Julianne Moore: The veteran nominee triumphs in a year of newbies

Moore won a Best Actress Oscar for her work in 'Still Alice' after having earned four previous nominations at the Academy Awards. Her fellow acting winners – 'Whiplash' actor J.K. Simmons, Patricia Arquette of 'Boyhood,' and 'The Theory of Everything' actor Eddie Redmayne – were not only first-time winners but also first-time nominees.

The rest of the winners for the acting prizes at the 2015 Oscars ceremony may have been new to the show, but actress Julianne Moore knew her way around the Academy Awards.

While Best Actor winner and “The Theory of Everything” actor Eddie Redmayne, “Boyhood” actress and Best Supporting Actress winner Patricia Arquette, and “Whiplash” actor and Best Supporting Actor winner J.K. Simmons were all first-time nominees, Moore had been nominated four times before at the Oscars, with her first nod coming in 1998 in the Best Supporting Actress category for the film “Boogie Nights.” 

Many seem to see Moore’s 2015 win as an overdue honor. “Julianne Moore Finally Wins Academy Award,” the Telegraph headline for the story about her win reads, while HitFix writer Kristopher Tapley wrote that “after… a career’s worth of bold, varied performances, Julianne Moore is finally an Oscar winner.” 

The movie “Still Alice,” in which Moore portrays a woman diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, was based off a novel by Lisa Genova. Monitor film critic Peter Rainer called Moore “startlingly good” in “Alice.”

Moore’s other Oscar nominations came for her 2000 role in “The End of the Affair,” for which she earned a Best Actress nod, and in 2003, when she was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category for her role in “The Hours” and in the Best Actress category for the film “Far from Heaven.”

As one might imagine, being nominated in two categories in the same year in the acting categories is a rare feat. In achieving it, Moore is in the company of, among others, actress Jessica Lange, who was nominated for “Frances" and Tootsie”; Al Pacino, who earned nods for “Scent of a Woman” and “Glengarry Glen Ross”; and last year’s Best Actress winner Cate Blanchett, who at one point in her career earned nominations for the movies “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” and “I’m Not There."

Last year's Oscars acting categories were also a triumph of the newcomers. Best Actor winner Matthew McConaughey, Best Supporting Actress winner Lupita Nyong’o, and Best Supporting Actor winner Jared Leto were all first-time nominees. Best Actress winner Blanchett had not only been nominated before but had also won an Oscar previously in the Best Supporting Actress category for the movie “The Aviator.”