Awards season is barely underway, but Bradley Cooper and his movie A Star is Born are already making history. While the movie was largely overlooked at last weekend's Golden Globes, it will have a much better chance at victory at the BAFTAs after A Star is Born nabbed seven nominations, including five specifically for Bradley Cooper, across five different disciplines, something which has apparently never happened in the history of the awards.
The BAFTAs are the British equivalent of the Academy Awards and they've been giving them out for 72 years. In that time nobody has done what Bradley Cooper just did, earning nominations as an actor, director, screenwriter, composer, and producer. The film also received a nomination for Best Sound and Lady Gaga received a nomination for Best Actress.
This would be an impressive feat even if it had been accomplished before. Being good enough in any one of these areas of filmmaking to earn a nomination would be impressive enough, but to make a movie worthy of all five shows just how successful A Star is Born has become. The nomination for directing is especially noteworthy considering this was Cooper's first film in that role.
Of course, while being nominated like this is certainly an impressive accolade for Bradley Cooper, he's got his work cut out for him when it comes to winning. He'll be going up against the likes of Christian Bale and Rami Malek in the acting category, both of whom took home Golden Globes last weekend. He'll be competing against Spike Lee and Alfonso Cuaron among others for Best Director.
And speaking of Alfonso Cuaron, he also had an impressive slate of BAFTA nominations. Roma earned six nominations in total, with the director taking five of them, also across five disciplines, including Best Film and Best Film not in the English language.
The previous record holder, according to THR, was George Clooney who received four nominations in separate categories back in 2005 when he received, writing, directing, and supporting actor nominations for Good Night, and Good Luck, and also received a Best Actor nomination for Syriana the same year.
However, the real winner this year was The Favourite, which scored a total of 12 nominations.
The BAFTAs will be given out on February 10 and many will be watching the prestigious awards show to see how things go in order to get some indication of what might happen at the Oscars later in February. The Golden Globes hit with a number of shocking results, and if the BAFTAs follow suit it could mean that movies that were expected to compete, like A Star is Born might not do nearly as well as previously believed. Many expected the Globes to be the first step in Lady Gaga's domination of awards season, but she only went home with the prize for best original song.
