Everything Everywhere All at Once is poised to become the first Hollywood film featuring Asians in major roles both before and behind the camera to win above-the-line Oscars. It is considered the favorite to win Best Supporting Actor and a strong contender for Best Picture, Actress, Supporting Actress, Director, and Original Screenplay.

Now is a good time to trace the history of Asians and Oscar and to catch up on those films via home video if you haven’t already done so.

Ke Huy Quan was the first Asian actor to take home a SAG award for Best Supporting Actor, but he won’t be the first to take home a supporting actor Oscar. Haing S. Ngor in The Killing Fields beat him to it 38 years ago.

Quan was preceded in nominations by eight other actors of Asian descent. They were Akim Tamiroff twice (the Armenian descendent was the first Asian to achieve multiple nominations), Sessue Hayakaka, (the Japanese actor was the first East Asian nominated), Omar Sharif (Lebanese descent), Mako (Japanese descent), Ngor (Japanese/Cambodian descent), Pat Morita (Japanese descent), Ben Kingsley twice (Indian descent), Ken Watanabe (Japanese), and Dev Patel (Indian descent). Ngor is the only winner to date.

The most egregiously overlooked among supporting actor nominees for a win was Sessue Hayakawa, the Japan-born actor who became a Hollywood matinee idol with Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat in 1915. After his popularity in Hollywood films waned in the mid-1920s, he returned to Japan briefly, then to France, returning to Japan again after World War II. He had a major comeback in 1949’s Tokyo Joe in support of Humphrey Bogart, followed by Three Came Home in 1950 in which he played a Japanese prison commandant opposite Claudette Colbert. He played a similar role in 1957’s The Bridge on the River Kwai for which he was nominated for an Oscar opposite William Holden and Alec Guinness, losing to Red Buttons in Sayonara.

Yul Brynner, born in Vladivostok, Russia of Buryat descent was the first actor of Asian descent to be nominated and win in the Best Actor category for 1956’s The King and I. He was succeeded by Topol (Israeli), Ben Kingsley twice, F. Murray Abraham (Syrian descent), Demian Bichir (Lebanese descent), Riz Ahmed (Pakistani descent), and Steven Yeun (Korean descent). Kingsley and Abraham were also winners, for Gandhi and Amadeus, respectively.

Michelle Yeoh is the first Southeast Asian actress nominated for Best Actress. She is, however, not the first Asian actress to be nominated. She was preceded by Merle Oberon (part Sri Lankan and Maori), Vivien Leigh (part Armenian and Parsi Indian), Cher (Armenian descent), Salma Hayek (Lebanese descent), Angelina Jolie (joint American/Cambodian citizenship), and Natalie Portman (Israel-born, of dual Israel and American citizenship). All except Hayek have won, Leigh having won twice for Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire. Jolie’s win was in support.

Yeoh herself was a major contender for Best Actress in 2000 for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but failed to be nominated. The most egregiously overlooked, however, was Jeong-hie Yun, the Korean Sophia Loren, who won the L.A. Film Critics Award for 2011’s Poetry, but failed to receive an Oscar nomination for her heartbreaking portrayal of a woman in the early stages of Alzheimer’s whose grandson may or may not be a murderer.

Either Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All at Once) or Hong Chau (The Whale) could become the fourth Asian actress to win in support after Miyoshi Umeki in 1957’s Sayonara, the previously mentioned Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted, and Yuh-jung Youn in 2020’s Minari. They are the eleventh and twelfth actresses of Asian descent (Chinese and Vietnamese, respectively) to be nominated in this category. They are preceded by Umeki (Japanese), Cher, Meg Tilly (Chinese descent). Jennifer Tilly (Chinese descent), Jolie, Catharine Keener twice (Lebanese descent), Shohreh Aghdashloo (Iranian), Natalie Portman, Rinko Kikuchi (Japanese), Hailee Steinfeld (Filipino descent), and Youn (Korean).

Anna May Wong, the most significant Asian actress in late silents and early talkies, was not so much ignored as she was passed over for important roles in such films as The Good Earth and Dragon Seed in which the starring roles went to Caucasians in yellowface.

Wong starred in numerous minor films but is largely remembered for her supporting roles in two, 1929’s Piccadilly and 1932’s Shanghai Express, both of which might well have earned her Best Supporting Actress nominations if supporting awards had been given prior to 1936. Her cousin, cinematographer James Wong Howe, was nominated for Oscars ten times and won twice, for The Rose Tattoo and Hud.

Daniel Kwan, co-director of Everywhere All at Once is the twelfth director of Asian descent to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Directing. He was preceded by Hiroshi Teshigahara (Japanese), Akira Kurosawa (Japanese), Terrence Malick twice (Lebanese and Assyrian descent), M. Night Shyamalan (Indian descent), Ang Lee thrice (Taiwanese), Bong Joon-ho (Korean), Lee Isaac Chung (Korean descent), Chloé Zhao (Chinese), Rysuke Hamaguchi (Japanese). Ang Lee, Bong Joon-ho, and Chloé Zhao have each won with Lee taking home two for Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi.

The most glaring omission for Best Director is that of Yasujiro Ozu, the great Japanese director who died on his sixtieth birthday in 1953. Ozu’s classic post-war films were not released in the U.S. until after his death. Tokyo Story, his 1953 masterpiece, which heavily evokes Leo McCarey’s 1937 classic Make Way for Tomorrow, was on numerous ten-best lists in 1972, the year it was finally made available here. AMPAS recognized Charles Chaplin’s 1952 film Limelight, released in Los Angeles for the first time in 1972, for Best Score, which it won, so why not Ozu’s Tokyo Story for Best Picture and Director, a question we have been asking for more than fifty years now.

Happy viewing.