Scotland has claimed its share of Hollywood glory at the Academy Awards over the years. In 1995, Braveheart memorably won five awards from ten nominations. Sir Sean Connery was awarded an Oscar for best supporting actor in 1988 for his role in The Untouchables. Annie Lennox won in 2003 for the song Into the West from The Return of the King, part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
An early Academy Award winner was Norman McLaren. Born in Stirling, he studied at Glasgow School of Art, and earned an Oscar for best documentary in 1952 with an anti-war film, Neighbours, which he made in Canada, where he had relocated to and was to spend the rest of his career.
Glasgow’s first fully-fledged taste of Oscars glory came in 1962, when Seawards the Great Ships, a documentary about the shipbuilding industry on the Clyde, won the Oscar for best live action short.
It was produced and co-written by Stirlingshire-born John Grierson for a Glasgow film company. He became renowned as “the father of the documentary” and had a glittering filmmaking career stretching from the 1920s to the 1960s.
Film historian Andrew Martin, from the National Library of Scotland, responsible for the official Scottish Screen Archive, says: “Scotland really has had a remarkable number of nominees and winners.
“Seawards the Great Ships was a really important film at the time and it is genuinely Scottish because it was filmed on the Clyde.
“Other nominees included Mary Ure, for Sons and Lovers, who was born in Glasgow, but met a very tragic end after the opening night of a play.”
The film adaptation of Alasdair Gray's novel Poor Things has 11 nominations for this year's ceremony. Glasgow can also point to Springburn’s Armando Iannucci and Shawlands’ Krysty Wilson-Cairns as previous Oscar nominees, but who are the Oscar winners from Glasgow?
1. Frank Lloyd
Glasgow-born film director Frank Lloyd won two Oscars for Best Director category for 'The Divine Lady' and 'Cavalcade', while his best known film 'Mutiny on the Bounty' won Best Picture. He was also one the founder of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - the body that established the Oscars. Photo: Jimmy Sime
2. Peter Capaldi
He may now be better known for his roles in 'Doctor Who' and 'The Thick Of It', but Peter Capaldi won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film in 1995 for 'Franz Kafka’s It’s A Wonderful Life'. Photo: Lia Toby
3. Deborah Kerr
Born in a maternity hospital in the west end of Glasgow, Deborah Kerr moved to Hollywood in the 1940s and became one of the most celebrated actresses. She was nominated six times for Academy Awards - for ‘Edward, My Son’, ‘From Here to Eternity’, ‘The King and I’, ‘Heaven Knows Mr. Allison’, ‘Separate Tables, and ‘The Sundowners’. She was then belatedly awarded an Honorary Oscar in 1994. Photo: Baron
4. John Grierson
Seawards the Great Ships is a 1961 film produced by John Grierson. It won an Oscar in 1962 for Best Short Live Action Subject, the first Scottish film to win an Academy Award. It chronicles the shipbuilding industry of the River Clyde during the early 1960s, featuring footage from the Fairfield and John Brown shipyards. It was produced by Glasgow-based Templar Films for the Clyde Shipbuilders’ Association. It includes dialogue between shipyard workers, but this is all scripted. They had hoped to use genuine dialogue between shipyard workers, but this included too many swearwords to be usable. Photo: Wikipedia