With the 96th Academy Awards just around the corner, the ceremony marks 10 years since one particularly historic photo broke the internet.
In 2014, before the art of taking a selfie became the norm, Ellen DeGeneres had the world talking with a single snap featuring many of Hollywood’s brightest stars.
The now-famous photo, taken at the 86th Academy Awards, officially turns 10 this year.
2014 saw it all from the Beyonce, Solange and Jay Z’s elevator stoush, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s wedding and when Taylor Swift released her smash-hit album 1989.
But it was the A-lister selfie that had the world truly talking that year.
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The photo was essentially a “who’s who” in Hollywood at the time, including host Ellen DeGeneres, Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Meryl Streep, Lupita Nyong’o, Kevin Spacey, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.
Since it was taken 10 years ago, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have divorced, Ellen DeGeneres has wrapped up her talk show, and Jennifer Lawrence has become a mother.
The selfie also made social media history after DeGeneres posted it on Twitter. It held the “most-retweeted” crown for three years until it was dethroned by a teenager’s viral Wendy’s post.
“If only Bradley’s arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars,” DeGeneres’ original tweet read. It attracted over three million retweets around the world.
A photo like this likely wouldn’t go viral in 2022. In 2014, Instagram was relatively new and we didn’t have access to celebrity selfies on several different social media platforms like we do today.
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And according to Fred Graver, Creative Lead, TV at Twitter, the selfie wasn’t quite as “spur of the moment” as we had initially been led to believe. Instead, it was a highly-orchestrated moment.
In a 2017 essay on Medium, Graver said the Twitter team worked with DeGeneres to figure out how to make a photo from the Oscars “viral” in the months leading up to the awards.
Initially, DeGeneres was supposed to only take a selfie with Meryl Streep, who was sitting in the front row.
Graver said there was a moment of “panic” when a raft of other celebrities decided to join in on the fun.
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“You’ll see the look of panic quickly fly across her face as her selfie with Meryl suddenly becomes a selfie with Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Lupita Nyong’o, Julia Roberts, Jared Leto, Kevin Spacey and – holding the camera – Bradley Cooper,” he wrote.
“When Bradley grabs the camera, you can see this kind of shocked look break on Ellen’s face. Would he know what to do? Obviously, he did.
“The selfie was retweeted 750,000 times in 45 minutes, and in the end actually ‘broke Twitter’ for a few minutes.”
For a long time, the famous Oscars selfie remained just that: an innocent, memorable selfie.
But as the passing of time goes, the picture has since transformed into a relic of an unrecognisable Hollywood.
So much has changed for the participants of the selfie. Since then, Ellen DeGeneres has been “cancelled” for fostering a toxic workplace and ended her talk show, Kevin Spacey was charged with sexual assault, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie parted ways in a messy divorce and the #MeToo moment uncovered a horrific level of abuse within Hollywood.
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Ellen DeGeneres cancelled – in more ways than one
Talk show legend and comedian Ellen DeGeneres was the reason the Oscars selfie exists in the first place.
At the time, she was still hosting the 11th season of The Ellen Show and was a beloved persona in Hollywood.
Since then, DeGeneres cancelled her show after 19 years and was the subject of media frenzy over her toxic and “mean” behaviour at work.
In March 2020, podcast host Kevin T. Porter wrote on Twitter that Ellen is “notoriously one of the meanest people alive,” asking followers to respond with the “most insane stories you’ve heard about Ellen being mean.”
The Twitter thread was filled with thousands of responses.
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A few months later a BuzzFeed News journalist spoke to 10 anonymous former employees of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, who detailed a number of ways that the mega-star had created a toxic work environment.
A former employee told them: “That ‘be kind’ bullshit only happens when the cameras are on. It’s all for show. I know they give money to people and help them out, but it’s for
The picture has since transformed into a relic of an unrecognisable Hollywood
DeGeneres made a public apology on social media and on her show. In 2021, she announced that the upcoming season of The Ellen DeGeneres Show would be the last one, but maintained that it was always her intention.
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Kevin Spacey’s sexual assault case
In July 2022, Spacey pleaded not guilty to charges of sexually assaulting three men. The actor denied four counts of sexual assault and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
And in July 2023, he was cleared of sexually assaulted four men in a London court.
Brad and Angelina’s messy divorce
In DeGeneres’ smiling Oscars selfie, former Hollywood golden couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are pictured together.
Then, the pair rocked Hollywood when they announced their shock split two years later in 2016.
Jolie and Pitt officially divorced in April 2019, after a judge allowed them to be declared single while other issues remained, including finances and child custody.
Pitt was also accused of being abusive toward his then-15-year-old son during the flight, but investigations were closed and no charges were filed against the Once Upon A Time In Hollywood star.
Jolie requested sole custody over the pair’s six children, with details of the reason behind her filing slowly unfurling in a drawn-out court battle.
In May 2021, the couple was eventually awarded joint custody over their kids.
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Jennifer Lawrence’s break from the spotlight
In the 2010s, Jennifer Lawrence was everywhere.
But after becoming a household name playing Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games franchise and winning a best actress Oscar, Lawrence all but disappeared years later.
After her 2019 film Dark Phoenix, the actress took a years-long break from the big screen.
In 2021, the same year she returned with the film Don’t Look Up, Lawrence opened up about the real reason behind her hiatus to Vanity Fair
“I was not pumping out the quality [of work] that I should have,” she admitted to the publication.
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“I just think everybody had gotten sick of me. I’d gotten sick of me. It had just gotten to a point where I couldn’t do anything right. If I walked a red carpet, it was, ‘Why didn’t she run?'”
During her hiatus, the star married art dealer Cooke Maroney in 2019 and welcomed her first child, son Cy Maroney, in 2022.
After several years away from acting and celebrating milestones in her personal life, Lawrence made a big comeback in 2023 with the comedy film No Hard Feelings.
“I had just had a baby, so I definitely wasn’t planning on working,” she told Good Morning America about her return to acting.
“And I just, I read the script, and it was just too funny. It was the funniest thing I had ever read.”
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