What happens if there is a tie at the Oscars? These are the winners who shared victory
With the Academy Award coming up on Sunday, we look at whether there has ever been a tie at the event.
Each year, members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) vote on the nominees in their respective categories. On six occasions there has been a tie. Under the current rules there can be a tie at the Oscars, but only if there is an exact match in total votes cast for each nominee.
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Here are the six occasions on which a split decision has been reached, with the voting structure playing a role the first time it happened, when an exact match was not needed.
The 97th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 2 at 7:00 p.m. ET / 4:00 p.m. PT
1932 Best Actor
In 1932, the voting rules were different in that if a nominee came within three votes of the winner, they received an “achievement”, and would also win the award.
Fredric March and his role in ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ had one more vote than Wallace Beer, for ‘The Champ’ in the Best Actor category, but seeing as the votes were so close, both actors won the award, beating out the only other actor in the category, Alfred Lunt.
1950 Best Documentary Short Subject
Though the achievement rule was gone by 1950, there was another tie at the Academy Awards in 1950.
The 18-minute short film, ‘A Chance to Live’, directed by James L. Shute tied with the animated film, ‘So Much for So Little’, directed by Chuck Jones, who also worked on ‘Bugs Bunny’, for the Best Documentary Short Subject category.
READ ALSO: Oscars 2025: complete list of nominees by category
1969 Best Actress
Presenter Ingrid Bergman opened the envelope for Best Actress in 1969 and found a tie between Barbara Streisand, who was a newcomer at the time, and two-time Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn.
Each actress received 3030 votes that year, 26-year-old Streisand for ‘Funny Girl’ and 61-year-old Hepburn for ‘The Lion in Winter star’. Hepburn was not there to accept the award, so Streisand gave the acceptance speech solo.
1987 Best Documentary Feature
Brigitte Berman’s film, ‘Artie Shaw: Time is All You’ve Got’, about the famous clarinetist, and Lee Grant’s ‘Down and Out in America’, about poverty in the 80s, tied for the Best Documentary Feature award in 1987.
1995 Best Short Film (Live Action)
The 1995 Best Short Film (live action) category saw a tie between Franz Kafka’s ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and Peggy Rajski’s ‘Trevor’.
2013 Best Sound Editing
The latest tie at the Oscars was in 2013 in the category of Best Sound Editing, where there was an extremely tight competition between a number of heavy-hitting films that year.
Paul N.J. Ottosson for ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ and Per Hallberg and Karen Baker Landers for ‘Skyfall’ beat ‘Argo’, ‘Django Unchained’, ‘Life of Pi’ in sound editing.
If there is a tie at the Oscars do both winners get a statue?
Yes, if there’s a tie, the winners will share the title, but both (or more if it’s a three-or-more-way tie!) get their own Oscar statue. Interestingly that works fine, because the Oscar statues are not engraved with the category and winner prior to the awards, each one is the same. After winning it, the winner heads backstage to the engraving bar, where an engraver etches the category and winner’s name onto the statue.
The Academy have more statues available than there are awards, after issues with supply in previous years, notably 2000 when the statues were stolen.
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