History was made at the Oscars on Sunday on a number of different fronts. The new milestones were set in a variety of categories including Best Actor, Picture, and Actress.
"Argo's" victory was the third time that a film has attained Best Picture without a Best Director nomination; the last film to accomplish the feat was by "Driving Miss Daisy" in 1990. "Wings" achieved the honor in 1929.
Daniel Day-Lewis' victory for Best Actor represented the first time in history that a male actor won three Oscars in the Lead Actor category. Day-Lewis won Best Actor in 2008 for his turn as Daniel Plainview in Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" and in 1990 for "My Left Foot." Jack Nicholson won three Oscars, but one of his wins is for Best Supporting Actor. Walter Brennan also won three Oscars, but all of them were for Best Supporting Actor. There have been three women to win three or more Best Actress awards in their careers: Ingrid Bergman and Meryl Streep garnered three victories while Katherine Hepburn holds the record with four acting Oscars.
At the age of 22, Jennifer Lawrence became the third youngest female to win Best Actress. Marlee Matlin holds the record after winning the honor at age 21 for her film "Children of a Lesser God."
The awards show also featured the first time since 1994 that there was a tie in any category as "Skyfall" and "Zero Dark Thirty" both won Best Sound Editing; it was the sixth such occurrence in Oscar history. Barbra Streisand and Katherine Hepburn split the Best Actress Award in 1969 and Fredrick March and Wallace Beery tied in the Best Actor race in 1932. In 1949 "A Chance to Live" and "So Much for So Little" tied in the Documentary Short Subject race. In 1986 the Documentary Feature film had a draw and in 1994 the Short Film (Live Action) also featured a draw between "Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life" and "Trevor."