Julie Walters in Stephen Daldry's Billy Elliot
Since the 1960s — by that time the Academy and its golden statuettes had been around for more than three decades — nearly every year has featured at least one "Oscar veteran" in the acting and directing categories. Some of those were veterans getting their first chance at the Oscars, e.g., Lauren Bacall in Barbra Streisand's The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), Fred Astaire in John Guillermin's The Towering Inferno (1974); others were Oscar veterans receiving their first nod in years, e.g., Henry Fonda, following his nomination as Tom Joad in John Ford's The Grapes Wrath (1940) with another nod forty-one years later for his frail patriarch in Mark Rydell's On Golden Pond (1981).
Another example of an Oscar veteran: Julie Walters, nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category for Billy Elliot (2000) 17 years after her first nomination (as Best Actress) for Lewis Gilbert's Educating Rita (1983).
Please follow the links at the bottom of each of the next several posts for a few such examples in the last 15 years. Surprisingly, for the most part those veterans did not come out victorious.