Killers of the Flower Moon star Lily Gladstone, Past Lives director Celine Song, and actors Jessica Alba, Catherine O’Hara and Fiona Shaw are among the 487 artists and entertainment executives invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organisation announced on Tuesday.
Other invitees included Past Lives actors Greta Lee and Teo Yeo, Bottoms filmmaker Emma Seligman, New Zealand actor Rachel House – best known for her collaborations with Taika Waititi – and French director Alice Diop, whose feature debut, the legal drama Saint Omer, became an international festival darling in 2022.
Among the invitees this year are 71 Oscar nominees and 19 further Oscar winners, including many who took home an award in 2024: The Holdovers’ Da’Vine Joy Randolph, American Fiction writer and director Cord Jefferson, and Anatomy of a Fall director, Justine Triet, who was invited alongside her co-writer Arthur Harari and the film’s stars, Sandra Hüller and Swann Arlaud.
Notable additions in craft categories included the Oscar-winning Poor Things costume designer Holly Waddington and choreographers Mandy Moore – who designed the dance numbers in La La Land and Taylor Swift’s Eras tour – and Prem Rakshith, who was behind RRR’s famous Naatu Naatu sequence.
If all invitees accept, the Academy’s membership would rise to 10,910, of which 9,934 would be eligible to vote in the 97th Oscars in 2025.
In recent years, the Academy has focussed its efforts on increasing diversity among its ranks. The number of invitees has stayed around 400 each year for the past few years, down from the 819 invitees in 2020 – a move that the Academy justified at the time to “enable steady future growth and to ensure the necessary infrastructure, staff resources and environment to support all Academy members”.
The Academy said that this year’s class comprised 44% women (a 4% increase from 2023), and 41% from underrepresented ethnic and racial communities (a 7% rise from 2023). A total of 56 countries and territories outside the US were represented, making up 56% of the invitees.
With 2024’s additions, the Academy now includes 35% women, 20% from underrepresented racial groups and 20% from countries and territories outside the US.
“We are thrilled to welcome this year’s class of new members,” Academy CEO, Bill Kramer, and the president, Janet Yang, said in a joint statement accompanying the 2024 invitations. “These remarkably talented artists and professionals from around the world have made a significant impact on our filmmaking community.”
Last year, the Academy invited 398 new members, among them Taylor Swift, Oscar-winning actor Ke Huy Quan and stars such as Paul Mescal and Austin Butler.
