And the Duke Oscar Goes To

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: ANNABETH GISH ‘93

While Annabeth Gish '93 was getting settled in her Duke dorm, her ‘80s cult classic Mystic Pizza with Julia Roberts was being screened on campus. But the actress took a break from movies while at Duke, studying English with renowned professors such as the late Reynolds Price ’55 and keeping up with acting via the drama club. After graduation, Gish headed back to Hollywood to take on supporting roles in films including Wyatt Earp, Nixon and Beautiful Girls before switching screens to TV, where she appeared in shows including The X-Files and Sons of Anarchy. In 2017, watch Gish in crime thrillers Term Life with Vince Vaughn and Before I Wake with Kate Botsworth.

Ken Jeong '90: Comedian and actor known for his role as gangster Leslie Chow in The Hangover trilogy. Jeong also is the creator, writer and lead actor of ABC sitcom Dr. Ken.

Marietta "Retta" Sirleaf '92: Former stand-up comedienne who played Donna Meagle on NBC's Parks and Recreation and who now is going into her third season on Bravo's Girfriends' Guide to Divorce, Sirleaf has crossed over from television to film with recent comedies such as Band-Aid with Susan Essman and Bastards with Owen Wilson.

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE: PATRICK WILLIAMS ‘61

Patrick Williams '61 is one of Hollywood’s most prolific composers—writing music for nearly 200 TV films, feature films, television series combined including The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show. As a student, Williams directed the student big band group known as the Duke Ambassadors. He went on conduct Frank Sinatra’s final studio recordings and has arranged music for stars such as Michael Buble, Natalie Cole, Gloria Estefan and Barbara Streisand. Williams has been nominated for the Pulitzer Price in music and an Academy Award and has received two Grammy’s and four Emmy’s.

Penka Kouneva Ph.D.’97: Film and video game music composer who has written scores for the Transformers movies series and collaborated with composers such as Hans Zimmer. 

BEST PICTURE: TEDDY SCHWARZMAN J.D.’06

After leaving corporate law in his mid-twenties, Teddy Schwarzman J.D.’06 learned the ropes as an on-set production assistant and a film agen, and founded his own production company, Black Bear Pictures. After four films, Schwarzman hit it big with The Imitation Game in 2014, a biopic film that follows the life of the father of artificial intelligence Alan Turing, who cracked Germany’s “Enigma Code” during World War II. Schwarzman wrested the screenplay from 30 producers also vying for the script when Warner Bros. let it go in 2012. The Imitation Game went on to earn eight Academy Award nominations, including Schwarzman's own for Bst Picture.

Mark Vahradian '89: Paramount Pictures producer known for his work on Hollywood blockbusters such as The Transformers series.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: ROBERT YEOMAN ‘73

A Raleigh screening of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange in 1971 changed the course for Robert Yeoman ’73. The psychology major vowed to study film after Duke and entered the University of South California’s School of Cinematic Arts. He earned an M.F.A and worked on films such as William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in LA and Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy. Those films eventually led Yeoman to Wes Anderson. Yeoman has worked on every Anderson action film to date, including Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel—the latter which Yeoman was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 2014.

Robert L. Cook ’73: Former vice president of software engineering at Pixar Animation Studios. Cook created a computer-graphics program he dubbed RenderMan, which creates computer images that look like photos. Cook received the Academy’s first Oscar for software in 2001 because of the contributions of RenderMan, which has been used by every film nominated for an Academy Award in the Visual Effects category in the last 16? years.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: ERIC KIRSTEN ‘91

Before becoming a Hollywood screenwriter, Eric Kirsten ’91 founded a software company acquired by Disney and worked as the head of basketball programming for ESPN. In 2012, his screenplay The Lighthouse, about the Chrysler Building’s race to become the world’s tallest building, won a place on The Black List’s best unproduced screenplays. Kirsten went on to write the script for Midnight Sun. The film was acquired by Open Road Films, which won a Best Picture Academy Award in 2015 for the film Spotlight. Kirsten’s latest script moves closer to the screen with the filming of the psychological thriller The Uninvited Guest by Apex Entertainment (Secretariat, Million Dollar Arm) this spring.

Alisa Lepselter '85: Editor of Woody Allen's films since 1999.

David H. Steinberg J.D.’93: Screenwriter of American Pie Presents: The Book of Love, American Pie 2, National Lampoon's Barely Legal and Slackers.

Randall Wallace '71: Academy Award-nominated screenwriter of Braveheart, Pearl Harbor, We Were Soldiers and The Man in the Iron Mask.

BEST RED CARPET LOOK: BOOTH MOORE ‘94

When Booth Moore ’94 arrived at the Los Angeles Times in 1998, she broke into the fashion beat as the newspaper’s style and party columnist. Six years later she rose up as the Times’ first-ever fashion critic, reporting on designers such as Karl Lagerfeld and Donatella Versace and covering Oscars’ fashion during her nearly two decades at the newspaper. Today you’ll find Moore reporting on the latest designers and celebrity style trends via The Hollywood Reporter, where she works as the magazine’s senior fashion writer.

Dave Karger ’95: On-air entertainment personality and former correspondent for Entertainment Weekly and Fandango.