Will ‘Maestro’ be the first film in 26 years to win both lead acting Oscars?

The current Oscar frontrunners for Best Actor and Best Actress according to the combined predictions of Gold Derby users are Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer”) and Emma Stone (“Poor Things”). However, they both face serious competition from the stars of “Maestro,” Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan. If the co-stars both win, “Maestro” would be the first film since “As Good As It Gets” to win both lead acting Oscars.

“Maestro” chronicles the decades-long relationship between conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) and actress Felicia Montealegre (Mulligan). Their love story spans over 30 years from the time they met at a party in 1946 and continuing through their quarter-century marriage. But winning matching Oscars isn’t easy. To date only seven films have won both lead acting awards. They are:

“It Happened One Night” (1934) – Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975) – Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher

“Network” (1976) – Peter Finch and Faye Dunaway

“Coming Home” (1978) – Jon Voight and Jane Fonda

“On Golden Pond” (1981) – Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn

“The Silence of the Lambs” (1991) – Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster

“As Good As It Gets” (1997) – Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt

Since then there have been three instances where it came close to happening again, but didn’t. In 1999 Kevin Spacey won Best Actor for “American Beauty.” His co-star Annette Bening was very competitive for Best Actress, even winning at the SAG Awards prior to the Oscars. But she was bested in the end by Hilary Swank for “Boys Don’t Cry.”

In 2005 Reese Witherspoon won Best Actress for “Walk the Line.” Her co-star Joaquin Phoenix had won the Golden Globe for Best Film Comedy/Musical Actor, likely due to that being the one place where he wasn’t up against the sweeper of that season, Philip Seymour Hoffman for “Capote.” But when they got to the Oscars, Hoffman completed his winning streak.

And in 2020 Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis were both competitive in their respective lead categories for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” The former won most of the major precursors while the latter pulled off a surprise win at SAG. Yet on Oscar night, Frances McDormand won Best Actress for “Nomadland” while Best Actor went to Anthony Hopkins in “The Father.”

As of this writing Cooper is in second place in our Oscar predictions with 4/1 odds. He’s looking to become the third actor to direct himself to an Oscar win, following Laurence Olivier for “Hamlet” (1948) and Roberto Benigni for “Life is Beautiful” (1998). Not only that, he’s also a nine-time previous nominee in various categories for producing, acting and writing, but has yet to win. Last time he contended for Best Actor, for his directorial debut “A Star is Born” (2018), he was an initial frontrunner, but was ultimately overshadowed by Rami Malek for “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Thankfully Cooper is this time undergoing a big physical transformation like multiple recent winners in this category (e.g. Gary Oldman in “Darkest Hour,” Brendan Fraser in “The Whale”), so that helps.

Meanwhile, Mulligan was previously nominated for Best Actress for “An Education” (2009) and “Promising Young Woman” (2020), but like Cooper she still has yet to win. It might be more challenging for her to prevail this year, though. She’s currently in third place with 5/1 odds behind second-ranked Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”) and frontrunner Stone. Voters could feel that since Mulligan has only been nominated twice before and is still relatively young, there’s still time to award her down the road. However, given that she is just as much of a lead in “Maestro” as Cooper is, academy members may not want to award one without the other.

Going into the Golden Globes, Gladstone is expected to win Best Film Drama Actress with 17/5 odds. Mulligan is currently in third place with 9/2 odds behind Sandra Hüller (“Anatomy of a Fall”). If Mulligan pulls ahead and wins there, that would help make her more competitive at the Oscars. SAG could come through for her too as “Maestro” being a Netflix film could help; Netflix films have done well at SAG as evidenced by past nominations or wins for “Beasts of No Nation,” “Mudbound,” “The Trial of the Chicago 7” and the aforementioned “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

And as Oscar Expert Tariq Khan mentioned in a recent article, only three women so far have won two best lead actress prizes at SAG: Frances McDormand, Renée Zellweger, and Viola Davis. That could make Stone, a previous winner for “La La Land,” vulnerable and open the door for a Mulligan upset. If Cooper and Mulligan both win at SAG, that would increase their chances of winning Oscars since there’s overlap between SAG voters and Oscar voters, and last year all four individual acting winners at SAG repeated at the Oscars. So we could ultimately see Cooper and Mulligan walk hand in hand across the Oscars stage.

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