Oscars 2019 nominees: Lady Gaga, Rami Malek and Bradley Cooper appear at Academy Awards lunch

More than 200 Oscar nominees were in attendance, offering an opportunity for the stars to mingle and meet

The annual Oscars Nominees Luncheon saw the likes of Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, and Rami Malek gather ahead of the main Academy Awards on 24 February.

More than 200 Oscar nominees were in attendance, offering an opportunity for the stars to mingle and meet – Best Supporting Actor nominee Richard E Grant, for example, posted a series of photos of himself alongside Cooper, Gaga, Malek, Mahershala Ali, Rachel Weisz, and The Favourite director Yorgos Lanthimos.

The luncheon culminated in a massive group photo, as John Bailey, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, paid tribute to the largest group of female nominees in Oscar history.

“Gender parity is an industry matter, not just an Academy matter,” Bailey said, according to Entertainment Weekly. “In front of and behind the camera, inclusion, diversity, racial, ethnic, and gender equality are not just buzzwords.”

“They get to the heart of what our Academy is doing, our ongoing initiative that by 2020, all 17 branches are dedicated to a truer representation of who we are in our movie scripts, casts, and in our shooting and post-production sets.”

The luncheon also saw producers offer a preview of how the ceremony itself will work, as they explained that winners will have 90 seconds to get from their seat to the stage and give their acceptance speech, under plans for the telecast of the show to run at a shorter three hours this year.

Laura Dern introduced each nominee as they gathered for the photo, adding: “Here, now, in a time marked by great fragmentation, noise, and unrest, we have the opportunity to join together as a single community and shape a coherent narrative, a narrative that gives voice to those without a voice, that honors the experience and the dreams of not just the few but the many.”