Jan 22 2009
YES,YES,YES!!!!
Nominations for the 81st Academy Awards were announced on January 22, 2009 by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis and Oscar winner Forest Whitaker.
Ganis and Whitaker, who won an Academy Award® for his lead performance in “The Last King of Scotland” (2006), announced the nominees in 10 of the 24 categories at a live news conference attended by more than 400 international media representatives.
Academy members from each of the branches vote to determine the nominees in their respective categories – actors nominate actors, film editors nominate film editors, etc. In the Animated Feature Film and Foreign Language Film categories, nominations are selected by vote of multi-branch screening committees. All voting members are eligible to select the Best Picture nominees.
On the first anniversary of his death, Heath Ledger received an Oscar nomination.
The Dark Knight star is up for Best Supporting Actor, alongside Josh Brolin (Milk), Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder); Phillip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt) and Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road).
“It’s fantastic,” costar Aaron Eckhart told Usmagazine.com after his win. It’s wonderful. I couldn’t be happier!”
On Jan. 22, 2008, the actor died of a prescription drug overdose at his NYC apartment at the age of 28.
“For any of us lucky enough to have worked with him or to have enjoyed his performance, he will be eternally missed,” Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan said as he accepted Ledger’s Golden Globe award, “but he will never be forgotten.”
