition.

When it comes to converting nominations to wins, Christopher Nolan’s biopic/thriller probably won’t manage anything like the record for most Oscars won by a single film, which is a tie between Ben-Hur (1959), Titanic (1997) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), all of which won 11 Oscars.

The record for the most nominations, meanwhile, is 14. It is held by All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997) and La La Land (2016).

Both All About Eve and La La Land won six of their 14 nominations, though Damien Chazelle’s musical romance was erroneously and notoriously read out as the winner of a seventh prize – best picture – at the 2017 ceremony in what is hands-down the funniest thing to have ever happened at the Oscars.

I can hear host Jimmy Kimmel – who is back again for 2024 – exclaim “Warren, what did you do?” even now.

So, it’s the nomination that counts right? That’s probably not how it felt at the various after-parties to the makers of The Turning Point (1977) and The Color Purple (1985), which jointly hold the record for the most nominations (11 of them) to remain unconverted on the night to a single win.

Film fans aren’t often all that fussed about the Oscars best original song category, but it’s one that Ireland has triumphed in before and it also yields the slight chance of a nomination again this year, so let’s give it the once over.

That slight chance comes courtesy of two songs from John Carney’s film Flora and Son – Meet in the Middle and High Life. Both were named on the 15-strong shortlist for this category, from which the five nominations will be drawn.

The bad news is that the competition is unusually fierce this year. Barbie is likely to be in the race with two songs: Billie Eilish and Finneas’s What Was I Made For? and Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt’s I’m Just Ken. Jon Batiste is also tipped with It Never Went Away from American Symphony, as is Lenny Kravitz for Road to Freedom from Rustin.

Then there’s 14-time nominee (but never a winner, unless you count an honorary Oscar, which you shouldn’t) Diane Warren, who is expected to add a 15th nomination for The Fire Inside from Flamin’ Hot.

But one seasoned predictor – Scott Feinberg from The Hollywood Reporter – reckons Meet in the Middle from Flora and Son by Carney, Gary Clark and star Eve Hewson could squeeze in.

While Cillian Murphy can be regarded as a dead cert for a nomination for his chilling turn as J Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the bulk of the Irish nominations will come from Poor Things, a splendidly weird table-turning fantasy led by Emma Stone.

Poor Things wasn’t filmed here – it was actually shot in Hungary – nor is it set in Ireland at any point. It has a Greek director in Yorgos Lanthimos and Australian screenwriter in Tony McNamara.

But Irishmen Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe, the founders of Element Pictures, are two of the producers of the film and it is the product of their now long-term collaborative relationship with Lanthimos. Robbie Ryan, its acclaimed Irish cinematographer, is likely to pick up a nod today.

When I went to see it, the audience whooped at the end – in admiration, to be clear, not relief that it was over.

Read Donald Clarke’s interview with the makers here and my Element Pictures background piece here.

Elsewhere, Barry Keoghan – nominated for best supporting actor last year for The Banshees of Inisherin – could be a surprise inclusion in the best actor category this year for his memorable and meme-able turn in Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn.

Hello, and welcome to our live coverage of this lunchtime’s big reveal of the 2024 Oscars nominations.

Last year’s ceremony was a special one for the Irish, with a record haul of 14 nominations, nine of them for The Banshees of Inisherin.

The good news is that thanks in large part to Poor Things, made by Dublin’s Element Pictures, Irish nominations could reach double figures again this year, as chief film correspondent Donald Clarke outlines in his annual pre-nominations predictions.

The even better news is that the supremely talented Cillian Murphy will – barring a highly unexpected and unlikely snub – soon be going by the new full title Academy Award Nominee Cillian Murphy.

Having won a Golden Globe a few weeks back, the Oppenheimer star is favourite to win best actor – and thereby become the first person born in Ireland to claim that prize – although Paul Giamatti, so wonderful in The Holdovers, is surging fast.

So, at 1.30pm, actors Zazie Beetz and Jack Quaid will announce this year’s Oscar nominations, and Donald will be giving his take on them soon after. In the meantime, here’s some further reading.

Read more:

• Oscars 2024: Will Barry Keoghan make the cut? Donald Clarke predicts this year’s nominees
• Tributes paid to ‘supremely talented’ Cork actor Cillian Murphy after Golden Globe win
• The Holdovers review: Paul Giamatti emerges as Cillian Murphy’s Oscars rival in a comedy set to become a Christmas classic
• Oppenheimer review: Cillian Murphy gives a commanding turn. But why is Florence Pugh reduced to Crazy Naked Chick?
• Poor Things review: Emma Stone is properly unsettling in this provocative feminist fable drenched in Victorian horror