| | Youngest winner of an acting award: Tatum O'Neal, age 10 (Best Supporting Actress, Paper Moon 1973) |
| | Youngest nominee of an acting award: Justin Henry, age 8 (Best Supporting Actor, Kramer vs. Kramer, 1979) |
| | Oldest winner of an acting award: Jessica Tandy, age 80 (Best Actress, Driving Miss Daisy, 1989) |
| | Oldest nominee of an acting award: Gloria Stuart, age 87 (Best Supporting Actress, Titanic, 1997) |
| | The films that have won the most Academy Awards, with 11, are: Ben-Hur (1959), Titanic (1997), The Return of the King (2003) |
| | Walt Disney has won the most Academy Awards, with 26 (22 competitive, 4 honorary) |
| | John Ford has won the most directing awards, with 4 |
| | Katharine Hepburn has the received 4 Academy Awards (all for Best Actress) |
| | In 2003, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King became the first fantasy film or science fiction film to win the Oscar for Best Picture. |
| | The film which received the most Oscars without winning Best Picture is Cabaret with 8 awards in 1972. Although the film was nominated for Best Picture, it lost to The Godfather. |
| | The two films which share the record for most nominations (11) with no Oscar wins are The Turning Point (1977) and The Color Purple (1985). |
| | The film with the most nominations without a Best Picture nomination is They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) with nine nominations. |
| | The first (and only) animated film ever to be nominated for Best Picture is Beauty and the Beast (1991), which also holds the record for the most nominations for an animated film, with six. |
| | No film to date has produced Oscar-winning performances in each of the four competitive acting categories (Leading Actor, Leading Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress). The two films which came closest to achieving this feat were A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Network (1976), with each film earning three out of the four acting Oscars. |
| | The Red Balloon (1956), a film with no dialogue, is the only such film ever to win an Oscar (as even silent films have scripted dialogue). This film won the Best Original Screenplay Award. It is also the only short film to win an Oscar outside of the short film categories. |
| | In 2006, Dreamgirls became the first film to ever have the most Oscar nominations of that year without having a Best Picture nomination. Though films from previous years had had more nominations without receiving a Best Picture nomination, there was always another film with more nominations. |
| | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Braveheart (1995), The Last Emperor (1987), Gigi (1958), Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), An American in Paris (1951), Grand Hotel (1932), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Wings (1927) are all films that won Best Picture without receiving a single acting nomination. |
| | Grand Hotel (1932) is the only film to win Best Picture without receiving any other nominations. |
| | Bette Davis and Greer Garson are the most consecutively nominated leading actresses (with five nominations from each in a row - Davis 1938 - 1942. Garson 1941 - 1945), while Marlon Brando is the most consecutively nominated leading actor (with four nominations from 1951-1954). |
| | Emma Thompson is the only actress to win an Oscar for Best Actress (Howards End, 1992) and an Oscar for Best Screenplay (Sense and Sensibility, 1995). |
| | Katharine Hepburn holds the record for the longest time span between first and last Oscar nominations (48 years from 1932/33 to 1981). |
| | Peter O'Toole holds the record for having the most Oscar nominations (8 for Best Actor) without ever winning a competitive acting award. He was given an honorary Oscar in 2003. |
| | Richard Burton (1925-1984) received the highest number of acting nominations (7) with two distinctions combined: without winning and without ever being given any kind of honorary award. |
| | Kate Winslet holds the record for the youngest person ever to have been nominated 5 times for an Oscar. |
| | James Dean is the only actor to receive two posthumous acting nominations. Although Dean was killed in an automobile accident in 1955, he was nominated for the Best Actor Award in 1956 for East of Eden (1955) and again in 1957 for Giant (1956). |
| | The shortest performance ever to win an acting Oscar is Beatrice Straight's performance, which lasted 5 minutes and 40 seconds, in Network (1976). Straight won the Best Supporting Actress Award for her role. |
| | The shortest performance ever to win a lead acting Oscar is Anthony Hopkins' performance as Hannibal Lecter, with about 16-17 minutes of screen time, in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Hopkins won the Best Actor Award for his role. |
| | The shortest performance ever to be nominated for an acting Oscar is Ruby Dee's performance, which lasted approximately five minutes, in American Gangster (2007). Dee was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Award for her role. |
| | Only six actors have received Oscar nominations for non-speaking roles. Jane Wyman won Best Actress for Johnny Belinda, Patty Duke won Best Supporting Actress for The Miracle Worker, John Mills won Best Supporting Actor for Ryan's Daughter, Holly Hunter won Best Actress for The Piano, Samantha Morton was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Sweet and Lowdown, and Rinko Kikuchi was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Babel. However, while some of the others extensively used sign language in their performances, Duke had no dialogue whatsoever other than grunts and screams. |
| | Only two actors have ever declined to accept their Oscars. George C. Scott refused to accept the Best Actor Award for Patton (1970); he claimed that acting should not be competitive. Marlon Brando refused to accept the Best Actor Award for The Godfather (1972); he sent Sacheen Littlefeather to accept it on his behalf to protest America's treatment of indigenous peoples. |
| | Sophia Loren and Roberto Benigni are the only actors to win Oscars for performing in a language other than English. Loren won for Two Women and Benigni for Life is Beautiful. |
| | Laurence Olivier and Roberto Benigni are the only people to have directed themselves to an acting Oscar. Olivier's win was for Hamlet (1948), and Benigni won for Life Is Beautiful (1998). Neither of them won the award for Best Director. |
| | Fay Bainter, Teresa Wright, Barry Fitzgerald, Jessica Lange, Sigourney Weaver, Al Pacino, Emma Thompson, Holly Hunter, Julianne Moore, Jamie Foxx, and Cate Blanchett are the only actors who have been nominated for both leading and supporting acting categories in the same year. Except for Weaver, Thompson and Moore, all won one of the two Oscars they were up for. (Blanchett's double achievement came in 2007; final results still pending.) |
| | George Bernard Shaw is the only person to have been awarded both an Oscar (Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Pygmalion in 1938) and a Nobel Prize (the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925). However, Nobel laureate John Steinbeck was nominated for his screenplay for Lifeboat (1944), and Nobel laureate Harold Pinter was nominated for his screenplays for both The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) and Betrayal (1983). |
| | Walt Disney holds the record for receiving as well as being nominated for the most Academy Awards. He won 22 competitive awards and received four honorary awards. He was also nominated for 59 Academy Awards during his lifetime. |
| | With 45 Oscar nominations, film composer John Williams is currently the most-nominated person alive. |
| | Sound re-recording mixer Kevin O'Connell currently holds the record for most Oscar nominations without a win at 19. His most recent nomination was for Transformers (2007). |
| | For the Best Director Award, John Ford holds the record for the most awards (four awards resulting from five nominations), while William Wyler holds the record for the most nominations (12 nominations resulting in three awards). |
| | Leo McCarey (Going My Way), Billy Wilder (The Apartment), Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather Part II), James L. Brooks (Terms of Endearment), and Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King) are currently the only filmmakers to receive Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. |
| | The youngest person ever to be awarded an Oscar is Shirley Temple (age 6), who was awarded the inaugural (now retired) non-competitive Academy Juvenile Award in 1934. |
| | The youngest person ever to be nominated for Best Director is John Singleton, who was 24 years old when he was nominated for Boyz N the Hood (1991). Additionally, he is currently the only African American to have been nominated for Best Director. |
| | Dudley Nichols was the first artist ever to decline an Oscar. He refused to accept the Best Writing (Screenplay) Award for The Informer (1935); he boycotted against the Academy for its support of company unions instead of the newly formed independent actors guilds and unions. |
| | Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro are the only two actors to win Oscars portraying the same character. Brando won Best Actor as Vito Corleone in (The Godfather) (1972) and De Niro won Best Supporting Actor also as Vito Corleone in (The Godfather Part II) (1974). |