There's more to winning an Oscar than just turning in a stirling performance on the silver screen, according to a new study.
Sociologists Nicole Esparza of Harvard University and Gabriel Rossman of the University of California, Los Angeles, used records from the Internet Movie Database for every Oscar-eligible film made between the founding of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in 1927 and 2005 to see what conditions might improve a performer's chances of being selected.
"A performer's odds of being nominated are largely set before the cameras even start rolling, back when the script was bought, the director was signed and the film was cast," Esparza said. "It's surprising how many variables other than a performer's talent play a role in determining who gets nominated."
The researchers found the largest predictor of earning a nomination was to leave the audience in tears instead of in stitches: Actors were nine times more likely to receive a nomination for a dramatic performance than a non-dramatic one.
"In the entertainment industry, there's long been a sense that the nomination process prefers dramas, but I don't think anybody is aware of the magnitude of the effect," Rossman said.
The second strongest predictor in the study, the number of films screened that year. The fewer screened, the less competition.
Actresses were more than twice as likely to be nominated as actors for any given performance, the findings showed, making being female the third biggest predictor.
"Because there are fewer female than male performers in films, and both are eligible for the same number of awards, actresses stand a better chance of being nominated than actors," said Esparza. "It's a simple matter of arithmetic, but as far as I know, nobody has ever raised the point."
Actors and actresses were also more likely to receive a nomination if they had a history of being named at the top of the credits, had been nominated for an Oscar before or if they appeared with previously nominated writers and directors.
Source: Xinhua/agencies
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