Who Should Have Been Invited to the Academy’s Acting Branch (a Year-by-Year Simulation)

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One of the less publicized elements of the Academy Awards is who gets invited to join the Academy every year. Every year, a press release gets sent out and it usually gets pushed down to the proverbial page six of Hollywood trade magazines. It doesn’t really get much more than an obligatory post on corresponding entertainment websites.

From digging up press releases, it appears that about 20–25 are from the actors branch. This often includes people who have just been nominated for the first time (provided they didn’t get an at-large invite).

This is the 2014 list which includes 5 first-time nominees from the year before, a nominee from 2005 (David Straithairn) who’s paperwork must have gotten lost in the shuffle, a variety of people who were hot at the moment (Josh Hutcherson coming off the Hunger Games; Julia Louis-Dreyfuss having the hit movie Enough Said) with people who had been amassing notable roles for a while (Ben Foster, Beth Grant)

Barkhad Abdi — “Captain Phillips”, Clancy Brown — “The Hurricane,” “The Shawshank Redeption”
Paul Dano — “12 Years a Slave,” “Prisoners”, *Michael…