Margot Robbie, Cillian Murphy, Bradley Cooper Gather Under One Roof For Oscars 2024 Class Photo

The annual Academy Award nominees luncheon took place at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles on Tuesday, February 13. The casts of  Barbie and Oppenheimer gathered alongside dozens of first-time Oscar hopefuls for handshakes, hugs, a huge group picture, and instructions on nailing an acceptance speech.

The event was a warm, feel-good affair where nominees in categories like best animated short get to rub shoulders and share tables with acting nominees like Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, whose snubs for best director and best actress, respectively, for Barbie caused a major stir, both showed up for the nominations they did get, and were all smiles.

Gerwig, nominated for adapted screenplay, was surrounded by selfie-seekers as soon as she entered the banquet hall while Robbie, up for best picture as a “Barbie” producer, beamed nearby as she hugged and chatted with a woman who got one of the best actress spots, Sandra Hüller of “Anatomy of a Fall.”

The class photo of Oscar nominees 2024

The centerpiece of the event is a class photo of the entire group of nominees. Nearly all of them usually attend, both as part of the Oscars experience and as part of their unspoken campaigns for votes.

Gerwig and Robbie got some of the loudest cheers of the afternoon when their names were called during the class picture roll call that feels like a school commencement and is perhaps the day’s most egalitarian tradition. The names are read and nominees are called up to risers in an order that seems to make no accounting for fame.

The first attempts at the photo didn’t go well. When they finally got a few that worked, Robert Downey Jr., supporting actor nominee for “Oppenheimer,” who had been shouting joke instructions to the group of several hundred, leaped up, pumped a fist, and shouted “yeah!” then turned and began applauding his fellow nominees.

Academy president’s ending remarks 

The nominees sat for a vegetarian meal of king oyster mushrooms and wild mushroom risotto while Academy President Janet Yang gave her annual remarks. She then played a montage of past speeches that met the ideals, with clips from Jamie Lee Curtis, Brad Pitt and Ke Huy Quan.

It ended with the academy’s Platonic ideal of a speech played in its entirety: Javier Bardem’s 2008 acceptance of best supporting actor for “No Country for Old Men.” Total time: 37 seconds.

(with inputs from AP)