Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay


The Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay is the Academy Award for the best screenplay not based upon previously published material. It was created in 1940 as a separate writing award from the Academy Award for Best Story. Beginning with the Oscars for 1957, the two categories were combined to honor only the screenplay.
See also the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, a similar award for screenplays that are adaptations.

Superlatives

has the most nominations in this category with 16, and the most awards with 3. Paddy Chayefsky has also won three screenwriting Oscars: two for Original Screenplay and one for Adapted Screenplay.
Woody Allen also holds the record as the oldest winner for Midnight in Paris. Ben Affleck is the youngest winner for Good Will Hunting, co-written with Matt Damon.
Richard Schweizer was the first to win for a foreign-language film, Marie-Louise. Other winners for a non-English screenplay include Albert Lamorisse, Pietro Germi, Claude Lelouch, Pedro Almodóvar, Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won. Lamorisse is additionally the only person to win or even be nominated for Best Original Screenplay for a short film.
Muriel Box was the first woman to win in this category; she shared the award with her husband, Sydney Box. The Boxes are also the first of two married couples to win in this category; Earl W. Wallace and Pamela Wallace are the others.
In 1996, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen became the only siblings to win in this category. Francis Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola are the only father-daughter pair to win.
Preston Sturges was nominated for two different films in the same year : Hail the Conquering Hero and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Oliver Stone achieved the same distinction in 1986, for Platoon and Salvador. Maurice Richlin and Stanley Shapiro were nominated in 1959 for both Operation Petticoat and Pillow Talk and won for the latter.
Jordan Peele became the first and only African-American to win in this category for 2017's Get Out.
Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won became the first Asian writers to win either Screenplay award, for 2019's Parasite.

Winners and nominees

Winners are listed first in colored row, followed by the other nominees.

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

Multiple wins and nominations

The following individuals have received multiple Best Original Screenplay Awards:
WinsScreenwriter
3-
3Woody Allen
2-
2Charles Brackett
2Paddy Chayefsky
2Quentin Tarantino
2Billy Wilder

The following individuals received three or more Best Original Screenplay nominations:
NominationsScreenwriter
16Woody Allen
6Federico Fellini
5Ingmar Bergman
5Mike Leigh
4Pete Docter
4Melvin Frank
4Tullio Pinelli
4Stanley Shapiro
4Quentin Tarantino
4Billy Wilder
3Sergio Amidei
3Wes Anderson
3Warren Beatty
3Robert Benton
3Paddy Chayefsky
3Ethan Coen
3Joel Coen
3Nora Ephron
3Ennio Flaiano
3Ruth Gordon
3Tonino Guerra
3Garson Kanin
3Barry Levinson
3Kenneth Lonergan
3Paul Mazursky
3Norman Panama
3Jack Rose
3William Rose
3Andrew Stanton
3Oliver Stone
3Preston Sturges

Age superlatives

Diversity of nominees/winners