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Monday, January 31, 2011

Oscar Loves... A Boxer



With 7 nominations to its credit, including one for Best Picture, it's clear that AMPAS has a lot of affection for the boxing drama The Fighter. But Mickey Ward isn't the only boxer Oscar has fallen for:



Most famously, of course, there's Rocky, which won Best Picture, Director and Editing at the 1976 Oscars. It was also nominated for 7 other Oscars, including Best Actor for Sylvester Stallone.

The other Oscar winning boxing movie is 2004's Million Dollar Baby, which netted a Best Actress Oscar for Hilary Swank.



Swank is the only woman to be nominated, let alone win, for playing a boxer, but the Best Actor category is no stranger to fighters:

Wallace Beery won in 1932 for The Champ, while Marlon Brandon won in 1954 for On The Waterfront (not a film about boxing, but about a boxer), and Robert De Niro won in 1980 for Raging Bull.

Actors who received Oscar nominations for playing boxers include Kirk Doulgas in 1949 for Champion, James Earl Jones in 1970 for The Great White Hope, Denzel Washington in 1999 for The Hurricane, and Will Smith in 2001 for Ali.

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