95th Academy Awards

The 95th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), took place on March 12, 2023, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. During the gala, the AMPAS presented Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 23 categories honoring films released in 2022. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner, with Weiss also serving as director. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel hosted the show for the third time, following the 89th ceremony in 2017 and the 90th ceremony in 2018.

In related events, the Academy held its 13th annual Governors Awards ceremony at the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel in Century City, California, on November 19, 2022. The Academy Scientific and Technical Awards were presented by host Simu Liu on February 24, 2023, in a ceremony at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles.

Everything Everywhere All at Once won seven awards, including Best Picture. Other winners included All Quiet on the Western Front with four awards, The Whale with two, and Avatar: The Way of Water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, The Elephant Whisperers, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, An Irish Goodbye, Navalny, RRR, Top Gun: Maverick, and Women Talking with one. The telecast drew 18.75 million viewers in the United States.

Winners and nominees

The nominees for the 95th Academy Awards were announced on January 24, 2023, at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, by actors Riz Ahmed and Allison Williams. Everything Everywhere All at Once led all nominees with eleven nominations; All Quiet on the Western Front and The Banshees of Inisherin tied for second with nine nominations each.

The winners were announced during the awards ceremony on March 12, 2023. Everything Everywhere All at Once became the first science fiction film to win Best Picture, and became the third film, alongside A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Network (1976), to win three acting awards. Best Director winners Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert became the third pair of directors to win for the same film. For the first time since the 7th ceremony in 1935, all five Best Actor nominees were first-time nominees. Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian winner for Best Actress and the second woman of color overall after Halle Berry, who won for her performance in Monster's Ball (2001). Furthermore, she became the first woman to identify as Asian to be nominated in that category. Ke Huy Quan became the first Vietnamese person to win an Oscar and the second Asian winner for Best Supporting Actor after Haing S. Ngor, who won for his role in The Killing Fields (1984).

The 42-year span between Judd Hirsch's first nomination, for his supporting role in Ordinary People (1980), and his second, for The Fabelmans, set the record for the longest gap between Oscar nominations. At age 90, Best Original Score nominee John Williams became the oldest person nominated competitively in Oscars history. Best Costume Design winner Ruth E. Carter became the first Black woman to win two Oscars.

Awards

Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface, and indicated with a double dagger (‡).

Governors Awards

The Academy held its 13th annual Governors Awards ceremony on November 19, 2022, during which the following awards were presented:

Academy Honorary Awards

• Euzhan Palcy – "A masterful filmmaker who broke ground for Black women directors and inspired storytellers of all kinds across the globe."
• Diane Warren – "For her genius, generosity and passionate commitment to the power of song in film."
• Peter Weir – "A fearless and consummate filmmaker who has illuminated the human experience with his unique and expansive body of work."

Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award

• Michael J. Fox – "For his tireless advocacy of research on Parkinson's disease alongside his boundless optimism exemplifies the impact of one person in changing the future for millions."

Films with multiple nominations and awards

Presenters and performers

The following presented awards and performed musical numbers.

Ceremony information

In September 2022, the Academy hired television producers Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner to oversee production of the 2023 ceremony. AMPAS president Janet Yang and CEO Bill Kramer remarked that they looked "to deliver an exciting and energized show" with Weiss and Kirshner. Two months later, comedian and talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was announced as host of the gala. "Being invited to host the Oscars for a third time is either a great honor or a trap," Kimmel stated in a press release regarding his selection. "Either way, I am grateful to the Academy for asking me so quickly after everyone good said no," he concluded. Furthermore, AMPAS announced that all 23 categories would be presented live during the gala. The announcement came in response to an internal survey which indicated negative feedback regarding the previous year's decision to present eight below-the-line categories prior to the live portion of last year's gala.

In light of the Chris Rock–Will Smith slapping incident during the previous year's telecast, AMPAS announced that the organization hired a "crisis team" in the event a similar altercation or if an unexpected fiasco arose. In an interview published by Time magazine, Kramer explained: "We have a whole crisis team, something we've never had before, and many plans in place. We've run many scenarios. So it is our hope that we will be prepared for anything that we may not anticipate right now but that we're planning for just in case it does happen."

Several others participated in the production of the ceremony and related events. Rickey Minor served as musical director for the ceremony. Production designers Misty Buckley and Alana Billingsley, who were the first women-led design team for an Oscars telecast, designed a new stage for the show. According to Buckley and Billingsley, the stage was designed to resemble Art Deco movie places from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Additionally, the set utilized several LED panels that were used to display the category names, winners' names, or images from the nominated films. Notably, the arrivals area along Hollywood Boulevard outside the Dolby Theatre was lined with a champagne-colored carpet, marking the first time since the 32nd ceremony in 1960 that a non-red colored carpet was utilized for the gala. According to red carpet consultant Lisa Love, the production team chose a lighter shade of carpet color in order to not clash with a sienna-colored tent erected to shield attendees from the sun or potential rain. She also added that the shades of color for both the carpet and tent were inspired by "watching the sunset on a white-sand beach at the 'golden hour' with a glass of champagne in hand, evoking calm and peacefulness".

Lady Gaga was initially not scheduled to perform her nominated song "Hold My Hand" from Top Gun: Maverick due to prior commitments involving her role in Joker: Folie à Deux. On the morning of the ceremony, however, it was reported that Gaga would perform at the ceremony. Meanwhile, actress Glenn Close, who was originally scheduled as a presenter during the gala, canceled her appearance due to a positive COVID-19 test.

Box office performance of Best Picture nominees

When the nominations were announced, nine of the ten films nominated for Best Picture had earned a combined gross of $1.57 billion at the American and Canadian box offices at the time. Top Gun: Maverick was the highest-grossing film among the Best Picture nominees with $718.7 million in domestic box office receipts. Avatar: The Way of Water came in second with $598.4 million; this was followed by Elvis ($151 million), Everything Everywhere All at Once ($70 million), The Fabelmans ($15 million), The Banshees of Inisherin ($9 million), Tar ($5.6 million), Triangle of Sadness ($4.2 million), and Women Talking ($1.1 million). The box office figures for All Quiet on the Western Front were unavailable due to their distributor Netflix's policy of refusing to release such figures. Furthermore, by virtue of Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick's Best Picture nominations, it marked the first time since the 55th ceremony in 1983 that the two highest grossing films of the year were both nominated in the aforementioned category.

Andrea Riseborough's nomination and controversy

Andrea Riseborough's Best Actress nomination for To Leslie was controversial amongst critics and pundits, as Momentum Pictures, the film's distributor, did not fund a conventional advertising-driven awards campaign for the film. Instead, director Michael Morris and his wife, actress Mary McCormack, organized a "celeb-backed campaign" to get Riseborough nominated. They contacted friends and colleagues in the entertainment industry, asking them to view the film and share it with others if they enjoyed it. Morris and Riseborough also hired publicists to coordinate the efforts. While not initially regarded as a serious contender, the campaign raised Riseborough's profile; dozens of celebrities praised her performance on social media, and some hosted screenings of the film during voting for the Academy Award nominations in January 2023. Riseborough's nomination was announced on January 24, which the Los Angeles Times called "one of the most shocking nominations in Oscar history".

After her nomination was announced, speculation arose that the tactics might have violated AMPAS rules against directly lobbying voters. A post on the film's Instagram account was noted by several AMPAS members for possibly violating a rule prohibiting "[singling] out 'the competition' by name" by featuring a quote from film critic Richard Roeper, who praised Riseborough's performance as better than Cate Blanchett's in Tár, a fellow nominee for Best Actress. On January 27, the Academy announced a review of the year's campaigns "to ensure that no guidelines were violated, and to inform us whether changes to the guidelines may be needed in a new era of social media and digital communication".

The Academy has rescinded nominations for nominees who participated in unsanctioned campaigning. However, there were no reports that Riseborough had been involved in such, or that any Academy members had lodged formal complaints about the campaign's behavior. On January 31, the Academy concluded its review by pledging to address "social media and outreach campaigning tactics" which they said caused "concern", but confirming that Riseborough's nomination would be retained. Following the controversy, the Academy introduced new campaigning rules and clarifications in May 2023.

Critical reviews

Variety columnist Owen Gleiberman wrote: "It didn't rock the boat, it didn't overstay its welcome, and it left you feeling that the world's preeminent awards show, all doom-saying punditry to the contrary, is still, on balance, a very good thing." He also added that the wins received by Everything Everywhere All at Once "lent the evening a rare emotional unity". Television critic Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter similarly praised the show's emotional beats and found its flaws "were mitigated more gracefully than just about any Oscars telecast" he could recall. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle commended Kimmel's stint as host stating: "He was establishing that 2023 would not be a repeat of 2022 — and it wasn't. It was such a relief to see something, anything, actually get better."

Mike Hale of The New York Times remarked on "the ordinariness and sameness of the ABC broadcast" compared to the prior year, while USA Today's Kelly Lawler criticized it as "terribly fake" and felt that Kimmel's role "felt phoned in, or at least maybe monitored by corporate overlords looking to avoid controversy" despite some of his jokes tackling controversial subjects such as the January 6 United States Capitol attack and Tom Cruise's Scientology advocacy. Hale added that "the modern Oscars have become something more to be endured than enjoyed".

Ratings and reception

The American telecast on ABC drew in an average of 18.75 million people over its length, which was a 13% increase from the previous year's ceremony and marked the first time that the Academy Awards experienced consecutive years of viewership increase since the 86th Academy Awards in 2014. The show also earned higher Nielsen ratings compared to the previous ceremony with 9.9% of households watching the ceremony. In addition, it garnered a higher 18–49 demo rating with a 4.03 rating among viewers in that demographic. It was the most-watched prime time entertainment broadcast of 2023 in the United States. In July 2023, the broadcast was nominated for three awards at the 75th Primetime Creative Arts Emmys.

"In Memoriam"

The annual "In Memoriam" segment was introduced by John Travolta. Singer Lenny Kravitz performed his song "Calling All Angels" during the tribute.

See also

• List of submissions to the 95th Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film

Notes

References

External links

• Academy Awards official website
• The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences official website
• Oscars Channel at YouTube (run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences)

Other resources

• The Oscars (2023) at IMDb