Best Sound

A total of 3% or 43 of the 1,422 nominees for Best Sound were women.* This is a ratio of 32 men to every 1 woman nominated. The first woman was nominated in 1987 (Cecelia Hall), and the same woman was the first winner in 1991. Ten women have won the Academy Award® for Best Sound. Only 6 nominees in this category were women of color. The first was nominated in 2017 (Ai-Ling Lee) with the first win in 2021 (Michelle Couttolenc). There have been over twice as many nominees named Richard (with a combined total of  32 nominations) as there were for women of color nominees in this category.

There was no difference between men and women based on whether they were nominated once or more than once. There was a sharp divergence between the man (Andy Nelson, 24 nominations) and woman (Anna Behlmer, 10 nominations) with the most nominations.

There were 52 underrepresented nominees in the category of Best Sound, representing 4% of the total 1,422 nominees.* This is a ratio of 26 white nominees to every underrepresented nominee. There have been 62 years when no underrepresented nominees appeared in this category. Willie D. Burton was the first underrepresented nominee in 1979 and the first underrepresented winner in 1989. A total of 9 people of color have won the award for Best Sound.

Underrepresented nominees (60%) were more likely to be nominated once than white nominees (46%). Additionally, the most-nominated white nominee (Andy Nelson) has 24 nominations, compared to 9 nominations for the top underrepresented nominees (Frank A. Montaño and Ren Kylce).