Jimmy Kimmel will host the 2024 Oscars tonight at 7 p.m. EDT at Hollywood's Dolby Theatre, joining a small group of legendary entertainers who have emceed the Academy Awards more than three times in its nearly 100-year history.
"I always dreamed of hosting the Oscars exactly four times," Kimmel said in a statement last November when he was tapped to host the award show again.
For over 20 years, Kimmel has been hosting his late-night show "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" When Kimmel started hosting the Oscars, he brought onto the Oscars stage a long-running gag from his show, the supposed feud between him and Matt Damon.
"Matt Damon and I have a complicated relationship," Kimmel told CBS' "Sunday Morning" with a laugh in 2017.
During the Oscars earlier that year, Damon was announced as a guest when he and Ben Affleck walked onstage to present the nominees for best original screenplay. Then, in the orchestra pit, Kimmel directed the musicians to play off Damon as he was speaking before the winner was announced.
But it didn't take long for Kimmel to learn that things don't always go according to plan at the Oscars and some things are just out of the host's control during the highly choreographed show. The night ended with "La La Land" mistakenly being announced as best picture instead of "Moonlight," the actual winner.
The slipup resulted in the producers of "La La Land" going onstage and giving acceptance speeches as various officials gathered behind them to figure out what went wrong.
Amid the commotion, Kimmel was sitting in the audience next to Damon preparing to close out the show. "So we're sitting there, and you just kind of figure, well, you know, the host will go onstage and clear this up," Kimmel said later. "And then I remember, oh, I'm the host."
The night ended with Kimmel reminding the audience that the Oscars is, after all, just an award show, and he made an offhand promise to never host again.
"I blame myself for this," Kimmel told the audience. "… I knew I would screw this show up, I really did."
It turned out the envelope that presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway opened onstage was a duplicate one for the best actress award, which went to Emma Stone of "La La Land" right before the best picture category.
Kimmel's fourth time hosting is unusual for the show in recent years. In his opening monologue in 2017, he said, "This is my first time here, and the way you people go through hosts, it's probably my last time here."
Whoopi Goldberg is the last person to host the show four times, tying Jack Lemmon and passing three-timers Jerry Lewis and David Niven in 2002. Johnny Carson has hosted five times, and Billy Crystal hosted for the ninth time in 2012.
Bob Hope holds the record for the most times as the Oscars' master of ceremonies at 19, but hosts now rarely return to emcee after their first or second time.
Ten years ago, Ellen DeGeneres used her last time hosting the Oscars to set a record for the most retweets with a celebrity-packed selfie that included Bradley Cooper, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep.
But not all hosts' performances work out.
In 2011, Anne Hathaway co-hosted the ceremony with James Franco in a widely panned performance that was an apparent attempt to attract younger viewers. Hathaway told "Entertainment Tonight" in 2019 that the hardest part about hosting is the day after the show and "finding out how you actually did."
"Because it feels nice – everybody tells you it's going well and then …," Hathaway told ET.
In a video promoting Sunday night's broadcast, best supporting actress nominee America Ferrera described what makes hosting the Oscars such a tightrope walk in a parody of a key speech her character gave in "Barbie."
"You can never show off, never fall down, never fail, never show fear," she tells Kimmel. "Nobody says thank you, and everyone has something critical to say online. If it goes well, no one says anything, but if it doesn't, it's your fault."
(The video also takes a moment to let Kimmel, Ferrera and her co-stars Ryan Gosling and Kate McKinnon freak out over "Barbie" director Greta Gerwig not being nominated for best director.)
The Hollywood Reporter called being the Oscars host "the least wanted job in Hollywood" in 2018 following Kevin Hart's sudden departure from emceeing the upcoming 2019 ceremony amid renewed criticism of past comments he made that were called homophobic.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ended up going without a host for the first time in 30 years and didn't have an official host again until 2022, when Regina Hall, Amy Schumer and Wanda Sykes co-hosted the ceremony. However, the most-talked-about moment of the night ended up being Will Smith slapping Chris Rock in the face onstage over a joke Rock made about Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith.
Here's a complete list of Oscars hosts from the academy, including the emcees for both ceremonies that were held in 1930:
In a look back at the performances of past Oscars hosts, Elle gave top billing to Billy Crystal, highlighting how he would pretend to narrate celebrities' inner-most thoughts as the camera closed in on different stars in the audience.
British newspaper the Independent hailed Bob Hope, noting that the academy bestowed him with an honorary award in 1966, when he was hosting for the 15th time. "You couldn't tip me or anything, huh?" Hope said after receiving a gold medal from the academy's president.
In 2020, Vogue included Whoopi Goldberg among its list of the seven best Oscars hosts, noting that she and Jack Lemmon are the only Academy Award winners to have hosted.
"No one can hold a room like Goldberg," the magazine said.
Kimmel's fourth time as host was announced by Academy CEO Bill Kramer and President Janet Yang in a statement, with Oscars executive producers Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan calling Kimmel "one of the all-time great Oscars hosts."
Kimmel told entertainment news outlet Deadline that ABC — which has televised the Oscars for decades and broadcasts Kimmel's late-night show — and Kramer wanted him to host again. Kimmel said Kramer's enthusiasm played a part in his decision.
"I mean he really wanted me, and he wanted my wife Molly (McNearney) to executive produce, and he even wanted her to executive produce if I wasn't hosting the show, and you know, that stuff ultimately means something," Kimmel said.
Kimmel also left the door open to possibly coming back for a fifth time.
"I would never be so presumptuous as to assume that they would want me back year after year after year," Kimmel told Deadline, "but this year, they wanted me, and they asked me, and so, I'm definitely going to do this one."
Alex Sundby is a senior editor at CBSNews.com. In addition to editing content, Alex also covers breaking news, writing about crime and severe weather as well as everything from multistate lottery jackpots to the July Fourth hot dog eating contest.
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