This year, the forerunner for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor seems to be Heath Ledger, nominated for his searing performance as The Joke in The Dark Knight. Ledger received the nomination on January 22 – the one year anniversary of his death.
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In case you were wondering, other actors have been nominated for Oscars posthumously. In the past 81 years, 53 people have received 70 posthumous nominations with 13 of them winning.
The first person nominated for an Oscar after his death was writer Gerald C. Duffy. Back then, movies were still pretty new technology and the 1927 and 1928 awards ceremony was combined and the nominees weren’t even announced until 1929. By then, Duffy had died. He was nominated for Best Title Writing (a category which was eliminated after “talkies” began), but lost.
Sidney Howard, who wrote the screenplay for Gone with the Wind was nominated in 1939. Poor Howard was working on his farm in Massachusetts when his tractor rolled over on him and killed him. He became the first person to have the honor of receiving an Academy Award posthumously when he won Best Screenplay that year.
In 1973, Edward G. Robinson was given an honorary Oscar for his “achieved greatness as a player, a patron of the arts, and a dedicated citizen.” Two months before the ceremony, Robinson died of cancer at the age of 79.
While there have been 70 nominations, most have not been for acting. In fact, only six actors, including Ledger have received an Academy Award nomination posthumously – Jeanne Eagels (for 1929’s The Letter), James Dean (for 1955’s East of Eden and 1956’s Giant), Spencer Tracy (for 1967’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?), Peter Finch (for 1976’s Network), and Massimo Troisi (for 1994’s Il Postino). Of those first five, only one – Peter Finch – has won. Finch died of a heart attack in January 1977 while promoting Network.
With incredible actors like James Dean and Spencer Tracy not winning posthumous Oscars, what do you think Ledger’s chances are of winning? He’s already won a Golden Globe, an Australia Film Institute award (the first to be awarded posthumously), and an LA Film Critics Association award for his performance and he is up for a BAFTA (the UK equivalent of the Academy Awards).
Should Heath Ledger win the Oscar?