20 2019 Oscar nominees you may have forgotten were previously nominated

Jason Blum (of Blumhouse Productions) is primarily known for producing horror flicks like the “Paranormal Activity,” “Sinister,” “Insidious” and “The Purge” franchises. So what’s more surprising: the fact that he’s nominated for an Academy Award this year for co-producing the Spike Lee comedy-drama biopic “BlacKkKlansman” or the fact that he has two previous Oscar nods for “Get Out” and “Whiplash”?

Yorgos Lanthimos directed and co-produced “The Favourite,” which has a whopping 10 Academy Award nominations, with Lanthimos up for both Best Director and Best Picture. These two nods aren’t his first, however, as Lanthimos has two previous nominations. He was up for Best Original Screenplay for the dystopian dark comedy “The Lobster” (2015) and Best Foreign Language Film for the drama “Dogtooth” (2009) — both of which he also directed.

It’s been a few years since we heard Alfonso Cuarón’s name at the Oscars, but the last time we did, it was for good reason. In 2014, the Mexican-born director won both Best Director and Best Film Editing (and narrowly missed out on Best Picture) at the 86th Academy Awards for the sci-fi thriller “Gravity.” Even prior to that, Cuarón amassed three combined Oscar nods for his films “Y Tu Mamá También” (2001) and “Children of Men” (2006). This year he adds five more nods to his resume, with his drama “Roma” earning 10 nominations in all, including Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Cinematography and Foreign Language Film nods for Cuarón.

Paweł Pawlikowski carved out two nominations at this year’s Academy Awards — Best Director and Best Foreign Language Film — for his period drama love story “Cold War.” But not only did Pawlikowski already get nominated for an Oscar and not only was it also in the Best Foreign Language Film category, but also Pawlikowski ended up winning! He took home the honor thanks to 2013’s “Ida,” which, like “Cold War,” also happens to be a period drama set in Poland, the director’s home country.

If you’re in disbelief that the writer and director of the crudely immature Will Ferrell comedies “Anchorman,” “Talladega Nights” and “Step Brothers” (all of which we love) could earn an Oscar nod for Best Director in 2019, you’ll truly be shocked to find out he already earned a nomination in the same category a few years ago. That nominee, the financial dramedy “The Big Short,” also garnered nods for Best Picture, Supporting Actor, Film Editing and Adapted Screenplay, with McKay winning the latter — the film’s sole win at the event. This year McKay’s nominee is the Cheney biopic “Vice,” which amassed a whopping eight nods, with McKay personally up for Best Director, Picture and Original Screenplay.

Bradley Cooper’s name hasn’t come up as an Oscar nominee in several years, but from 2013 to 2015, Cooper earning a nomination was something of an annual event. It began with a Best Actor nod for “Silver Linings Playbook,” followed by Best Supporting Actor for “American Hustle,” capped off with chances at both Best Picture and Best Actor for “American Sniper.” Cooper has returned to the Academy Awards in grand fashion in 2019, as his role as the director, co-producer, co-writer and co-star of “A Star is Born” has earned him Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actor nominations.

In the Best Actor category, Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper and Willem Dafoe have all earned Oscar nods for big-name films (with Bale nabbing a win for 2010’s “The Fighter”), but Viggo Mortensen’s pair of previous nods — both for Best Actor — flew somewhat under the radar. His first came in 2008 for David Cronenberg’s gangster flick “Eastern Promises,” and his second, more recently, was for the 2016 dramedy “Captain Fantastic,” two criminally underwatched films that only made a combined $77 million at the box office. If Mortensen wins this year, it’ll be for his role as Frank "Tony Lip" Vallelonga, whom he plays opposite Mahershala Ali in the Peter Farrelly film “Green Book,” which is up for five Oscars.

Lady Gaga is up for not one, but two Academy Awards this year, including Best Actress. (There’s a sentence we never would’ve thought we’d write 10 years ago.) The nomination is, of course, for “A Star is Born,” which also earned her a Best Original Song nod for “Shallow.” Gaga previously earned a nomination in that same category for co-writing “Til It Happens to You” for the 2015 documentary “The Hunting Ground.”

Comedic actors and actresses don’t usually get a lot of love from the Academy, which is why even we totally forgot Melissa McCarthy previously had a chance at an Oscar in 2012. Of course, she was deserving of that Best Supporting Actress nomination, as McCarthy was arguably the funniest part of “Bridesmaids,” playing Megan, a filterless, puppy-stealing, cruise-ship-fall survivor. This time around, McCarthy’s nomination is in the Best Actress category, and it’s for a drama, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” — based on the 2008 memoir of the same name by Lee Israel.

OK, so you might know Glenn Close has been previously nominated for an Academy Award, given both the span of her career and the accolades for her various roles. What might be more surprising is that Close has never won an Oscar. And it’s not for a lack of chances, with seven total nominations (including this year’s nod) for films like “The World According to Garp” (1982), “Fatal Attraction” (1987) and “Dangerous Liaisons” (1988), among others. In 2019, she’ll compete for Best Actress thanks to “The Wife” — a drama in which she stars alongside Jonathan Pryce and Christian Slater — a role that recently earned Close a Golden Globe win.

We’ll forgive you if you forgot that Rachel Weisz was not only previously nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award once but alsoactually won it. After all, Weisz’s win was for “The Constant Gardener,” which was released almost 14 years ago. She’s back in the category in 2019 for playing Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough, in “The Favourite.” This is Weisz’s second role in a Yorgos Lanthimos film in the last three years, as she previously starred in 2015’s  “The Lobster.”

When you hear Eric Roth’s name read among the list of nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay, you might not recognize it. When you see his face on the TV screen, you still might not recognize him, but you know Eric Roth’s work. In addition to “A Star is Born,” Roth co-wrote the scripts for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2008),” “Munich” (2005)” and “The Insider” (1999), all of which previously earned Best Adapted Screenplay nominations at the Academy Awards. Oh, and Roth also single-handedly adapted the screenplay for “Forrest Gump,” which won him an Oscar back in 1995.

The Rich Moore-directed cartoon “Ralph Breaks the Internet” (starring John C. Reilly and Sarah Silverman) is up for Best Animated Feature Film, which isn’t much of a surprise, as the original film in the franchise, 2012’s “Wreck-It Ralph,” previously earned a nod in the same category. However, this isn’t the only Oscar that Moore has competed for. He was nominated — and won — in the same category in 2017 for co-directing the animated buddy-cop movie “Zootopia.”

Composer Marc Shaiman is up for two Academy Awards — Best Original Score and Best Original Song — for providing the music for “Mary Poppins Returns,” but this isn’t his first shot at an Oscar. Shaiman has five previous nominations for contributing music to everything from “Sleepless in Seattle” and “The First Wives Club” to “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut” (specifically, the infamous song “Blame Canada”). However, seven Oscar nominations isn’t Shaiman’s most impressive accomplishment. Instead, it’s the fact that if he wins this year, he’ll secure his EGOT, having previously won an Emmy (Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Variety or Music Program for The 64th Annual Academy Awards in 1992), a Grammy (Best Musical Show Album for “Hairspray” in 2002) and a Tony (Best Original Score, also for “Hairspray,” in 2003).

If Nicholas Britell — the Best Original Score-nominated composer behind Barry Jenkins’ “If Beale Street Could Talk” — sounds familiar, it’s because he was nominated in the exact same category two years ago. The nominee? “Moonlight,” which was also written and directed by Barry Jenkins. However, Britell works with other directors too, of course. In fact, he also did the music for Adam McKay’s “Vice”! (But he sadly didn’t get a nod for that film.)

If you recognize the name Caleb Deschanel, it might be because the veteran cinematographer has been nominated for films such as “The Right Stuff” (1983), “The Natural” (1984), “Fly Away Home” (1996), “The Patriot” (2000), “The Passion of the Christ” (2004)” and this year the German drama “Never Look Away.” No? Then maybe it’s from directing episodes of shows like the original “Twin Peaks” as well as “Law and Order: Trial by Jury” and “Bones.” Still no? Well, how about the fact that the 74-year-old filmmaker is the father of actresses Zooey and Emily Deschanel. Talk about a famous family!

With sound-editing credits for lighthearted and comedic films like “Bruce Almighty” (2003), “Tangled” (2010) and “Deadpool” (2016), Ai-Ling Lee’s Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing nominations for Damien Chazelle’s Neil Armstrong space biopic, “First Man,” might seem a bit out of the ordinary. But seemingly even more out of the ordinary is the film that earned Lee two previous nods in the same categories in 2017: the musical “La La Land.” Then again, that was also a Chazelle-directed film, so it actually makes a bit of sense.

Most sound editors aren’t household names, so we’ll excuse you for not immediately recognizing Ethan Van der Ryn. However, he had a big part in creating numerous big-name films such as “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” (2002), “King Kong” (2005), “Transformers” (2007), “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” (2011) and “Argo” (2012). In fact, he actually earned Oscar nominations for every one of these films and won Best Sound Editing for the first two. This year, he has a chance to capitalize on editing the sound on one of his first horror films, John Krasinski and Emily Blunt’s gripping thriller “A Quiet Place.” 

A frequent collaborator of Spike Lee, Barry Alexander Brown has handled the film editing for Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” (1989), “Malcolm X” (1992), “25th Hour” (2002), “Inside Man” (2006) and “BlacKkKlansman” (2018) — the latter of which puts him up for a Best Film Editing Academy Award this year. However, Brown is also a film director himself. The English-born American previous earned a Best Documentary Feature nomination for 1979’s “The War at Home,” and he also directed music videos for the likes of Public Enemy, Stevie Wonder, Prince and Michael Jackson.

Matthew Libatique is mostly known for shooting films with Darren Aronofsky, with whom he worked on “Pi” (1998), “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), “The Fountain” (2006), “Black Swan” (2010), “Noah” (2014) and “Mother!” (2017). However, the veteran’s 2019 Best Cinematography nomination isn’t for an Aronofsky film, but instead it's for Bradley Cooper’s “A Star is Born.” This is Libatique’s second shot at the award, which he was previously nominated for in 2011 for the aforementioned “Black Swan.”