Ellen DeGeneres’s memorable Oscar selfie turns 10
By Alli Rosenbloom, CNN
(CNN) — It’s been 10 years since Ellen DeGeneres broke X (then still Twitter) by posting an instantly iconic selfie packed with A-List actors during the 2014 Oscars telecast.
DeGeneres managed to squeeze Meryl Streep, Bradley Cooper, Jared Leto, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Spacey, Lupita Nyong’o and Channing Tatum into the frame.
Revisiting this moment, and the famous faces in it, is a time capsule. Some of those photographed have been working steadily ever since. For others – like Spacey, who was fired from “House of Cards” in 2018 amid the #MeToo movement after facing sexual misconduct allegations – things have certainly changed.
Cooper, for one, has become an Oscar-mainstay since his 2014 supporting actor nomination for “American Hustle.” A decade later, he has earned double-digit Oscar nominations and will return to next week’s Academy Awards as a nominee for “Maestro” – a film he directed, produced and stars in.
Lawrence was also a nominee for her performance in “American Hustle.” She went on to earn another Oscar nod the following year for her performance in “Joy” and has appeared in a film every year since. She also became a mom along the way.
Leto won an Oscar that year for “Dallas Buyers Club,” as did Nyong’o for “12 Years a Slave.” Leto has since toggled between roles in various blockbuster movies, the 2022 mini-series “WeCrashed” and has stuck with his rock band 30 Seconds to Mars.
DeGeneres at the time was still hosting her long-running daytime talk show “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” which aired its final episode in 2022 after 19 years.
Jolie and Pitt at the time of the selfie were still a couple. They got married that same year in an intimate ceremony at their chateau in France but have since divorced and are in the midst of various legal battles. Pitt won a supporting actor Oscar in 2020 for “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
In 2014, Meryl Streep had broken her own record when she earned her 18th Oscar nomination for “August: Osage County.” It’s a record that became Degeneres’s bargaining chip when she approached Streep to help her “break another record” for the most retweets, sparked by the epic selfie.
Streep lost out to Cate Blanchett that year but the selfie wound up generating 2.7 million retweets and two million likes, and it remains one of pop culture’s starriest images to date.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
