Finding Nemo won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2004 while Steve Jobs was Pixar’s chairman.
Released by Pixar in 2003, Finding Nemo follows Marlin, a clownfish searching for his son Nemo, with help from the forgetful regal tang Dory. Andrew Stanton directed the film, which became a major critical and commercial success for Pixar and Disney.
At the 76th Academy Awards, held in 2004, Finding Nemo won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature awarded to a Pixar film. The award is sometimes confused with Pixar’s earlier Oscar history: Toy Story received a special achievement award, while later Pixar films won the newly established animated-feature category.
Jobs was chairman of Pixar during this period after helping guide the company from its 1986 acquisition of George Lucas’s computer graphics division toward feature-film production. Pixar’s success with Finding Nemo strengthened its position before its eventual acquisition by Disney in 2006.