Yes, Robert Downey Jr. is surprisingly the first former SNL cast member to win an Oscar
Robert Downey Jr. won his first Academy Award on Sunday night, taking home Best Supporting Actor for his work in Oppenheimer. It was the first award of the night that the film won.
It was the third time Downey had been nominated. He was up for Best Actor in 1990 for Chaplin, and Best Supporting Actor in 2009 for Tropic Thunder.
Downey’s performance as Lewis Strauss also won him a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, and a SAG Award. His portrayal of Strauss is incredibly key to making the film work, as director Christopher Nolan uses Strauss’s Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of Commerce as a framing device to tell the story.
The win for Downey was not just significant for him and Oppenheimer, but also the show he was on in 1985, a little thing called Saturday Night Live.
Downey is in fact the first former SNL cast member to win an Oscar.
Yes, really.
That might be hard to believe considering the show has produced stars like Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey and Kristen Wiig. A lot of those folks have been nominated for Oscars, but never won.
Murray won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for his work in 2003’s Lost In Translation, but lost the Best Actor Oscar to Sean Penn. Murphy was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in 2007 for his work in Dreamgirls, but lost to Alan Arkin. Wiig was nominated for Best Original Screenplay in 2012 for writing Bridesmaids, but the award went to Woody Allen for Midnight In Paris.
Ironically, Downey’s SNL run was pretty short, lasting just 16 episodes.
There it is: the first former Saturday Night Live cast member to win an Oscar pic.twitter.com/4ZDtOZaXJr
— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) March 11, 2024