Ten years of Oscar snapshot
This selfie would no longer exist today
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A picture goes around the world – and is worth a thousand words: This is undoubtedly true of the Oscar selfie that presenter Ellen DeGeneres once took. That was ten years ago now. What remains is a contemporary document that would probably be unthinkable in this form today.
It was ten years ago: on March 3, 2014, presenter Ellen DeGeneres took one of the most famous selfies of all time during the Oscars. She went into the audience and gathered megastars like Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts and Channing Tatum for a picture. Bradley Cooper pressed the cell phone shutter.
DeGeneres posted the picture to X, which was then called Twitter, during the show. The selfie quickly became the most shared photo in Twitter history to date, with over two million re-tweets – and overloaded the platform.
The selfie perfectly reflected the spirit of the times. At that time, smartphones had finally become established. The Oxford English Dictionary named the term “selfie” the English word of the year in 2013. Twitter was the digital place to be long before Elon Musk took over.
Kevin Spacey and “Brangelina”
Some stars probably wouldn't make it into the selfie today. In the middle, Kevin Spacey laughs into the camera. A good three years later he would no longer be able to laugh. In the wake of the MeToo movement that emerged in 2016, several men accused the actor of sexual harassment starting in autumn 2017. Although the two-time Oscar winner was acquitted in all cases, he has not been rehabilitated in Hollywood to this day.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie can also be seen in the record selfie – although the actress almost completely covers her face with her hand. As “Brangelina,” the two stars were the quintessential glamor couple in Hollywood for many years. They married a few months after the Oscars on August 23, 2014. But Jolie and Pitt divorced in 2016. Today they would probably only be in the same room with their lawyers present.
And what happened to the other stars in the selfie? Bradley Cooper, Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep are still doing well. The same applies to Jennifer Lawrence, even if she is no longer as popular as she was in the selfie era. Around 2014, she was the biggest female movie star. Channing Tatum was her male equivalent back then, and his greatest successes also happened a few years ago.
Only partially spontaneous
Jared Leto can also be seen in the cut. He won the Oscar that night for best supporting actor for “Dallas Buyers Club.” It was his only great moment at the Academy Awards. Since then, the “Morbius” star has only been nominated for the ridiculous Golden Raspberry award.
Lupita Nyong'o won the Oscar for best supporting actress ten years ago for “12 Years a Slave.” She posed behind her brother and companion Junior, the only non-star in the photo. Lupita Nyong'o established herself as a permanent fixture with the “Black Panther” films at the latest. The native Kenyan was recently chairwoman of the Berlinale jury.
Ellen DeGeneres has also seen better times. Two years ago she gave up the talk show named after her. Her image has suffered greatly due to bullying allegations from her former employees.
By the way, the selfie wasn't as spontaneous as DeGeneres did during the gala: the cell phone manufacturer Samsung paid a lot of money to be present during the Oscar broadcast.
