Academy Juvenile Award

Academy Juvenile Award
Bobby Driscoll accepting the Juvenile Award
Awarded for	Academy Honorary Award presented for "Outstanding Juvenile Performance"
Country	United States
Presented by	Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
First awarded	February 27, 1935
Official website	www.Oscars.org

The Academy Juvenile Award, also known as the Juvenile Oscar, was a Special Honorary Academy Award bestowed at the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to specifically recognize juvenile performers under the age of eighteen for their "outstanding contributions to screen entertainment".

The trophy itself was a miniature Oscar statuette which stood approximately 7 inches tall. The honor was first awarded by the Academy in 1935 to 6-year-old Shirley Temple for her work in 1934. The Award continued to be presented intermittently over the next 25 years until 1961, when 12-year-old Hayley Mills became the last recipient to be awarded the child-size statuette for her role in Pollyanna.

The Academy Awards, first presented on May 16, 1929, did not originally present a Special Award for Juvenile actors. The very first child actor to be nominated for an Oscar was 9-year-old Jackie Cooper who was nominated as Best Actor in 1931 for his work in the film Skippy, but lost that year to Lionel Barrymore. Recognizing that children could be placed at an unfair disadvantage with Academy voters when nominated alongside their adult counterparts in the competitive Best Actor /Actress categories, and with no categories for Best Supporting Actor /Actress having yet been established, the Academy saw the need to establish an Honorary "Special Award" specifically created to recognize juveniles under the age of eighteen for their work in film.