Yesterday, CB, Bedhead and I were working out what we were going to cover on Oscar night and I volunteered to do the coverage of the Best Actresses. Then a thought struck me: what if the French actress Emmanuelle Riva actually won?! And what if she won and that night was literally the first time I had discussed her in any way? So this is my belated post about poor Emmanuelle Riva. I’m sorry I didn’t talk about her sooner. Sunday is her 86th birthday, which makes her the oldest Best Actress nominee ever, and if she wins, she’ll be the oldest actor to ever take home an acting award.

Riva is nominated for her performance in Amour. She plays “retired music teacher Anne, a spirited woman who suffers from a stroke that ultimately leaves her helpless and in the care of longtime husband Georges (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant).” As I looked through the photos we have of Riva, I realized that she’s barely been anywhere during the awards season – she hasn’t come to any of the awards shows, and she only made it to New York once for the National Board of Review Awards. So it’s not like I was actively trying to ignore her! She just wasn’t around. Anyway, Us Weekly has a nice piece of “five things you didn’t know about…”

1. Best birthday ever! The Oscars, held this year on Sunday, Feb. 24, also marks Riva’s 86th birthday. In other words, if she snags the award ahead of her much-younger counterparts, then she will have set an even higher threshold of cinematic greatness as the oldest person to ever win an Oscar, beating out Christopher Plummer, who was 82 when he won Best Supporting Actor for his role in 2010’s Beginners.

2. Simple beginnings: Riva’s first job was working as a seamstress in Remiremont, a rural part of the eastern French countryside, a far cry from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood. She did a few “little theater productions” during grade school, she told The Hollywood Reporter, but it wasn’t until she came across an ad for a theater school in Paris several years after high school graduation that she dared to take a stab at acting professionally.

3. A woman of many talents: In addition to being a revered actress in her native France, having tackled such notable French films as Gillo Pontecorvo’s Kapo (1960), Jean-Pierre Melville’s Leon Morin (1961) and Georges Franju’s Therese (1962), Riva is also a published photographer. The actress’ landmark first film, 1959’s Hiroshima Mon Amour, was set in the famous Japanese city, and Riva took photos of Hiroshima that later went on to be part of a Japanese exhibit at the Nikon Salon (the images were also published in book form in France and Japan).

4. Parlez-vous anglais? Riva hasn’t been campaigning for her Oscar the way her other competitors (Jessica Chastain, Jennifer Lawrence, Naomi Watts and Quvenzhane Wallis) may have been because the actress admittedly doesn’t speak any English. “I’m sure you know that roles for older women in cinema are not that numerous,” she told THR. “And when you’re 84 years old? It’s not very often that you find a role that matches you.”

5. No retirement on the horizon: Despite her more advanced age, Riva isn’t planning on quitting the industry anytime soon. The actress will next appear in French comedy A Greek Type of Problem, in the self-explanatory role of “Granny.”

[From Us Weekly]

Some Oscar-watchers think Riva has had a late surge in votes because she’s so old and this will likely be her last and only time at the show. Going along with that, the Oscars have a history of giving awards at the end of an actor’s career, symbolically giving the award as some kind of “lifetime achievement.” I don’t know though… it’s not like Riva was or is widely known in America, nor is Amour some unexpected hit (like The Artist last year), and I still think Jessica Chastain or Jennifer Lawrence will have a better shot at it. My money is still on Chastain, actually. Weird, I know.

Photos courtesy of WENN.