Michael Cieply: By The Numbers, Actors Count Much Less In The Oscar Voting Pool
13.10.2023 - 15:49
/ deadline.com
As actors continue to struggle in negotiations with the entertainment companies, it’s probably worth noting a point that doesn’t get advertised much.
That is, performers—living, breathing human beings who appear on movie screens—are far less influential than they were just a few short years ago at the Oscar-granting Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Disclaimer: There is no link between leverage at the bargaining table and Oscar votes. Those things exist in separate dimensions, and the Academy has nothing to do with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which is trying to hammer out a contract with striking SAG-AFTRA.
Still, it’s fascinating to realize that actors have had a rough ride with entertainment companies even as performers have been gradually demoted in the hallmark Academy Awards process.
The numbers don’t lie. And the easiest way to get a grip on them is simply to compare the relative weight of actors in the Oscar voting pool back in August of 2015, when the film Academy first compiled an official tally of members for its bondholders, with the picture in June of this year, when a similar count was made for a new bond offering. (Invitations to 398 prospective new members sent a few days after the 2023 count aren’t likely to have altered balance much.)
The bottom line: In eight years, the overall number of Oscar voters rose by 48.7 percent, to 9,419 in 2023 from 6,335 in 2015. But the number of voting actors, whose branch is numerically the Academy’s largest, rose only 10.6 percent, to 1,276 from 1,153 in those same years. Put differently, actor-members made up 18.2 percent of the voting pool in 2015, but only 13.5 percent in 2023—a 25.8 percent decline in their share of the