Beverly Hills, CA - Nominations for the 71st Annual Academy Awards were announced today (Tuesday, February 9) by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Robert Rehme and Kevin Spacey, an Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the 1996 film "The Usual Suspects."

Rehme and Spacey announced nine of the 24 categories at a 5:30 a.m. (7:30 a.m. CST) news conference attended by over 550 international media. Thirty radio and television outlets carried the announcements live. Nominations in all categories were distributed simultaneously to news media in attendance and via the Internet on the official Academy Awards Web site - Oscar.com (www.oscar.com).

Academy members selected nominees in their respective branches, with the exception of the Documentary, Foreign Language Film and Makeup categories, where nominations were selected by vote of screening committees. The 5,557 secret ballots were mailed in early January and returned directly to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the international accounting firm, for tabulation.

Official screenings of all pictures with a nomination will begin this weekend at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater. Screenings in special categories also will be held in London, New York and San Francisco.

The Academy's entire active and life membership is eligible to select the winners in all categories, although in five of them - the two short film and documentary categories and the foreign language film category - members can vote only after attending special screenings of the nominated films.

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 1998 will be presented on Sunday, March 21, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center of Los Angeles County. Sunday at the Oscars will be televised live by the ABC Television Network beginning at 7 p.m. (CST) with a half-hour arrivals and behind-the-scenes segment before the awards ceremony.