Claim:
NBA star Kobe Bryant was the only person ever to win both an Olympic medal and an Academy Award.
Rating:
True ( About this rating? )
On June 22, 2024, X user @stats_feed posted , "Kobe Bryant is the only person to have won both an Olympic medal and an Oscar." At the time of this writing, the post had received around 88 reposts and 840 likes.
Also on June 22, 2024, Reddit user u/TonahVilla made the same claim on the r/todayilearned subreddit, in a post that had received around 21,000 upvotes and 728 comments at the time of this writing. The Reddit post linked to an article titled "The Only Person to have Won an Olympic Medal and an Oscar," which was published on June 8, 2023, by Far Out magazine, a culture-focused publication based in the UK.
The claim is true. Bryant , who died in 2020, won his two Olympic gold medals in Beijing, in 2008, and in London, in 2012, both times as a member of the US men's Olympic basketball team. He won his Oscar in the short film (animated) category for "Dear Basketball," which he wrote and narrated, in 2018 at the 90th Academy Awards ceremony.
To confirm that no other Olympic athletes have ever won an Oscar, we consulted Olympedia , a website run by a self-described "group of dedicated Olympic historians and statisticians" that maintains a database of information about every athlete who has competed in the Olympics since the first modern games were held in Athens in 1896.
According to Olympedia, Bryant does hold the honor of being the only Olympic medallist — and, in fact, the only Olympic athlete, regardless of placement — ever to have won an Oscar.
The website lists one other "Olympian" to have won an Oscar: actress Michelle Yeoh, who has never competed in the Olympic Games as an athlete but became a member of the International Olympic Committee in 2023. Yeoh won an Oscar, also in 2023, for her leading role in "Everything Everywhere All at Once."
An article published on Aug. 24, 2022, in A.frame, the official digital magazine of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization that awards Oscars, offers further confirmation that the claim is correct, at least for now. The article also points out two other historic "firsts" established by Bryant's 2018 Oscars win: he was the first former professional athlete in any sport to become an Oscar winner, as well as the first Black man to win an Oscar for best animated short film.
Fellow former NBA stars Steph Curry and Shaquille O'Neal executive produced the documentary "The Queen of Basketball," which took the award for best short subject documentary in 2022. However, according to Academy Award rules , executive producers are not eligible for nominations. So, technically, Curry and O'Neal are not Oscar winners themselves, though a film they executive produced is.
Bryant, however, remains the only Olympic medallist to have won an Oscar. As such, we rate this claim as "True."
Sources:
Esnaashari, Farbod. "Steph Curry Wins Oscar as Executive Producer." Inside the Warriors , 29 Mar. 2022, https://www.si.com/nba/warriors/news/steph-curry-wins-oscar-as-executive-producer-queen-of-basketball .
IOC. "Kobe BRYANT." Olympics.Com , https://olympics.com/en/athletes/kobe-bryant . Accessed 27 June 2024.
"Kobe Bryant, Daughter Killed in Copter Crash, 7 Others Dead." AP News , 26 Jan. 2020, https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-sports-general-basketball-ca-state-wire-us-news-98f3978b392cbd3d9143529267b1f1ee .
Mrs Michelle YEOH . https://olympics.com/ioc/mrs-michelle-yeoh . Accessed 27 June 2024.
Olympedia – Olympians Who Won Academy Awards (Oscars) . http://www.olympedia.org/lists/160/manual . Accessed 27 June 2024.
Sciences, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and. "Remembering Kobe Bryant and His Oscar-Winning Short Film 'Dear Basketball.'" A.Frame , https://aframe.oscars.org/news/post/remembering-kobe-bryant-and-his-oscar-winning-short-film-dear-basketball . Accessed 27 June 2024.
The Only Person Who's Won an Olympic Gold Medal and an Oscar . 8 June 2023, https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-only-person-to-have-won-an-olympic-gold-medal-and-an-oscar/ .
Updates:
July 2, 2024: This article was corrected to clarify that neither Steph Curry nor Shaquille O'Neal have won Oscars themselves, though a film they executive produced did.
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