Want to win an Oscar: Be born in California
A whopping 26 (or 70.3%) of the last decade’s worth of acting Oscar recipients – including 2024’s Emma Stone (“Poor Things”), Robert Downey Jr. (“Oppenheimer”), and Da’Vine Joy Randolph (“The Holdovers”) – were born in the United States. Also counted here is Joaquin Phoenix (“Joker,” 2020), who originates from the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. Compared to the group of performers who prevailed between 2005 and 2014, the 2015-2024 set includes six more Americans, constituting a 16% larger majority. Considering all 96 years of Academy Awards history, the rate of unique American acting victors stands at 68.1%.
Stone, who earned her first of two Best Actress trophies for “La La Land” (2017), is now the first-ever dual honoree from Arizona, with the only other acting winner from her state being Troy Kotsur (“CODA,” 2022). Before they came along, the sole nominee to have been born there was Mare Winningham (“Georgia,” 1996), who lost to New Yorker Mira Sorvino (“Mighty Aphrodite”).
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Randolph is the 11th Pennsylvanian to ever clinch an acting Oscar and the second to do so during the 2020s, after Will Smith (“King Richard,” 2022). The subset of native New Yorkers to which Downey belongs comprises 49 members (or 15.5% of all acting winners), the first four dozen of whom were all added more than a decade ago. Until this year, the group’s most recent general entrant was Anne Hathaway (“Les Misérables,” 2013), while the last male one was Alan Arkin (“Little Miss Sunshine,” 2007).
Although it ranks second on the all-time list of luckiest birth states (with 34 total examples), California is home to nine of said 26 American winners, whereas no other state produced more than two. Making up the Golden State plurality are Leonardo DiCaprio (“The Revenant,” 2016), Brie Larson (“Room,” 2016), Mahershala Ali (“Moonlight,” 2017; “Green Book,” 2019), Sam Rockwell (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” 2018), Rami Malek (“Bohemian Rhapsody,” 2019), Regina King (“If Beale Street Could Talk,” 2019), Laura Dern (“Marriage Story,” 2020), Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” 2022), and Jamie Lee Curtis (“Everything Everywhere All at Once,” 2023).
Aside from Arizona and Pennsylvania, the states from which multiple 2015-2024 acting champs originate are Illinois (Patricia Arquette, “Boyhood,” 2015; Frances McDormand, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and “Nomadland,” 2021), North Carolina (Julianne Moore, “Still Alice,” 2015; Ariana DeBose, “West Side Story,” 2022), and Massachusetts (Casey Affleck, “Manchester by the Sea,” 2017; Allison Janney, “I, Tonya,” 2018). Those associated with one winner each are Michigan (J.K. Simmons, “Whiplash,” 2015), South Carolina (Viola Davis, “Fences,” 2017), Texas (Renée Zellweger, “Judy,” 2020), Oklahoma (Brad Pitt, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” 2020), and Indiana (Brendan Fraser, “The Whale,” 2023).
The significant increase in U.S. winners between the two most recent decades is emphasized by the fact that 2020 and 2022 were the first years since 1998 to produce completely American sets of champions. There have now been 21 such instances overall, while only two fully non-American quartets have ever emerged, in 1965 and 2008.
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