In Steve Sailer’s review of The Fabelmans (which I reviewed here) he writes
In Hollywood, Jews tend to dominate the business side, less so the screenwriting side, even less directing, and least of all cinematography and acting
I responded skeptically regarding their representation in acting was as low as for cinematography, and decided to do a quick investigation in the spirit of my earlier look into #OscarsSoWhite (which specifically acknowledged the lack of any listing of Jewish nominees on Wikipedia).
The Academy Award for Best Cinematography ceased to be divided into black & white vs color awards in the 40th ceremony, so that is where I started counting winners. Wikipedia identified 4 such cinematography awards as going to people of Jewish descent (I am not going to count partial descent as a fraction, since I just want a ratio between branches and can just apply the same rule to all). Three of them were back-to-back awards for when Emmanuel Lubezki did Gravity, Birdman & The Revenant, while the first such one in my list is Haskell Wexler’s for Bound for Glory. I first decided to check Best Actress as a comparison, since the (heavily male) director’s branch could skew things via actor-directors or casting an ethnic standin (as Mike Nichols did casting Dustin Hoffman instead of Robert Redford in The Graduate). I found five such awards in that time period, without any Jewish women winning multiples. They were Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, Marlee Matlin in Children of a Lesser God, Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love, Natalie Portman in Black Swan and Julianne Moore in Still Alice. I was surprised by that last actress, and surprised that neither Helen Mirren nor Emma Stone were Jewish.
Since that was only one more, I then looked to see if Best Actor could settle things, and it did. Richard Dreyfuss, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman, Michael Douglas, Adrien Brody and Joaquin Phoenix have all won one, while Sean Penn won two and Daniel Day-Lewis won three (with those larger numbers I won’t bother listing films except to note that The Graduate wasn’t Hoffman’s). So whether one wanted to restrict it to men who won a single award, or just to ones who won multiples, theirs would still outnumber the total number of cinematography awards given to Jews.
Finally, I should note that my reason for skepticism dates back to hearing Barry Sonnenfeld say he was relatively atypical as a Jewish cinematographer, and knowledge that Jews have been prominent in acting going back to when Broadway/vaudeville were bigger than movies.
Entitled to an Opinion 
December 22, 2022 at 4:56 am
“Richard Dreyfuss, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman, Michael Douglas, Adrien Brody and Joaquin Phoenix have all won one, while Sean Penn won two and Daniel Day-Lewis won three”
My impression is 6 of these 8 had one Jewish parent and one gentile parent, and that only Dreyfuss and Hoffman had two Jewish parents. (I admit I was surprised that Brody was half-Jewish).
In general, I think it’s pretty common for movie stars these days to be half or a quarter Jewish (e.g., Robert Downey Jr. is, I believe, 1/4th Jewish). On the other hand, in the last few years, the entire category of “movie star” seems to be fading. Leonardo DiCaprio is still a movie star, but after that it’s vaguer than it was 20 years ago.
December 22, 2022 at 8:30 am
Someone else is invited to use fractional calculations, as well as to look at a wider pool of nominees rather than just winners or a larger date range.
The decline of movie stars carrying movies seems to be related to the rise of IP and the increased targeting of children (adults can watch prestige TV instead). I think the increasingly international nature of the movie business could also reduce the prevalence of Jews in it. There was a time when a lot of Jewish emigres from Europe came over and worked in Hollywood, but nowadays (Lubezki aside) foreign talent is going to be less likely to be Jewish than domestic.
December 22, 2022 at 5:01 am
Julianne Moore had a Jewish great-great-grandfather, so she’s 1/16th Jewish genetically. We will increasingly see prominent individuals like her who are vaguely Jewish by ancestry.
December 22, 2022 at 5:14 am
My guess is that Jews in the movie business who have the talent to be Oscar-winning cinematographers — e.g., Spielberg — tend to get into directing.
The best Jewish cinematographer of recent decades, Lubezki, is Mexican. Perhaps that’s a different culture, or perhaps he happened to get to know young a cohort of highly gifted directors and decided to work with them as a cinematographer rather than compete with them as a director. Three Oscars later, you can’t say that Lubezki made the wrong decision. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lubezki were the greatest talent of the Three Amigos generation and we missed out by him not pushing to take the director’s chair.