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Steven Yeun is the first Asian American & Riz Ahmed, the first Muslim to receive a Best Actor Oscar nomination
Steven Yeun and Riz Ahmed make history by becoming first Asian actors to grab an Oscar nomination in the Best Actor category. Take a look.
As the nominations were announced for the 93rd Academy Awards, actors like Steven Yeun and Riz Ahmed made history. 9 actors of colour received an Oscar nomination on Monday, this was certainly a big milestone for the Academy after its years of attempts to diversify the Award ceremony. The year 2015 and 2016 saw the presence of all-white nominees, and fortunately, this year saw Yeun who became the first Asian American to be awarded an Oscar nomination for his acting in the film Minari. Meanwhile, Ahmed became the first Muslim to receive a nomination in the same category for his part in Sound of Metal.
Yeun and Ahmed are nominees for the same category, Best Actor. Apart from the two, other nominees in this category are Chadwick Boseman for his part in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, Anthony Hopkins for “The Father” and Gary Oldman for “Mank”. A.O. Scott, who is The New York Times’s chief film critic, praised Yeun’s performance in the film saying, “the cracks in the character’s carefully cultivated reserve, the large, unsettled emotions behind the facade of stoicism.” Times critic Jeannette Catsoulis also complimented Ahmed for his “tweaking urgency that’s poignantly credible — he’s a study in distress.”
The Oscar nomination this year was similar to that of BAFTA Film Awards, which also nominated the most diverse actors ever after last year’s infamous #BAFTAsSoWhite scandal, due to which the award show had implemented 120 changes to its membership and voting procedures. While the two men made history by bagging a nomination in the category, only one female of Asian descent has been nominated in the Best Actress category to date.
