Love and hate at the Oscars: the most surprising family stories of the nominees

A pain in the heart is what all fans of the Oscar galas experienced when in 2010 the Academy decided to pay tribute to the talent of director John Hughes and the generational mark he left on millions of viewers of films such as All in one day, The Breakfast Club and Home alone. The latter's star, Macaulay Culkin, appeared on stage to recall how important Hughes was to his ill-fated career. It will be quite a shock to see his brother Kieran – one of the night's most anticipated awards – pick up the supporting actor award this year for his role in the film. In Real Pain.

Twenty-seven years ago, Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro was nominated, surprisingly and deservedly, for the Oscar for best actress for the film Central Station of Brazil, by Walter Salles. It is exciting to see that, this year and also directed by Salles, it is his daughter Fernanda Torres who is nominated for the statuette for her role as the wife of an opponent in the Brazilian dictatorship of the seventies, in the film I'm still here. Both mother and daughter play the same role twenty years apart.

She had never been nominated for an Oscar and this year it was her turn for a role, the discreet but plot-decisive nun in Conclave, which doesn't last more than ten minutes on screen. It's exciting that Isabella Rossellini is finally up for an award that her mother, the great Ingrid Bergman, won three times. As best actress for Gas lamp and Anastasia and best supporting actress for Murder on the Orient Express. Oh! And, just like her daughter today, she also received a nomination for putting on the nun's habit. It was for The bells of Santa Maria.

One of the cinematographic phenomena of the year has undoubtedly been The substance. And Demi Moore gives us an impressive creation. Risky, almost suicidal, a surrender to the most absolute abyss. For the first time she could take home an award for which she has never been nominated. Neither was her ex-husband, Bruce Willis, who is now retired from the cinema due to a cruel degenerative disease. Both have maintained over the years a beautiful relationship of friendship and complicity, of gratitude and mutual comfort for the years lived together. If Moore wins, it will not be strange if Willis appears in her speech.

There is no family connection in this last chapter, but there is something intangible and fascinating related to the passage of time. Adrien Brody won the Oscar for best actor in 2003 for his role as The pianist, by Roman Polanski. He plays the Polish musician who survives in the Warsaw ghetto and manages to avoid the brutal persecution of the Nazis. It is exciting, almost a whim of time, that more than twenty years later, he has many chances to repeat the award in the role of the Hungarian architect who flees the Holocaust.

Other classic connections of the most important awards in the world of cinema

When two years ago Jamie Lee Curtis won the Oscar for her incredible role in Everything at once and everywhere, He couldn't help but get emotional when he remembered his parents, the unforgettable Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, stars of the golden age of Hollywood in the fifties and sixties, who were completely ignored by the Oscars. Throughout their extensive career, they received only one very sad nomination each. A similar situation occurred when in 1996, Kirk Douglas received an honorary Oscar from Steven Spielberg for his amazing acting career during which he was only nominated for the award three times and never won. From the audience, his son Michael, who already had two Oscars on the shelves of his house, applauded him excitedly. One as producer ofSomeone Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and one as an actor for Wall Street.

The other side of the coin could be the one experienced by Angelina Jolie, who saw her work recognized very early on with an Oscar. She was only twenty-five years old when she triumphed for her role in Innocence interrupted. Jon Voight, his father, had achieved it in the forties, with his war-wounded Vietnam veteran in The return. When Liza Minnelli collected the Oscar for best actress for Cabaret, A shiver ran through the souls of moviegoers around the world. Her saintly mother, Judy Garland – who had died prematurely four years earlier – was one of the greatest actresses of the 1940s and 1950s. The non-award to Garland for her memorable role in The Last Jedi is considered one of the most blatant "robbery" in the entire history of the Oscars. A star is born.

Paul Newman's love-hate story with the Oscars became legendary. Six nominations between 1959 and 1982. All unsuccessful. The last disappointment, for his memorable creation in Final verdict, It made him furious. And three years later the Hollywood Academy awarded him an honorary Oscar, which he did not collect because he was filming The color of money, the film that the following year brought him his first "official" Oscar. His wife, Joanne Woodward – still, by the way, in this world at 95 years old – had received the award for best actress at a very young age for The three faces of Eve. She was only twenty-seven years old. Interesting contrasts.

It is curious to know that one of the most gallant stories of enmity ever generated by the Oscars was played out by two sisters: Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland. The rivalry accompanied them since they were little, both became Hollywood stars almost at the same time, but it was Juan who got ahead when he won the Oscar for Suspicion in 1941. Olivia did not take it well, but she made up for it by winning two awards just two years apart, between 1947 and 1949, but Julia Norris's intimate life and The heiress. Both competed, with tenacity, until the end of their days. Juan died in 2013 at the age of 96, but this race was won by Olivia, who left this world on July 26, 2020. 104 years contemplated her. Let's review the actors and actresses who have possibilities this year and curious family connections.