Quick Facts
SagittariusBiography
Kevin O'Connell (born November 27, 1957 on Long Island, New York) is a sound re-recording mixer. He holds the record for most Academy Award nominations without a win at 21, having originally set the record in 2006 with his 18th nomination and loss, making him the "unluckiest nominee in the history of the Academy Awards".
Awards and nominations
O'Connell won an Emmy for sound mixing for Lonesome Dove. In addition to his 21 Academy Award nominations, he has been nominated for 11 Cinema Audio Society Awards, two Satellite Awards, and one BAFTA Award. He was profiled by the American weekend newsmagazine CBS Sunday Morning in 2007 on the morning before the Oscar telecast, as well as by the CBS Evening News.
The films for which O'Connell has received an Oscar nomination without winning the award are:
- Terms of Endearment (1983) (lost to The Right Stuff)
- Dune (1984) (lost to Amadeus)
- Silverado (1985) (lost to Out of Africa)
- Top Gun (1986) (lost to Platoon)
- Black Rain (1989) (lost to Glory)
- Days of Thunder (1990) (lost to Dances with Wolves)
- A Few Good Men (1992) (lost to The Last of the Mohicans)
- Crimson Tide (1995) (lost to Apollo 13)
- Twister (1996) (lost to The English Patient)
- The Rock (1996) (lost to The English Patient)
- Con Air (1997) (lost to Titanic)
- The Mask of Zorro (1998) (lost to Saving Private Ryan)
- Armageddon (1998) (lost to Saving Private Ryan)
- The Patriot (2000) (lost to Gladiator)
- Pearl Harbor (2001) (lost to Black Hawk Down)
- Spider-Man (2002) (lost to Chicago)
- Spider-Man 2 (2004) (lost to Ray)
- Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) (lost to King Kong)
- Apocalypto (2006) (lost to Dreamgirls)
- Transformers (2007) (lost to The Bourne Ultimatum)
- Hacksaw Ridge (2016) (pending)
For his Academy Award nomination for his work on the film Transformers, he commented, "If you could bottle up the way that I felt this morning when I found out I was nominated, people wouldn't buy drugs anymore because this is just the best thing on the planet."