Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel lead the race for this year’s Oscars with nine nominations each. The Imitation Game, Boyhood and American Sniper also have multiple nominations.
There was good news for British actors as Benedict Cumberbatch, Eddie Redmayne, Rosamund Pike, Felicity Jones and Keira Knightley are all nominated. Up against Cumberbatch and Redmayne for best actor are Steve Carell, Bradley Cooper and Michael Keaton.Cumberbatch, who plays codebreaker Alan Turing in The Imitation Game, said he was “knocked for six” by the nomination. “So excited and honoured to receive this recognition,” he said. “It’s wonderful to be included by the Academy in this exceptional year of performances. To ring my parents, who are both actors, and tell them that their only son has been nominated for an Oscar is one of the proudest moments of my life.” Fresh his Golden Globe win on Sunday, Eddie Redmayne, again nominated for his role as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, told the BBC how he heard the news in Los Angeles. “It’s the crack of dawn and I’ve gone from being in a deep dark sleep to hearing this news. I can’t quite articulate what I’m feeling but I feel pretty good”. He played down any rivalry with his “old friend” Benedict Cumberbatch, calling him a “lovely, wondrous, human being”. “We’ve been texting this morning and there have been a lot of exclamation marks of euphoria so there’s definitely no competition there,” he said Redmayne revealed he would stay up to watch the Oscars as a child but would “never ever dream I’d get to go. Frankly being invited to the party is an extraordinary thing”. It is Bradley Cooper’s third consecutive Oscar nomination in the best actor shortlist, this year for his role in Clint Eastwood’s military biopic American Sniper. He is the first actor to achieve this feat since Russell Crowe was nominated for The Insider, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind at the start of the century. He won for Gladiator in 2001. Meryl Streep is nominated for her 19th acting Oscar, breaking her own Academy Awards record. She is up for best supporting actress for Into the Woods alongside Knightley, Patricia Arquette, Laura Dern and Emma Stone. Nominated alongside Felicity Jones and Rosamund Pike in the best actress category are previous Oscar winners Reese Witherspoon and Marion Cotillard, alongside Julianne Moore, who recently won the Golden Globe for her role in Still Alice. Those who missed out in the category included Jennifer Aniston, who was nominated for a Golden Globe for her role in Cake, and Amy Adams who won the Golden Globe for best actress in a musical or comedy for Big Eyes. Speaking immediately after the announcement, Felicity Jones, nominated for her role as Stephen Hawking’s first wife Jane in The Theory of Everything, admitted she was too nervous to watch the nominations live. “It’s so nerve-wracking I couldn’t watch it”, she told BBC 5 live. “I was just waiting and I got a phone call from my brother. He was very sweet, he just said: “you’ve done it, you’ve got it. “I was just so excited. It’s one of those things you never quite expect. It’s just fantastic news”.
