Oscar Top 10: The Actors.

(From Malay Mail)

Byline: Daniel Chan

ONLY two actors - Jack Nicholson and Walter Brennan - have won three Oscars each in the 75 years of the Academy Awards to date, while 15 other actors have each won two Oscars.

Actors who won twice were Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks, Jack Lemmon, Robert De Niro, Gene Hackman, Kevin Spacey, Anthony Quinn, Peter Ustinov, Jason Robards, Melvyn Douglas and Michael Caine.

But in drawing up Guinness Book of Records-styled Top Ten lists on the actors, more interesting are these aspects: Actors with the most Oscar nods, actors with two Oscar nods in the same year, and actors with the most consecutive Oscar nods.

The focus on actors is part of this column's on-going retrospective on the winners (and losers) of Oscar as a countdown to the 76th Academy Awards taking place on Feb 29, 2004 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

Firstly, the Top Ten actors with the most Oscar nods - for Best Actor as well as Best Supporting Actor - have been Jack Nicholson with 12 nods, followed by Laurence Olivier (10 nods), Spencer Tracy and Paul Newman (nine nods each), Marlon Brando, Jack Lemmon and Al Pacino (eight nods each), Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole and Dustin Hoffman (seven nods each).

Jack Nicholson (born April 22, 1937, now aged 66) was Oscar-nominated for 1969's Easy Rider, 1970's Five Easy Pieces, 1973's The Last Detail, 1974's Chinatown, 1975's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (won Best Actor), 1981's Reds, 1983's Terms Of Endearment (won Best Supporting Actor), 1985's Prizzi's Honor, 1987's Ironweed, 1992's A Few Good Men, 1997's As Good As It Gets (won Best Actor) and 2002's About Schmidt.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, directed by Milos Forman, had Nicholson as an asylum inmate who inspires his fellow patients to rebel but is crushed by the inhumane system epitomised by a cruel head nurse (Louise Fletcher).

Terms Of Endearment, directed by James L.

Brooks, had Nicholson as a swinging astronaut who has a fling with a merry widow (Shirley MacLaine) who has problems with her ailing daughter (Debra Winger).

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