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Oscars 2025’s Unforgettable Looks: Ariana Grande, Zoe Saldana, Halle Berry
The 97th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday was the end of an awards season that lost some of its luster because of tragic wildfires and controversies surrounding certain nominated films. But, for the most part, the heaviness in the air did not dim the sparkle of the season’s red carpets — and the custom “Academy Red” rug that stars paraded down at the Oscars was no exception.The occasion known as Hollywood’s biggest night had stars pulling out all the stops. Some turned heads in brilliant colors: saturated reds and blues, for instance, as well as pastel yellows and pinks. Others shone in metallic finery that shimmered with each step they took. And many who went with understated tuxedos or gowns made them more special with sparkly jewelry.Of all the fabulous attire, these 21 ensembles took the cake when it came to looks at the Oscars that won’t soon be forgotten.Emma Stone: Most Glazed!Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesA piece of fine porcelain came to mind upon seeing the actress in her pale Louis Vuitton dress covered in glassy sequins.Michelle Yeoh: Most Smurfette!Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesWe 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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Sean Baker Wins Best Director Oscar for ‘Anora’
Whoever won the prize for best director on Sunday night was going to receive a first directing Oscar, but no nominee has labored as a filmmaker more single-mindedly for a longer time than Sean Baker, the creative force behind “Anora.”By winning the Oscars for director, original screenplay, film editing and best picture (as a producer), Baker tied the record for most Oscars won by an individual in one year with a very famous name. Walt Disney won four awards for four different films in 1954, none of them particularly well remembered today.“Anora,” a Cinderella story that foregrounds hot topics like class, immigration and global capitalism through the story of a stripper who initially accepts money for sex, is in many ways typical of Baker’s oeuvre. Like several of his past movies, including “Tangerine” (2015) and “The Florida Project” (2017), it blends comedy and drama, depicts sex workers sympathetically and makes copious use of nonprofessional actors.But “Anora” signaled Baker’s mainstream recognition. Nearly a year ago, the film won the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival; more recently, it picked up top prizes from the directors and producers guilds. On Sunday, the movie’s star, Mikey Madison, received the Oscar for lead actress.Baker beat out the directors Jacques Audiard, for “Emilia Pérez”; Brady Corbet, for “The Brutalist”; Coralie Fargeat, for “The Substance”; and James Mangold, for “A Complete Unknown.” More
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Mikey Madison Wins Best Lead Actress Oscar for ‘Anora’
Mikey Madison, who played a feisty and tenacious sex worker in the movie “Anora,” won the Oscar for best lead actress.It was Madison’s first Oscar nomination.The win was something of an upset; Demi Moore, who has seen a career revival for her dynamic performance as an aging fitness star in “The Substance,” was favored to win her first Oscar for the role.“Anora” — which went on to win the biggest award of the night: best picture — was directed by Sean Baker and revolves around Madison’s character, known as Ani, as she has a whirlwind romance with a Russian oligarch’s son after meeting him at her strip-club gig.The role required feats of physicality, both in performing the job of a dancer in a strip club and in fighting back when the oligarch sends his henchmen to force the couple to annul their Las Vegas marriage.“This is a dream come true — I’m probably going to wake up tomorrow,” Madison said in her acceptance speech, in which she thanked Baker, her family and the movie’s movement consultant, Kennady Schneider, among many others.Madison also underscored the influence that sex workers had on her performance. To study her character, she read memoirs by sex workers, underlining sections of Andrea Werhun’s “Modern Whore.”We 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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‘Anora’ Wins Best Picture During a Dominant Night at the Oscars
“Anora,” a comedy-drama about an exotic dancer who weds a flighty Russian, won best picture at the Oscars on Sunday night, capping a dominant performance for a movie that was far from a box-office smash.In addition to winning the top award as a producer, Sean Baker won Oscars for directing, original screenplay and editing, tying Walt Disney’s record with four competitive Oscars in one year. Mikey Madison also won the award for best actress. (The only category that “Anora” was nominated for but did not win was best supporting actor, in which Yura Borisov lost to Kieran Culkin, who starred in “A Real Pain.”)“Anora” established its award-season bona fides last May, when it won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Still, it did not dominate this season in the manner of the recent best picture winners “Oppenheimer” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”Although “Anora” earned impressive wins with Hollywood’s producers, directors and writers guilds, it was shut out for top awards at the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the BAFTAs.In the best picture category, “Anora” defeated “The Brutalist,” which won three Oscars for best actor (Adrien Brody), cinematography and score. Several other movies in the category earned two Oscars: “Dune: Part Two” (visual effects, sound), “Emilia Pérez” (supporting actress, song) and “Wicked” (production design, costume design).Discounting the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, “Anora” becomes the lowest-earning film to take home the night’s biggest prize.It has collected only $15.6 million since arriving in theaters in October, according to Comscore, which compiles ticketing data. Last year’s best picture winner, “Oppenheimer,” sailed past the $300 million mark. More
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‘I’m Still Here’ Wins Oscar for Best International Feature
The Brazilian film “I’m Still Here,” based on the true story of an activist whose dissident politician husband disappeared at the hands of a military government, won the Academy Award for best international feature.Directed by Walter Salles, the movie was a blockbuster in Brazil, where many remember the legacy of the military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985. The film is based on a memoir of the same name by Marcelo Rubens Paiva: the son of Eunice Paiva, the film’s main character, and Rubens Paiva, her politician husband who disappeared after being arrested in a 1971 military raid of the Paiva house.“This goes to a woman who, after a loss suffered during an authoritarian regime, decided not to bend and to resist,” Salles said while accepting the award. “This prize goes to her. Her name is Eunice Paiva. And it goes to the two extraordinary women who gave life to her: Fernanda Torres, and Fernanda Montenegro.”The film’s lead actress, Torres, won the Golden Globe for best actress in a drama in a surprise victory in January and was also nominated for the best actress Oscar, but lost to Mikey Madison of “Anora.” Torres was the second Brazilian actress to receive a nod for that prize: The first was her mother, Montenegro, a grande dame of Brazilian film who plays an older version of her daughter’s character in “I’m Still Here.” She was nominated in 1999 for “Central Station,” also directed by Salles.“I’m Still Here” won in a category that included France’s entry, the Spanish-language musical “Emilia Pérez,” which was once an Oscars front-runner; the Danish social drama “The Girl With the Needle”; the wordless Latvian animated film “Flow”; and “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” a film shot in secret in Iran and submitted by Germany.“I’m Still Here” is also nominated for best picture, making it the first Brazilian-produced film to compete for the top prize at the Oscars. More
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Adrien Brody Wins Oscar for Best Actor for ‘The Brutalist’
Adrien Brody has won his second Oscar, this time for playing the fictional Hungarian architect László Tóth in the three-and-a-half-hour epic “The Brutalist.” The win on Sunday came 22 years after Brody received the best actor trophy for his work in “The Pianist,” which made him the youngest performer to ever receive that award. Both “The Brutalist” and “The Pianist” center on Holocaust survivor characters played by Brody.“Acting is a very fragile profession,” Brody said after accepting the award. “It looks very glamorous, and in certain moments it is. But the one thing that I’ve gained, having the privilege to come back here, is to have some perspective.”“No matter where you are in your career, no matter what you’ve accomplished, it can all go away,” he continued. “I think what makes this night most special is the awareness of that and the gratitude that I have to still do the work that I love.”“The Brutalist” charts László’s arrival in America after World War II, where he meets a wealthy industrialist (Guy Pearce) who enlists him to build a massive institute in Pennsylvania. Throughout the film’s awards run, Brody has spoken about his connection to the role through his mother, the photographer Sylvia Plachy, who was born in Hungary and lost relatives in the concentration camps.“I’m here once again to represent the lingering traumas and the repercussions of war and systematic oppression and of antisemitism and racism and othering,” Brody said in a speech that saw the orchestra start to play music in an attempt to get him to conclude before he appealed to let him keep talking.“And I believe that I pray for a healthier and a happier and a more inclusive world,” he continued. “And I believe if the past can teach us anything, it’s a reminder to not let hate go unchecked.”But Brody’s campaign also weathered some controversy when it emerged that the film used artificial intelligence to improve the dialogue spoken in Hungarian. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Brody said: “Obviously, his postproduction process only touched some lines spoken in Hungarian. Nothing of the dialect was altered.”Despite the social media hubbub, Brody was the favorite to win the Oscar. He also won the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and the Critics Choice Award. More
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Morgan Freeman Honors Gene Hackman at Oscars
Morgan Freeman honored Gene Hackman at the Academy Awards on Sunday, opening the telecast’s in memoriam segment by saying that the film community had “lost a giant.”Last week, Hackman, 95, and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 65, were found dead in their home in New Mexico. In recent days, the question of how they died has consumed Hollywood and bewildered the community of Santa Fe.Freeman appeared with Hackman in the 1992 western “Unforgiven,” which won Hackman his second Oscar, and the 2000 thriller “Under Suspicion.”“Like everyone who ever shared a scene with him, I learned he was a generous performer and a man whose gifts elevated everyone’s work,” Freeman said.Calling Hackman a “dear friend,” Freeman noted that the actor often said that he did not think about his legacy but hoped that people would remember him “as someone who tried to do good work.”“So I think I speak for us all when I say, Gene, you’ll be remembered for that, and for so much more,” Freeman said.The producers of the telecast had only a few days to decide how they would honor one of the giants of acting. On Wednesday, law enforcement found Mr. Hackman’s body in the mud room of his home outside Santa Fe, next to his cane and sunglasses. Ms. Arakawa’s body was discovered in a bathroom, near an open prescription bottle and pills scattered on the countertop.An examination of Mr. Hackman’s pacemaker indicated that the actor had died on Feb. 17, the Santa Fe County sheriff said. A detective wrote in an affidavit that Ms. Arakawa’s body had shown signs of decomposition and that Mr. Hackman showed signs of death “similar and consistent” with his wife.It could take weeks or longer for investigators to piece together a timeline as they interview the couple’s contacts and wait for toxicology results and autopsy reports. More
