The Academy Awards itself was already geriatric age by the time the 2005 ceremony rolled around. But that doesn’t mean there were no more milestones to be set or records broken. And indeed, history was made that evening: The lead actor and supporting actor Oscars were both won by Black men for the first and, so far, only time.
The 77th Academy Awards event at the Kodak Theatre was in some ways a triumph of representation. Jamie Foxx became the first Black actor to receive two acting nominations in the same year, and he’d go on to win one of them, besting “Hotel Rwanda” star Don Cheadle, among others, for his lead performance in “Ray.” By that time, Morgan Freeman had already triumphed in the supporting category for his turn in “Million Dollar Baby.
” Worth a million, baby Freeman accepted his first Oscar from presenter Renée Zellweger early in the ceremony. It was his fourth of five nominations — he had previously been recognized in the supporting category for “Street Smart” and lead category for “Driving Miss Daisy” and “The Shawshank Redemption” — and the first time he’d been nominated for working with director Clint Eastwood. Freeman played former boxer Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupris in Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby,” a film for which star Hilary Swank would earn the lead actress trophy later in the evening.
Freeman became the oldest Black actor to win an Academy Award (he was 67 at the time) and gave a short speech once he got up .
