Feeling the love — from the Academy and each other! When the 2022 Oscar nominations were announced in February, two couples earned nods for their performances throughout the year.
Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst both earned their first Oscar nominations — for Best Supporting Actor and Actress, respectively, for their performances in The Power of the Dog. The Little Women star was particularly excited to celebrate the historic achievement alongside her fiancé of four years, telling Us Weekly after the nominations that “to be honored by the Academy is a truly humbling experience. For both Jesse and I to get our first nominations together is beyond our wildest dreams.”
Meanwhile, Javier Bardem earned a best actor nomination alongside his wife of 11 years, Penelope Cruz. The Being the Ricardos star celebrated her accomplishment in a statement reacting to the nominations, noting that he “couldn’t be happier to share this celebration with my talented wife, Penelope, for her work in Parallel Mothers.”
Being nominated alongside their significant other will likely make awards season even more memorable for the quartet of actors. “[Having him next to me] wasn’t even a question,” Alicia Vikander, who won Best Supporting Actress in 2016, told British Vogue about having now-husband Michael Fassbender with her at the ceremony. (Fassbender was up for Best Actor in a Leading Role that night, for his work in Steve Jobs, but lost to Casey Affleck.)
She continued: “It felt like the right thing. We wanted to sit next to each other, simple as that. We wouldn’t have gone there and not sat together.”
Four years later, both Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach earned six nominations each for their films Little Women and Marriage Story, respectively, and did much of their awards season press together. “It’s exciting to have mutual acknowledgment of the work that he and I have both put into [our movies],” Gerwig told The Hollywood Reporter in December 2019. “There is a sense of wanting to show off for each other. At least on my part. I remember when I showed Noah cuts or drafts of Little Women. He’s my favorite filmmaker and my favorite writer. It means everything to me that he thinks it’s good.”
Baumbach was equally effusive about her work, describing Little Women as his “favorite movie of the year.” The Squid and the Whale director added, “It feels like, ‘How great that this is being recognized in the way that you hoped it would.'”
Keep scrolling to see even more couples who were nominated for Oscars in the same year.