The 50-year struggle to get Best Casting into the Oscars |
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The 50-year struggle to get Best Casting into the Oscars
It’s one of the few female-dominated niches in Hollywood. They finally made it to the Academy Awards.
On Sunday night, the Academy Awards will confer their first trophy to a casting director. The award for Best Casting is the first new category to be added to the Oscars in 24 years — and it’s doing its part to remedy the Oscars’s abysmal record on gender.
Since the Academy Awards began in 1929, 82.2 percent of winners have been men, with women making up just 17.8 percent. Time hasn’t helped even the split out as much as you might think. Of this year’s nominated class, 67 percent are men and 33 percent are women. Unbelievably, this is the highest proportion of female nominees on record, matching the high-water mark established in 2021.
Adding casting to the Oscars almost certainly means adding female nominees. “About 75 percent of casting directors are women,” says Lana Veenker, president of the International Casting Directors Association. This year, four of the five nominees for Best Casting are women.
As is so often the case with women’s work, casting........