Academy Invites 534 New Members, Including Saeed Roustaee, Payman Maadi, and Ariana Grande
According to cinemadrame news agency, Oscar-winning actors Mikey Madison and Kieran Culkin, Oscar nominee Ariana Grande, Oscar nominee Sebastian Stan, actor and director Payman Maadi and Saeed Roustaee of the film “Woman and Child,” and Oscar-winning directors Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani of “Under the Shade of the Cypress” are set to become members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The list of 534 artists invited to the Academy was released by the Academy this Thursday. The racial diversity of this list is another response to the “#OscarsSoWhite” movement in 2015 and 2016 when a record 683 to 928 new members were invited. In 2024, the Academy invited 478 artists for membership.
Hamdan Bilal, the Palestinian filmmaker who won an Oscar for Best Feature Documentary for “No Other Land,” a film about the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, will be among the new Academy members. Bilal was reportedly beaten and detained by Israeli people and the army in the occupied territories.
Twelve new members have received invitations from multiple branches but must choose one. These include Brady Corbet and Coralie Fargeat in the directors’ and writers’ branches, and Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani in the animation and short film branches.
Approximately 41% of the new members are women, 45% are from underrepresented ethnic/racial communities, and 55% are from outside the United States. If all invitees accept, the total number of Academy members, including retired members, will reach 11,120, of whom 10,143 will have voting rights. Of this group, 35% will be women, 22% from underrepresented ethnic/racial communities, and 21% from outside the United States. Rachel Brosnahan, Jodie Comer, Dave Bautista, Adria Arjona, Gillian Anderson, Amal Amin, Yura Borisov, Emma Corrin, Stephen Graham, Paul Walter Hauser, Margaret Qualley, Jeremy Strong, and Fernanda Torres are some of the other new Academy members in the acting branch.
