2005 oscar fun-fact

• The five low-budget Best Picture nominees evenly split the major nominations - no film received more than 8 nominations. They were all modest in scope, and challenged political, sexual and intellectual mores. Of the five nominees, only one of them had a budget over $14 million (Spielberg's Munich at $70 million), and three of them were budgeted at about $7 million. Two were biopics. None of the films grossed more than $53 million at the box-office at the time of the nomination's announcements in late January:
• All five of the Best Picture-nominated directors were nominated for Best Director. This is very rare and has happened only three other times in Oscar history: 1957, 1964, and 1981.
  
• With his two nominations, George Clooney became the first to receive directing and acting nominations for two different films in the same year. Paul Haggis and Steven Spielberg were also nominated for producing (Best Picture) Crash and Munich, respectively.
• Special mention should be made of the fact that Woody Allen earned his 14th career writing nomination (all for Best Original Screenplay) for Match Point - it was his 21st career nomination. He has won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar twice, for Annie Hall (1977)
  and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). The next closest nominee remained Billy Wilder, with 12 career writing nominations and 3 career writing wins.
• For the first time in the short history of the Best Animated Feature Film category, none of the three nominees were CGI films:
• Best Supporting Actor nominee was 56 year-old, four-time nominee William Hurt, in a powerfully unsettling, creepy 10-minute role as brutal mobster Richie Cusack in A History of Violence (with 2 nominations, including Best Screenplay Adaptation). [Hurt's prior three nominations were all for lead roles, including a win for Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), and nominations for Children of a Lesser God (1986) and Broadcast News (1987).]