• Eight of the 20 acting nominees are first-timers. Four of the 20 acting nominees are previous winners. 

• A year after Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Oscar for best director (The Hurt Locker), the field is all male again. 

• There are no African-American nominees in the major categories this year. 

• The only three movies that have won awards in all the categories are “It Happened One Night”,” One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “The Silence of the Lambs”. This achievement is also known as the Big Five or Oscar Grand Slam. 

• True Grit has the youngest and oldest acting nominees this year: Hailee Steinfeld turned 15 last month, and Jeff Bridges is 62. 

• The Academy Awards were held on Thursdays until 1954. From 1959 – 1998 they were held on Mondays except for few exceptions. It started to be held on Sundays from 1999. 

• Three films hold the record for winning most number of Oscars, which are “Ben-Hur” in 1959, “Titanic” in 1997 and “The Return of the King” in 2003.