The Academy Awards itself was already geriatric age by the point the 2005 ceremony rolled round. However that doesn’t imply there have been no extra milestones to be set or information damaged. And certainly, historical past was made that night: The lead actor and supporting actor Oscars had been each received by Black males for the primary and, to date, solely time.
The 77th Academy Awards occasion on the Kodak Theatre was in some methods a triumph of illustration. Jamie Foxx grew to become the primary Black actor to obtain two appearing nominations in the identical 12 months, and he’d go on to win one in all them, besting “Hotel Rwanda” star Don Cheadle, amongst others, for his lead efficiency in “Ray.” By that point, Morgan Freeman had already triumphed within the supporting class for his flip in “Million Dollar Baby.”
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Freeman accepted his first Oscar from presenter Renée Zellweger early within the ceremony. It was his fourth of 5 nominations — he had beforehand been acknowledged within the supporting class for “Street Smart” and lead class for “Driving Miss Daisy” and “The Shawshank Redemption” — and the primary time he’d been nominated for working with director Clint Eastwood. Freeman performed former boxer Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupris in Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby,” a movie for which star Hilary Swank would earn the lead actress trophy later within the night.
Freeman grew to become the oldest Black actor to win an Academy Award (he was 67 on the time) and gave a brief speech as soon as he acquired as much as the microphone. “I want to thank everybody and anybody who ever had anything at all to do with the making of this picture, but I especially want to thank Clint Eastwood for giving me the opportunity to work with him again and to work with Hilary Swank,” he mentioned. “This was a labor of love. And I thank the academy. I thank you so very much.”
Clearly, Freeman has good chemistry with Eastwood; he beforehand labored with him on 1992’s “Unforgiven” and once more on “Invictus.” Freeman’s fifth Oscar nomination was for his efficiency as Nelson Mandela within the 2009 movie.
“I have worked with a number of directors and my favorite of them all, I think the best of them all, certainly for me, is Clint Eastwood,” Freeman mentioned in an episode of “Oprah’s Master Class” not lengthy after the 2009 movie was launched. “When we started developing ‘Invictus,’ we said: ‘Who should we get to direct?’ And I said, ‘I can only think of two people: Clint and Eastwood.’”
New nominees
Freeman was the one nominee within the class with any earlier Oscar nominations. Emmy winner Alan Alda was nominated for enjoying Sen. Ralph Owen Brewster, a politician trying to give a monopoly on worldwide journey to Pan Am in “The Aviator”; Thomas Haden Church performed a soon-to-be-married man on a highway journey to wine nation together with his pal in “Sideways”; Foxx was additionally nominated as a taxi driver who picks up a success man in “Collateral,” and Clive Owen performed dermatologist Larry Grey, who was catfished after which caught up in a twisted love polygon in “Closer.” None of Freeman’s opponents have been Oscar-nominated since.
