Academy President Sid Ganis and past Oscar® nominee Salma Hayek announced the nominations for the 79th Academy Awards. Nominations for the 79th Annual Academy Awards were announced on Tuesday, January 23, by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis and past Oscar® nominee Salma Hayek. Ganis and Hayek, who was nominated for an Academy Award® in 2002 for her lead performance in “Frida,” announced the nominations in 10 of the 24 categories at a 5:30 a.m. live news conference at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Nominations in all categories then were distributed to the over 400 international media representatives in attendance and via the Internet on the official Academy Awards Web site, www.oscar.com. Academy members from the various branches selected the nominees in their corresponding award categories, with the exception of the Animated Feature and Foreign Language Film categories, in which nominations were determined by vote of screening committees composed of members from several branches. All voting members are eligible to select the Best Picture nominees. Ballots were mailed to 5,830 voting members in late December and were returned directly to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the international accounting firm, for tabulation. Best Picture nominees, "Babel", "The Departed", "Letters from Iwo Jima", "Little Miss Sunshine", and "The Queen". Official screenings for members of all pictures receiving nominations will begin this weekend at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Screenings in some categories also will be held in Hollywood, at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn Theater, as well as in London, New York and San Francisco. The Academy’s entire active and life membership is eligible to select the winners in all categories, although in five of them – the Animated Short Film, Live Action Short Film, Documentary Feature, Documentary Short Subject, and Foreign Language Film categories – members can vote only after attesting that they have seen all of the nominated films in the category. Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2006 will be presented on Sunday, February 25, 2007, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center®, and televised live by the ABC Television Network at 5 p.m. PST (8 p.m. EST), beginning with a half-hour arrivals segment, “The Road to the Oscars®.” See a complete list of nominees
At 5:36:30 a.m. local time Tuesday, Hollywood was abuzz as the Academy Award nominations were announced by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis and past Oscar nominee Salma Hayek. The winners from these nominations will be announced at the 79th Academy Awards ceremonies in Los Angeles on 25 February, 2007.