The announcement of the Oscar nominations came out 2 days ago (click here if you missed it), and brought with it a couple of major surprises as a number of big Hollywood names were snubbed and left out as nominees. The nomination list in the main acting categories also appeared to be skewed towards the “white”, which has led to The Academy being heavily criticized for the lack of diversity in this year’s nominations in the main acting categories and even regarded as the whitest Oscars ever since 1998.
One of the biggest snub in the 2015 Oscar nomination announcement was the movie ‘Selma‘, in which both David Oyelowo and Ava Duvernay were not nominated in the best actor and directing categories respectively. Although Selma was nominated in the best-picture category, it was quite shocking that the movie did not get nods in other categories including, original screenplay and editing categories.
Since the 70th annual Oscar ceremony, at least one non-white person has been nominated each year in the four acting categories since 1998, according to Huffington Post. Check out the whole list below:
2014: Lupita Nyong’o, Barkhad Abdi and Chiwetel Ejiofor
2013: Denzel Washington and Quevenzhane Wallis
2012: Demian Bichir, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer
2011: Javier Bardem and Hailee Steinfeld
2010: Gabourey Sidibe, Monique, Penelope Cruz and Morgan Freeman
2009: Taraji P. Henson
2008: Ruby Dee and Javier Bardem
2007: Forest Whitaker, Will Smith, Djimon Honsou, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson, Adriana Barraza, Penelope Cruz and Rinko Kikuchi
2006: Terrence Howard
2005: Jamie Foxx, Don Cheadle, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Sophie Okonedo, Morgan Freeman and Jamie Foxx
2004: Djimon Honsou, Ken Watanabe, Benicio del Toro, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Keisha Castle-Hughes
2003: Salma Hayek and Queen Latifah
2002: Denzel Washington, Will Smith, Halle Berry and Ben Kingsley
2001: Javier Bardem and Benicio del Toro
2000: Denzel Washington and Michael Clarke Duncan
1999: Fernanda Montenegro
1998: None
Source: Huffington Post, Photo credit: Ivan Nikolov / WENN