- The Oscar statuette is not made of gold. It is a pewter like alloy called brittanium, which is 93 percent tin, 5 percent antimony and 2 percent copper. It is then plated with gold.
- Academy Award statuettes are 13½ inches tall and weigh 8½ pounds.
- Since 1950, Oscar winners must agree not to sell their statuettes without first offering them to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for $1.
- At a 1999 auction, Michael Jackson paid $1.5 million for the best picture statuette for "Gone With the Wind" (1939).
- During the metal shortages of World War II, the Oscar statuettes were made of plaster.
- The first Academy Awards ceremony, in a banquet room at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in 1929, was also the shortest — 15 minutes. The winners had been notified beforehand.
- In 1940, when Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American Oscar winner for her supporting role in "Gone With the Wind," she was required to sit in a segregated section of the room.
- Three movies share the record for the most Oscar wins, with 11: "Ben-Hur" (1959), "Titanic" (1997) and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (2003).
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- The individual with the most Oscar wins is Walt Disney, with 26 (including 22 competitive awards and 4 honorary awards). He was nominated for a record 48 Academy Awards.
- The most Oscar wins by a woman is eight, by costume designer Edith Head.
- Katharine Hepburn won the best actress award a record four times.
- Meryl Streep is the queen of best actress nominees, with 15, and total acting nominations, with 18.
- The 34-minute French film "The Red Balloon" (1956) won best original screenplay with virtually no dialogue.
- The youngest honorary Oscar recipient was Shirley Temple (age 6) in 1934.
- The youngest best actor winner was Adrien Brody (age 29) for "The Pianist" (2002).
- The youngest best actress winner was Matlin (age 21) for "Children of a Lesser God" (1986).
- The oldest best director winner was Clint Eastwood (age 74) for "Million Dollar Baby" (2004).
- The only silent film to win best picture was "Wings," in the inaugural ceremony (1927).
- John Ford won a record four Academy Awards as best director.
- Only one woman has won best director: Kathryn Bigelow, for "The Hurt Locker" (2008). Only four women have been nominated.
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- The first posthumous Oscar winner was screenwriter Sidney Howard for "Gone With the Wind" (1939).
- The only Academy Award winner named Oscar was songwriter Oscar Hammerstein.
- “Gone With The Wind” is the longest Best Picture winner, clocking in at 234 minutes.
- Christopher Plummer became the oldest person to win an Oscar, when he won for Best Supporting Actor in 2012 for his performance in "Beginners" (2011), at age 82.
- The first person to turn down an Academy Award was Dudley Nichols, who refused a Best Screenwriter award for “The Informers” (1935) due to a union dispute at the time.
- Liza Minnelli, meanwhile, is the only Oscar winner whose parents (Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli) also both won Academy Awards.
- According to legend, the name 'Oscar' was given to the statuettes by Margaret Herrick, the Academy's librarian. Reportedly, the statuette looked like her uncle Oscar.
- Sidney Poitier became the first black actor to win an Oscar when he collected for “Lilies Of The Field” (1963).
- The very first person to receive an Academy Award didn't even attend the ceremony. Emil Jannings, the winner for Best Actor in the 1927-28 Academy Awards, had decided to go back to his home in Germany before the ceremony. Before he left for his trip, Jannings was handed the very first Academy Award.
- The only Academy Award winner who won but was never officially nominated was Hal Mohr for Best Cinematography for “A Midsummer Night's Dream” (1935). Mohr was the first and only person to win via a write-in vote.
BY: Olusola Agbaje
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