Before Monday morning, the late actor Chadwick Boseman had somehow never been nominated for an Academy Award, despite his astonishing performances as Jackie Robinson in 2013’s “42” and as James Brown in 2014’s “Get on Up” — not to mention his iconic role as the superhero T’Challa in 2018’s “Black Panther.”That was finally rectified with Boseman’s nomination for best actor as an ambitious jazz trumpeter in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” It also puts Boseman, who died from colon cancer in August at 43, in one of the rarest and most bittersweet Oscar categories: the posthumous acting nominee.Deceased nominees are not all that uncommon at the Oscars; there have been 79 in total before this year.
But prior to Boseman, only seven actors had ever earned Academy Award nominations after their deaths.The first posthumous acting nominee, Jeanne Eagels, didn’t technically receive an official nomination — the second Academy Awards
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