And the Oy-scar goes to…Inside the long Jewish history of the Academy Awards

The Academy Awards have come a long way since 1929, when the first Oscars ceremony ran for a tight 15 minutes before a crowd of 270 people who each paid $5 to attend.

Nowadays the prestigious award ceremony is watched by some 20 million people in the US alone, takes place in a theatre that seats an audience of over 3,000 and features several hours of performances and award presentations, making it one of the most hotly anticipated nights of the year. It is also, of course, invite only.

The first Oscars ceremony took place in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. (Photo: Oscars)[Missing Credit]

But there is one definitive throughline connecting the first homespun Oscars ceremony 97 years ago to the awards show we know today: Jews were top among the nominees and winners.

With a number of strong Jewish contenders nominated for the big-ticket awards in this year’s upcoming Oscars, we’re looking back at the talented Jews who won those coveted gold statuettes before them.

Writers Benjamin Glazer and Ben Hecht and director Lewis Milestone, born Lieb Milstein, were the first Jewish Oscar winners in history, taking home awards for writing, adapted screenplay and direction at the first ever Oscars ceremony in 1929.

Two years later, Canadian American actress Norma Shearer became both the first Jewish actor to win an Oscar – as well as the first Jewish woman – for her role in the romance film The Divorcee. Shearer converted to Judaism in 1927 to marry MGM producer Irving Thalberg and, though Thalberg died in 1936, Shearer continued observing Judaism until her death in 1983.

Norma Shearer became the first Jewish woman to win an Oscar when she took home the award for her performance in 'The Divorcee' in 1931. (Photo: Oscars)[Missing Credit]

Jews also took the top two Oscars in 1937, with Paul Muni, a Ukrainian emigree whose acting career began in the Yiddish theatres of Chicago, receiving the best actor award for his leading role in the biographical film The Story of Louis Pasteur, and German-born Jewish actress Luise Rainer winning best actress for her turn in the musical drama The Great Ziegfeld.

Rainer won the award again in 1938 for her leading role in The Good Earth. Together with Jodie Foster and Hilary Swank, Rainer remains one of the only actresses ever to win two Oscars before the age of 30.

Hungarian American actor Paul Lukas was the next Jewish actor to win an Oscar, taking the award in 1944 for his portrayal of a German resistance fighter working against the Nazis in Watch on the Rhine.

Paul Muni won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1937. (Photo: Oscars)[Missing Credit]

Lukas was followed by Judy Holliday, born Judith Tuvim, who won best actress in 1951 for her role in the comedy film Born Yesterday. She switched to her stage name “Holliday” in 1943 because it related to the Hebrew word tuvim, meaning holiday.

French actress Simone Signoret, whose French-born father was Jewish, won the award in 1960 for her role in the British drama Room at the Top.

Paul Lukas won an Oscar in 1944 for his leading role in Watch on the Rhine. (Photo: Oscars)[Missing Credit]

Icon Elizabeth Taylor, who converted to Judaism in 1959, won her first Oscar for best actress in 1961 for her role in Butterfield 8, followed by another in 1967 for her role in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Although two of Taylor’s seven husbands were Jewish, she has been quoted as saying that she had wanted to convert “for a long time” and that there was "comfort and dignity and hope for me in this ancient religion that [has] survived for four thousand years... I feel as if I have been a Jew all my life.”

26th April 1967: Elizabeth Taylor holding an Oscar she won for the film 'Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf' at the Grosvenor Hotel, London. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)Getty Images

The next Jewish woman to win the leading lady award was the inimitable Barbara Streisand in 1969 for her portrayal of the Jewish teenager Fanny in Funny Girl. In a bizarre and never-again-repeated twist, two women were awarded the best actress Oscar that year, so Streisand had to share the glory with Katharine Hepburn.

The next Jewish actor to win was Richard Dreyfuss in 1978 for his leading role in romantic comedy-drama film The Goodbye Girl, beating out Woody Allen who was nominated for his portrayal of the nebbishy Alvy Singer in Annie Hall.

Barbara Streisand accepts her Oscar for her role in Funny Girl at the 1969 Academy Awards. (Photo: Oscars)[Missing Credit]

In 1980 Dustin Hoffman took home the Oscar for his performance in Kramer vs. Kramer, then won again in 1989 for his portrayal of an autistic poker savant in Rain Main.

In 1987, deaf actress Marlee Matlin won the Oscar for her debut film performance in Children of a Lesser God. Matlin, born into a reform Jewish household, learned her bat mitzvah Torah portion phonetically and attended a synagogue for the deaf.

Marlee Maitlin won the Oscar for best actress in 1987. (Photo: Oscars)[Missing Credit]

Jewish actors Michael Douglas and Daniel Day-Lewis won in 1988 and 1990 respectively, Douglas for his portrayal of Gordon Gecko in Wall Street and Day-Lewis for his portrayal of Christy Brown in My Left Foot. Day-Lewis, who won best actor twice more in 2008 for There Will Be Blood and 2013 for the biopic Lincoln, currently holds the most Academy Awards of any Jewish actor or actress.

Helen Hunt and Gwyneth Paltrow, both half-Jewish through their famous fathers, took the best actress Oscars in 1998 and 1999, Paltrow for her role in Shakespeare in Love and Hunt for As Good As It Gets. They were followed in 2003 by Adrien Brody for his harrowing turn as a Holocaust survivor in The Pianist.

British actor Daniel Day Lewis won the Oscar for Best Actor for his role in 'My Left Foot' during the 62nd Annual Academy Awards in 1990. (Photo by SCOTT FLYNN/AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images

After Day-Lewis's 2008 win, half-Jewish actor Sean Penn earned an Oscar in 2009 for leading role in the biopic drama Milk and was followed in 2011 by Israeli-born actress Natalie Portman, who won in 2011 for her dramatic turn as a ballerina in Black Swan.

Joaquin Phoenix, who won best actor in 2020 for his role in Joker as the eponymous Batman villain, was the last Jewish actor to win the coveted award.

Jewish performers have also made a splash in supporting roles, with recent winners in the category including Rachel Weisz for 2005’s The Constant Gardener, Alan Arkin for the 2006 film Little Miss Sunshine, Patricia Arquette for the 2014 drama Boyhood, Robert Downey Jr for 2024’s hit Oppenheimer, and Jamie Lee Curtis for the 2023 film Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Adrien Brody poses with his award for 'The Pianist' during the 75th Annual Academy Awards in 2003. Brody is nominated for his second Oscar for this year's film 'The Brutalist.' (Photo by Frank Micelotta/Getty Images)Getty Images

Oppenheimer, which centred on Jewish physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer as he worked to create the atomic bomb in the midst of World War II, won best picture and a slew of other awards at last year’s Oscars, a year which also saw wins and nominations for two other films with Jewish overtones: Zone of Interest – whose Jewish director Jonathan Glazer made a controversial speech when the film won best international feature – and Maestro, which told the story of Jewish composer Leonard Bernstein.

The Oscars have a rich history of honouring films with Jewish connections, overt or implicit.

Most notable among the best picture winners are 1944’s winner Casablanca, the celebrated and influential Nazi-era drama starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman; 1948’s winner Gentleman’s Agreement, a film about a journalist who pretends to be Jewish as part of his research for an exposé on American antisemitism; 1978 winner’s Annie Hall, Woody Allen’s romantic comedy about a neurotic Jew’s search for answers about a past love; and 1994’s Schindler’s List, the historical drama following the German industrialist who saved the lives of over a thousand Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.

Director Steven Spielberg poses with his two Oscars at the 66th Annual Academy Awards in 1993, when he won best director and best picture for his movie 'Schindler's List.' (Photo by DAN GROSHONG/AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images

Best feature documentary has also been a fruitful category for Jewish storytelling – and winning.

In 1982, film director Arnold Schwartzman and co-writer Rabbi Martin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, won an Oscar for their feature-length documentary Genocide, telling the story of the Holocaust through testimonies from survivors. 1996 saw another Holocaust documentary taking an Oscar: Anne Frank Remembered, produced and directed by Jon Blair, chronicles the life of the young German-Jewish diarist and features interviews with the woman who helped shelter the family.

Jewish documentaries dominated the next few consecutive years. Rabbi Hier won a second Oscar in 1998 for The Long Way Home, a documentary depicting the conditions Jewish refugees faced in the years after WWII and the tremulous journey towards the formation of Israel. Another Holocaust-centred documentary won an Oscar the following year; The Last Days, executive produced by Shoah Foundation founder Steven Spielberg, tells the story of five Hungarian Jews in the final year of WWII, when their Nazi-occupied country began mass-deportations of Jews to concentration camps.

Winners of the Best Documentary Feature (From L-R:) John Battsek, Arthur Cohn and Kevin Macdonald pose at the Academy Awards in 2000 after winning Oscars for 'One Day in September.' (HECTOR MATA/AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty Images

In 2000, One Day in September took the Oscar for its examination of the 1972 murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the summer Olympics in Munich, featuring narration by Michael Douglas. 2001’s documentary winner was Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, which shone light on the British rescue operation that saved over 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi persecution.

With a promising roster of Jewish nominees poised to win big-ticket awards at the upcoming 2025 Oscars, the already impressive list of Jewish winners may soon become a few lines longer.

After his Oscar-winning turn in The Pianist, Adrien Brody could win a second Academy Award for portraying a Holocaust survivor in the acclaimed 2024 film The Brutalist; his performance as Hungarian Jewish architect László Tóth has already won him a Golden Globe and Bafta.

Brody will compete for the best actor award against fellow Jewish actor Timothee Chalamet, who is nominated for his portrayal of the legendary Jewish singer-songwriter Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, a performance for which he recently won a Screen Actors Guild Award.

Mikey Madison, neé Mikaela Madison Rosberg, is nominated for best actress for her striking breakout performance in the film Anora. Madison, who is Jewish, led the film alongside fellow Jewish newcomer Mark Eydelshteyn.

The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown and Anora all received nominations for directing and best picture in this year’s Oscars. And if the Academy Awards’ history has anything to teach us, it’s that Jews almost always come away with a statuette.