Timothée Chalamet could become the youngest best actor winner at the March 2 ceremony.
Timothee Chalamet como Bob Dylan en A COMPLETE UNKNOWN’.
Macall Polay /© Searchlight Pictures /Courtesy Everett Collection
Timothée Chalamet could make Oscar history on March 2, when the 97th annual Academy Awards are presented at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. His performance as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown could make him the youngest winner ever for best actor. Chalamet, who will be 29 years and 65 days on Oscar night, would seize the title from Adrien Brody, who was 29 years and 343 days in 2003 when he won for The Pianist.
Ironically, Chalamet’s top rival for this year’s Oscar is Brody, who is nominated for The Brutalist. While it’s not over till it’s over, as Lenny Kravitz memorably put it, Brody seems to have the inside track to win the Oscar. He edged out Chalamet at the Golden Globe Awards, Critics Choice Awards and BAFTA Film Awards. Their next big showdown is at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday Feb. 23.
This is Chalamet’s second Oscar nomination for best actor. He was previously nominated, at age 22 years and 27 days, for his role as a 17-year-old falling in love with a graduate student in Call Me By My Name. That made him the third-youngest nominee ever in this category. The youngest-ever best actor nominee was Jackie Cooper, who was nine years and 20 days old when he was nominated for playing the title role in Skippy, based on a popular comic strip and novel. Runner-up is Mickey Rooney, who was 19 years and 142 days old when he was nominated for Babes in Arms, the second film in which he co-starred with Judy Garland.
This focus on ages made us wonder who the youngest winners in other key categories are. We also checked to see who the youngest winner of an honorary award from the Academy is. The recipient, the OG “America’s Sweetheart,” was not even seven when she won.
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Best actor: Adrien Brody, The Pianist
Age upon winning: 29 years and 343 days
Date of ceremony: March 23, 2003
Notes: An overexcited Brody gave presenter Halle Berry a very big kiss, a move that some saw as presumptuous. That impression was exacerbated by his subsequent remark to Berry, “I bet they didn’t tell you that was in the gift bag.” He got away with it at the time — just barely — but now it would probably be seen as crossing a line.
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Best actress: Marlee Matlin, Children of a Lesser God
Age upon winning: 21 years and 218 days
Date of ceremony: March 30, 1987
Notes: Matlin acted opposite her then-boyfriend William Hurt in the film. Because Hurt was the previous year’s best actor winner (for Kiss of the Spider Woman), he presented her with the award. Since she is deaf, she spoke in sign language with Jack Jason interpreting.
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Best supporting actor: Timothy Hutton, Ordinary People
Age upon winning: 20 years and 227 days
Date of ceremony: March 31, 1981
Notes: Hutton played the troubled son of Mary Tyler Moore and Donald Sutherland in this Robert Redford film. Moore, who was nominated for best actress, presented the award in tandem with Jack Lemmon. In thanking the cast, Hutton only had to turn a bit to his right to say, “Mary, thank you.” The ceremony was delayed one day because of an assassination attempt the previous day on President Reagan.
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Best supporting actress: Tatum O’Neal, Paper Moon
Image Credit: Richard Markell/Courtesy Everett Collection Age upon winning: 10 years and 148 days
Date of ceremony: April 2, 1974
Notes: O’Neal acted opposite her dad Ryan O’Neal in the film. “All I really want to thank is my director Peter Bogdanovich and my father,” she said in accepting the award. This was the ceremony where, at the height of the streaking fad, a streaker ran across the Oscar stage just before the announcement of best picture. Was it a planned stunt? The Oscars have always denied it.
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Best song: Markéta Irglová, Once (“Falling Slowly”)
Age upon winning: 19 years and 361 days
Date of ceremony: Feb. 24, 2008
Notes: Only Glen Hansard, Irglová’s collaborator (and then romantic partner) had a chance to speak before the winners were played off and the show went into a commercial break. Show producer Gil Cates decided Irglová had been given short shrift, and allowed her to be brought back on stage after the commercial break to give her speech. Classy move.
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Best original song score: Prince, Purple Rain
Image Credit: Warner Bros. / courtesy Everett Collection Age upon winning: 26 years and 291 days
Date of ceremony: March 25, 1985
Notes: “This is very unbelievable,” Prince said in accepting his award. “I could’ve never imagined this in my wildest dreams.” Prince was accompanied on stage by The Revolution band members Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin, whom he introduced to the global audience.
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Best director: Damien Chazelle, La La Land
Age upon winning: 32 years and 38 days
Date of ceremony: Feb. 26, 2017
Notes: La La Land was mistakenly announced as the winner of best picture, only to have the award pulled back and presented to its rightful winner, Moonlight. The messiness of that moment may have marred the Oscar night experience for the La La Land team. Thank goodness the awards to Chazelle, actress Emma Stone, composer Justin Hurwitz and lyricists Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, among others, were not recalled.
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Best original screenplay: Ben Affleck, Good Will Hunting
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection Age upon winning: 25 years and 220 days
Date of ceremony: March 23, 1998
Notes: Affleck won in tandem with his longtime BFF Matt Damon, who was 27 at the time. Affleck opened their acceptance speech by saying, “I just said to Matt, losing would suck and winning would be really scary. It’s really, really scary.” Affleck had good reason to be nervous: Boosted by the boxoffice phenomenon Titanic, the telecast garnered more than 57 million viewers in the U.S., making it the most-watched Oscars broadcast in history.
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Best adapted screenplay: Charlie Wachtel, BlacKkKlansman
Age upon winning: 32
Date of ceremony: Feb. 24, 2019
Notes: Wachtel won in tandem with David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Spike Lee. This is Lee’s only competitive Oscar to date. He had won an Honorary Award in 2015, inscribed: “To Spike Lee, filmmaker, educator, motivator, iconoclast, artist.”
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Honorary awards: Shirley Temple
Age upon winning: Six years and 310 days
Date of ceremony: Feb. 27, 1935
Notes: Temple’s award read: “To Shirley Temple, in in grateful recognition of her outstanding contribution to screen entertainment during the year 1934.” But that doesn’t really do justice to her significance. Many have credited the plucky child star with keeping Americans’ spirits during the depths of the Great Depression.
