These legends have both an Out100 honor AND an Oscar!
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Editor's note: The full 2023 Out100 list drops on Tuesday, Oct. 17! Sign up for our email newsletter and we'll send it straight to your inbox!
The Out100 honors the best and brightest LGBTQ+ people in the world each year, and that always includes plenty of actors, filmmakers, and musicians.
While the number of out actors and filmmakers who have won Oscars is still shockingly low, several people have been both on the Out100 and have won Academy Awards! Here they are!
1. Melissa Etheridge
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Legendary musician Melissa Etheridge was featured in the Out100 in 2005, one year before she won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “I Need to Wake Up” from the documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
2. Pedro Almodóvar
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Spanish filmmaker Almodóvar was featured in the Out100 back in 2009. He had previously won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Talk to Her in 2002 and his 1999 film All About My Mother won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
3. Dustin Lance Black
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Dustin Lance Black was included on the Out100 in 2011, two years after he won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Milk.
4. Elton John
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Elton John and his husband David Furnish were named to the Out100 in 2012. The legendary pianist and singer has been nominated for four Academy Awards, winning in 1994 for “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from The Lion King, and again in 2019 for “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” from Rocketman.
5. Tarell Alvin McCraney
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McCraney was in the Out100 back in 2013. He won an Academy Award in 2016 for Best Adapted Screenplay for co-writing Moonlight based on his own play.
6. Bill Condon
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Bill Condon was featured in the 2015 Out100. He’s been nominated for two Oscars for Best Screenwriting, winning the 1999 trophy for Adapted Screenplay for Gods and Monsters.
7. Benj Pasek
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Benj Pasek was on the Out100 in 2017. Along with his songwriting partner Justin Paul, he’s been nominated for three Oscars for Best Original Song. The two of them, along with Justin Hurwitz, won the Oscar in 2017 for “City of Stars” from La La Land.
8. Sam Smith
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Sam Smith made their Out100 debut in 2014 and then in 2019 appeared on the cover as the "Evolution of the Year when they came out as nonbinary. In 2016, they won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Writing’s on the Wall” from Spectre.
9. Ariana DeBose
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Actress and singer Ariana DeBose graced the cover of the 2021 Out100 issue, and then a few months later, won her first Academy Award for playing Anita in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. She was the first openly queer woman of color to win an acting Oscar.
