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Cheese: An Annotated History of the Oscar Class Photo

This article originally ran on April 23, 2021. After two years off, the group photos are back, so we’re republishing it now.

When this year’s uncommonly long movie awards season reaches its conclusion on Sunday night with the 93rd Oscars, it will do so having skipped a much anticipated step along the way. For nearly 40 years, the Oscar Nominees Luncheon — the high-profile, endearingly awkward gathering where a Best Actress nominee might be seated next to a film editor before everyone in attendance poses for a class photo — has been a mainstay of the award season. That streak was interrupted last month, when, for the first time since its inception in 1982, COVID-19 concerns prompted the Academy to officially cancel the event.

“I feel about the luncheon the way most of us feel about the institutions and activities that have been throttled and postponed because of the pandemic,” says Richard Kahn, 91, who served as president of the Academy in the late 1980s and has attended every luncheon. “It was a labor of love for us.”

In fact, it was Kahn who initiated the tradition in the first place. Back in 1981, the monthslong buildup to the Academy Awards needed an overhaul. “This was when the show took place in late March, sometimes in April,” says Steve Pond, journalist and author of The Big Show: High Times and Dirty Dealings Backstage at the Academy Awards. Film blogs, of course, didn’t exist, so it was hard to sustain excitement. Pond adds, “People were not as ravenous for all information having to do with the Oscars as they are now.”

Kahn, then a member of the Academy’s Board of Governors and a longtime marketing executive, stared down the problem and came away with an idea: What if nominees gathered for a cordial, agony-free luncheon several weeks before the ceremony? It would bring publicity to the Oscars during the long slog between when nominations were announced and the show itself. It also seemed like a charming way to present the nominees with their nomination certificates, which had previously been sent by mail, usually in a leather-bound kit. Kahn was never a fan of that approach. “That was a rather staid and impersonal way of doing it,” he says.

And so in early 1982, the first Oscar Nominees Luncheon took place in the grand ballroom of the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills. In a New York Times write-up, Fay Kanin, then the president of the Academy, said the goal was to launch “an event that pays proper tribute to the inpidual achievements of each and every Oscar nominee.” Yet during the lead-up, Kahn, despite it having been his idea, feared it would be a flop. “I worried, Would they come?” he recalls.

Of course they came. “We were elated that 42 of the nominees accepted our invitation,” says Kahn, who distinctly remembers watching Steven Spielberg enter the room and exclaim, “Wow!” “I said to myself, Steven Spielberg just said ‘Wow’!”

At the event, the nominees were seated randomly, a tradition that continues today. “A sound mixer might be sitting next to a producer, and a supporting actor might be sitting next to a makeup person,” Kahn says. “It was based on the original mandate of the Academy, to be like the very definition of an academy: a place where people of various artistries and crafts join together.” Over time, the luncheon hardened into tradition: For the Academy, it became a convenient means of flexing its prestige muscles; for nominees, it was a way to congregate and schmooze away from the stress-heavy environs of the actual ceremony.

“During the cocktail hour, you have stars and filmmakers talking: ‘Oh, I saw your film. It’s tremendous.’ You get a lot of that vibe,” says veteran Los Angeles Times photographer Al Seib. For instance, Tom Hanks approached Frank Darabont at the 1995 luncheon and declared himself available to work with the filmmaker; Darabont soon sent him The Green Mile. “I don’t see that as much on the actual Academy Awards night,” notes Seib. “The tension is higher.”

But for Oscar obsessives on the outside, the luncheon is mostly significant for one reason: the class photo. Each year, it’s a glorious sight — a selection of nominees, gathered around an Oscar statue, beaming like members of a youth-soccer league. That particular tradition began in 1985, and as Kahn explains, “It grew into the most popular element of the luncheon — this wonderful gathering of all kinds of artists and craftsmen, all up there on the risers like they were graduating from middle school!”

During the 1990s, the process of gathering for the group photo was chaotic. “They would just say, ‘Okay, all the nominees come up here and stand on the risers,’” recalls Pond, who has been attending the luncheon annually since 1994. “It was sort of a free-for-all. Everybody would go up there, jostle for positions.” After an endless barrage of camera flashes, the nominees would remain on the risers and be called alphabetically to collect their certificate of nomination and an official Oscar-nominee sweatshirt, which became a traditional swag item in 1989.

“You had nominees whose names fall at the end of the alphabet standing up there forever,” Pond says. Film composer Hans Zimmer, who has received 11 Oscar nominations to date, was frequently the victim of this tradition. One year, the Academy decided to call the names in reverse alphabetical order and begin with Zimmer. “That kind of surprised him,” says Kahn.

Around 2011, the Academy overhauled the procedure. Nominees’ names would be called before gathering for the photo, instead of remaining on the risers, and they would grab their nomination certificate on the way out. It’s a faster, more efficient process. “Once all the nominees are called, they take the class photo and then it’s, ‘Thank you very much. That’s it,’” Pond says. And these days, the Oscar-nominee sweatshirts are no more. In his decades of attending the luncheon, Pond only ever saw one actor wear the sweatshirt: Catherine Keener. (“She said, ‘I’m cold!’, and ripped open the bag and put on the sweatshirt.”)

During the final Oscar season before the pandemic came a bigger change: In 2020, the luncheon was moved from the Beverly Hilton to the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood and Highland. As Deadline noted, “This was the first Oscar lunch ever to take place at the same facility where the show itself will be broadcast.”

Of course, last year’s event is, for the moment, the only luncheon ever to hold that distinction. Kahn, for his part, thinks the Academy has done a “marvelous job” navigating the circumstances of the pandemic and looks forward to attending the luncheon in 2022. “There is a collegial sense inherent in the luncheon that goes back to the great academies in Europe and, even before that, to the age of Rome and Greece. All the great persons are gathered together where they share each other’s knowledge and skill.” He pauses. “That’s a highfalutin way of saying it, but it’s a great event.”

Since Oscar enthusiasts were deprived this year of the many joys found in browsing a given class’ group photo, we figure it’s a good time to pe into the Academy archive and revisit the classics from the past. Below, you’ll find all 36 class photos along with details about that year’s major awards narratives and a guide to spotting notable luncheon attendees.

57th Academy Awards (Event held in 1985)

Photo: Richard Harbaugh/AMPAS

Michelle Yeoh stands dead center with her hands clasped (fifth row, 14th from the right), awaiting the day the Academy picks their Best Actress with a posture made for magazines. After nearly 40 years in the film industry, and 25 years since her Hollywood debut, the Everything Everywhere All at Once star continues to radiate grace, long-overdue recognition from America’s preeminent film body notwithstanding. A different Best Actress nominee, Angela Bassett (first row, third from the right), smiles a little awkwardly, maybe because she’s underneath the arm of a beaming four-time nominee Tom Cruise (first row, fourth from the right). Pinocchio director Guillermo del Toro (first row, first from the right) faces the camera like a good kid at the mall photo studio, probably thinking about how he can free animation from the shackles of the form’s category and get it into the major leagues. The group photo has all the key elements of a senior-year class portrait taken in high-school auditorium — between the risers and the big curtain, the perse smattering of faces and the polite smiles that look ready to tackle their next big challenge, it’s easy to forget that this is a portrait of a notable slice of the film industry. Let’s hope they all remember to take their picture-day slip home so their parents can order the wallet-size photos that sit unused in their family’s basement filing cabinet for posterity.

Also look for:

➼First-time nominees Brian Tyree Henry (Best Supporting Actor nominee for Causeway) and Stephanie Hsu (Best Supporting Actress nominee for Everything Everywhere) stand next to 14-time nominee and composer Diane Warren (Best Original Song nominee for “Applause”), making a cool-kids corner out of the back row’s right side.

➼Other first timers made a space for themselves in front of the group — Paul Mescal (Best Actor nominee for Aftersun) and the lauded Ke Huy Quan (Best Supporting Actor nominee for Everything Everywhere) sit center-left, the former in a good-boy pose that’s at odds with his chest-exposing collarless shirt, while the latter sports a cheerful grin.

➼Cate Blanchett is tall in the back row, third from the left, knowing that her place in Oscars history is already secured with her record ten appearances in Best Picture nominees, eight nominations, and two wins. Today, she’s here for her Tár nod for Best Actress.

➼Andrea Riseborough’s noticeable absence. She’s known for her controversial surprise Best Actress nomination for her performance in To Leslie, and did not attend the luncheon due to her shooting schedule, per reps.