
Nine-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis and 85-year-old Emmanuelle Riva are the youngest and oldest ever nominees for Best Actress. (Fox Searchlight Pictures, Sony Pictures Classics)
Thursday morning, the nominations for the 85th Academy Awards were announced in Beverly Hills.

Sally Field and Daniel Day-Lewis appear in a scene from “Lincoln.” (David James/DreamWorks/Twentieth Century Fox/AP)
Steven Spielberg’s film “Lincoln” leads the field with 12 nominations including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for star Daniel Day-Lewis.
Ben Affleck and Katherine Bigelow were notably missing from the Best Director nominations.
“Silver Linings Playbook” was the only film that received nominations in every acting category.
The independent film “Beasts of the Southern Wild” picked up nine nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actress for Quevenzhane Wallis, the youngest Best Actress nominee ever.
Here & Now spoke with the 9-year-old earlier this year, along with her co-star Dwight Henry, who plays her father in the movie:
This year’s nominations also included the oldest Best Actress nominee ever, Emmanuelle Riva, for her role in the French film “Amour.”
Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr told Here & Now’s Robin Young that his favorite surprises among the Academy Award nominations were the number of nods to “Amour” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”
“One of the things that the Academy members were awarding with these nominations is human performances, human films, films about people undergoing real life problems,” Burr said. “That’s reflected in some of the movies that weren’t nominated and some of the surprises.”
The Oscars will be held on Feb. 24.
- See the full list of Oscars nominees (Includes links to each trailer)
Here & Now has covered stories related to these 2012 Best Picture nominees:
- Torture Debate Surrounds New Bin Laden Film
- What Pres. Obama Learns From Lincoln
- The First Visual Incarnation Of ‘Life of Pi’

