Actors and Actresses

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      Cillian Murphy Wins His First Oscar for ‘Oppenheimer’

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      Cillian Murphy won the Oscar for best actor for his portrayal in “Oppenheimer” of the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who developed the atomic bomb and was haunted by its impact.“For better or for worse, we’re all living in Oppenheimer’s world,” Murphy said in his acceptance speech. “So I would really like to dedicate this to the peacemakers everywhere.”This is Murphy’s first Oscar win and his first nomination. He was a top contender at this year’s Academy Awards after winning a slew of other awards, including best actor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, best leading actor at the BAFTA Film Awards and best actor in a drama at the Golden Globes.“It’s been the wildest, most exhilarating, most powerfully satisfying journey you’ve taken me on over the last 20 years,” he said, thanking “Oppenheimer” producer Emma Thomas and director Christopher Nolan, who also won his first Oscar on Sunday night. “I owe you more than I can say.”The contest for best actor had developed into a two-way race between Murphy and Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”), who won best actor at the Critics Choice Awards and best actor in a musical or comedy film at the Golden Globes.Bradley Cooper (“Maestro”), Colman Domingo (“Rustin”) and Jeffrey Wright (“American Fiction”) were also nominated in the category. More

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      Emma Stone Wins Her Second Best Actress Oscar for ‘Poor Things’

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      Last year’s Oscar for best actress went to a universe-hopping laundromat owner who at one point appears to have hot dogs for fingers. Naturally, this year had to go even stranger.The award went to Emma Stone for her performance in the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed “Poor Things” as Bella Baxter, once dead but resurrected by a mad scientist, who implanted the brain of her unborn child into her skull.The result is a full-grown woman with the impulses of an infant, until she progresses into a child testing boundaries and searching for independence in a world where men are accustomed to dictating women’s lives.Stone, who was visibly overwhelmed in her acceptance speech, shared a conversation she had with Lanthimos, who is a frequent collaborator.“The other night I was panicking, as you can kind of see happens a lot, that maybe something like this could happen,” she said, “and Yorgos said to me, ‘Please take yourself out of it.’ And he was right because it’s not about me. It’s about a team that came together to make something greater than the sum of its parts.”The victory is Stone’s second for best actress: she won for her turn as a striving Hollywood performer in the 2016 musical “La La Land.”In the fantastical, absurdist world of “Poor Things,” Stone’s Bella Baxter is charmingly blunt, brash and intent on being free to experiment. In one memorable scene at a restaurant in Portugal, Baxter launches into a wild and silly dance, inspiring her lover (played by Mark Ruffalo) to furiously try matching her vigor.“She’s drinking up the world around her in such a unique and beautiful way that I just dream I could,” Stone, 35, said in an interview with The Times in November.This past year was something of a crossroads for Stone’s career as she made a sharp turn away from the kind of mainstream roles that made her famous (“Easy A,” “The Help”). On TV, Stone starred alongside Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie in “The Curse,” a satire of a home renovation show filled with little absurdities that almost rival the duck-headed bulldog in “Poor Things.”Baxter’s unusual character arc provided Stone a unique actor’s playground as her character learned how to walk and talk, discovered her sexuality, learned the deepest horrors of humanity, and sought to forge her own life as an adult.“I felt like I kind of lived with her for a long time,” Stone told Vanity Fair. “Yorgos and I still talk about how we miss her now.” More

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      Vanessa Hudgens Reveals Her Pregnancy on Oscars Red Carpet

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      The actress Vanessa Hudgens, one of the hosts of ABC’s Oscars pre-show, included a subtle pregnancy announcement in her coverage of the red carpet on Sunday evening.“I clearly have a lot to be excited for,” she said at the beginning of the broadcast, positioning her hands on her stomach.Ms. Hudgens, 35, wore a fitted black Vera Wang gown with long sleeves and a turtleneck. She did not explicitly discuss her pregnancy during the broadcast, instead keeping her attention on the stars she was interviewing.A representative for Ms. Hudgens did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.This is the third consecutive year that Ms. Hudgens, who became a household name with her role in “High School Musical” in 2006, has hosted “The Oscars Red Carpet Show” on ABC.Ms. Hudgens married Cole Tucker, a baseball player, in Mexico in December. (For that occasion, she also wore a streamlined Vera Wang gown.) This will be the couple’s first child.During the broadcast, Ms. Hudgens traded off interviews with her co-host, Julianne Hough, and acknowledged that the ceremony was taking place on Indigenous land. Her interview subjects included Emma Stone, Simu Liu, Ariana Grande and America Ferrera.When her coverage shift concluded, she held a microphone in one bejeweled hand and beamed into the camera. “That was a lot of fun,” she said. More

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      Da’Vine Joy Randolph Wins Her First Oscar for Best Supporting Actress

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      Da’Vine Joy Randolph won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her portrayal in “The Holdovers” of a warm, witty cafeteria matriarch grappling with how to endure the holiday season at a boarding school after the loss of her son.It was Randolph’s first win at the Academy Awards on her first nomination. She was the favorite coming into the Oscars, having already won this year in the supporting actress category at the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards, the BAFTAs and the Screen Actors Guild Awards.”I didn’t think I was supposed to be doing this as a career,” she said in an emotional acceptance speech. “For so long, I’ve always wanted to be different, and now I realize I just need to be myself. And I thank you. I thank you for seeing me.”Danielle Brooks (“The Color Purple”), Emily Blunt (“Oppenheimer”), America Ferrera (“Barbie”) and Jodie Foster (“Nyad”) were also nominated in the category. More

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      Here Are the 2024 Oscars Host, Presenters and Performers

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      You may have heard that “Oppenheimer,” with a pack-leading 13 nominations, is a lock to win best picture. This is accurate. But even if we’re certain how the night will end, the getting there is the fun part. Here’s what to expect:Who is hosting?Jimmy Kimmel is back for a second consecutive year, his fourth time overall as host of the ceremony. That ties him with Whoopi Goldberg and Jack Lemmon, but puts him behind Johnny Carson (with five) and Billy Crystal (nine). And it’s still miles back from the record-holder, Bob Hope, with 19.Who is presenting?The “Field of Dreams” format is back! For the first time since the 2009 ceremony, five past winners in each acting category will introduce the five current nominees for each award, and then announce the winner together.The academy never reveals which presenters will be announcing which awards before the ceremony, but all four of last year’s acting winners — Brendan Fraser (actor), Michelle Yeoh (actress), Ke Huy Quan (supporting actor) and Jamie Lee Curtis (supporting actress) — are in the presenter lineup.Also set to take the Dolby stage on Sunday night: Mahershala Ali, Bad Bunny, Nicolas Cage, Chris Hemsworth, Dwayne Johnson, Michael Keaton, Jennifer Lawrence, Matthew McConaughey, Rita Moreno, Lupita Nyong’o, Octavia Spencer, Ramy Youssef and Zendaya.Who will be performing?All five of the best original song nominees will be represented: “I’m Just Ken” from “Barbie” (performed by Ryan Gosling and Mark Ronson); “The Fire Inside” from “Flamin’ Hot” (performed by Becky G); “It Never Went Away” from “American Symphony” (performed by Jon Batiste); “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” from “Killers of the Flower Moon” (performed by Scott George and the Osage Singers); and “What Was I Made For?” from “Barbie” (performed by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell). More

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      Jeremy Strong Isn’t Sure He Knows Who He Is

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      For years, Jeremy Strong was a relatively anonymous, steadily gigging actor. He did theater and some recurring TV work (“The Good Wife,” “Masters of Sex”), and was able to land decent supporting roles in big movies (“The Big Short,” “Selma”). Then “Succession” changed everything. The hit HBO show, a biting satire about the emotionally dysfunctional, […] More

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      The Worst Oscar Snubs, According to Times Film Fans

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      We asked staffers in Culture and Books about the snubs from years past that still bother them, and they had some things to say.I have never forgiven the Oscars for picking “Birdman” over “Boyhood.” What can I say — “Boyhood” was moving and meaningful, while “Birdman” was pretentious and obtuse, and none of my cinéaste colleagues are going to persuade me otherwise. MICHAEL PAULSON, theater reporterI am still mad about the academy’s refusal to recognize, even just to nominate, Greta Gerwig for her creative work on one of the best movies of its decade. The film I’m of course referring to is “Frances Ha,” for which Gerwig was the lead actress and co-screenwriter (with Noah Baumbach, who directed) — a brilliant, joy-filled movie about art and youth that borrowed from mumblecore, Rohmer and Woody Allen while arguably surpassing them all, and which was nominated for a grand total of zero Oscars. MARC TRACY, reporterWhen I first started to comprehend what Oscars recognize and celebrate, I was a tween who’d recently been enraptured by the greatest onscreen performance I’d ever seen: Michelle Pfeiffer as Selina Kyle turned Catwoman in Tim Burton’s “Batman Returns,” in which she nails the attitude of a woman who’s been belittled and underestimated one too many times. When I expressed dismay that she’d been snubbed, I was met with condescension from adults who informed me, with a pat on the head, that superhero movies don’t get acting Oscars. Of course today, that couldn’t be more untrue, and every year, when l watch “Batman Returns” (it’s a Christmas movie, don’t forget), I grow more convinced that Pfeiffer’s unhinged yet unflappable performance delivers a rare frisson and deserved a nomination. When she purrs, “Life’s a bitch, now so am I,” I still gasp. MAYA SALAM, editor and reporterAva DuVernay should have been recognized for directing both 2014’s “Selma” and last year’s “Origin.” She is one of the greatest storytellers of our time. Her leading stars — David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. in “Selma,” and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Isabel Wilkerson in “Origin” — also deserved nominations for their staggering work in both films. BARBARA CHAI, deputy culture editor“Shakespeare in Love” beating “Saving Private Ryan” for best picture is the snub I can never let go of, partly because it just feels artistically wrong but mostly because it cost me a payday on my office Oscar pool that year. DAVID RENARD, senior editorEddie Murphy not winning for “Dreamgirls” in 2007. And I get him walking out, too. Why should he have to put on another performance for the academy that robbed him? (And then he pulled out of hosting the ceremony five years later … nothing against Billy Crystal, of course, but that was a massive disappointment.) ALEXANDRA JACOBS, book criticWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      25 Biggest Oscar Snubs of All Time

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      Every year since the Academy Awards were invented, somebody has been overlooked, ignored, passed over, disregarded or brushed off. You know what they say about beauty and beholders.But perceived Oscar omissions — snubs, as we have come to call them — have grown into a frenzied annual conversation, with people left off the nomination list, or nominated but denied a statuette, sometimes receiving as much attention, or more, as those who win.These are the 25 true snubs and unjust losses that Times film critics, columnists, writers and editors still can’t get over. Read more →‘Do the Right Thing’ for Best Picture (1990)Actual winner: “Driving Miss Daisy”Spike Lee and Danny Aiello in the Brooklyn-set drama.Universal PicturesSome people hated this movie. Others, more ominously, feared it, or claimed to. News articles and reviews imagined riots sprouting in its wake (they never came), seeing in the character of Mookie — who, in a fit of righteous fury, smashes a pizzeria window in the film’s famous climax — confirmation of Lee’s insidious intent. Did academy voters have similar misgivings? Lee, who was shut out of the directing category, did receive a nomination for his screenplay, suggesting at least one branch of the organization had his back. (Danny Aiello was also nominated for supporting actor.) But it’s hard to look at the eventual best picture winner, “Driving Miss Daisy” — a film in which Morgan Freeman plays Hoke Colburn, the patient chauffeur of a bigoted, elderly white woman — and not see a statement of preference. In 1990, it was the Hoke Colburns of the world, not the Mookies, who were welcome on the academy’s biggest stage. REGGIE UGWU, pop culture reporterWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More