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HOLLYWOOD : Celebrity couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are one of only seven couples ever to be nominated for acting honours in the same year at the Oscars but as history suggests, the duo are likely to leave empty-handed on Sunday.
Pitt, 45, is in the running for the best actor Oscar for his role in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" while Jolie, 33, is nominated for the best actress award for her performance in "Changeling".
Pitt and Jolie are the first couple in 42 years to arrive at the Oscars with both husband and wife in the running for acting awards.
The previous couple that did so were Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in 1966 for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?". Three years earlier, British duo Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts were nominated for their respective performances in "Cleopatra" and "This Sporting Life". Neither couple struck gold.
Similarly, husband and wife nominees Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton, both nominated for their performances in "Witness for the Prosecution" left the 1958 Oscars empty handed.
One of the few acting couples to have tasted success on Oscar night were Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner. Sinatra won a best supporting actor statuette in 1954 for his performance in "From Here to Eternity" but Gardner, nominated for "Mogambo," lost out to Audrey Hepburn ("Roman Holiday").
In 1940, Laurence Olivier and soon-to-be second wife Vivien Leigh arrived at the Academy Awards just months before tying the knot.
Olivier, nominated for "Wuthering Heights", lost out to Robert Donat ("Goodbye Mr Chips") while Leigh won the Oscar for her performance as Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind".
The first couple to be jointly nominated for best actor and actress Oscars were Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, who both picked up nods for 1931 film "The Guardsman." Both came away empty handed.
With the odds stacked up against Pitt and Jolie, we will just have to wait and see if they can create history by leaving with both best actor and actress statues on Sunday.
- CNA/km
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