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    On the Ground at the Governors Ball 2025 Oscars Party

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    Adrien Brody, with his best actor statuette, for “The Brutalist.”Zoe Saldaña, who won best supporting actress for her role in “Emilia Pérez.”Conan O’Brien, who hosted the ceremony. Paul Tazewell, the “Wicked” costume designer, with his Oscar.Kieran Culkin, holding his statuette, with his manager Emily Gerson Saines.From left, Sean Baker and Samantha Quan of “Anora,” holding Oscars, and behind them, Wolfgang Puck.Willem Dafoe.Brandon Wilson of “Nickel Boys.”A server, in the shadows.Basel Adra, left, and Yuval Abraham, winners of the award for best documentary feature film for “No Other Land.” The director Gints Zilbalodis, who won for his animated feature “Flow.”Guests at the party. More

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      The Fairy Tale Night of Sean Baker, Director of Dreams Gone Awry

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      Baker’s four Oscars for “Anora” are validation of his sensitive portrayals of people on the margins who always seem to come up short.Sean Baker came equipped with extra speeches, and that was wise: On the night of the Oscars, he wound up onstage four times to receive four statues.That’s not just unusual. It’s almost unheard-of.Baker’s film “Anora,” about a sex worker in the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn who marries the son of a Russian oligarch and then watches it all go sideways, earned five Oscars overall on Sunday. One went to its ingénue star, Mikey Madison, and four to Baker: best director, best original screenplay, best editing and best picture.By taking home four Oscars on a single night, Baker joins just one other luminary: none other than Walt Disney, who pulled off the same trick in 1954. That year, Disney won best documentary feature (“The Living Desert”), best documentary short subject (“The Alaskan Eskimo”), best cartoon short subject (“Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom”) and best two-reel short subject (“Bear Country”).But even Disney didn’t pull off Baker’s feat: earning four Oscars on one night for the same movie. Doing so requires wearing a lot of hats, and Baker, who started his career in ultra-low-budget independent films, has a deep hatrack.Movies are a collaborative art, and even the most hands-on filmmakers work with a team of artists and craftspeople. But writing, directing, editing and producing a film leaves a distinctive personal mark. Disney, who was heavily involved with his studio’s projects, certainly did so. Similarly, “Anora” audiences who know Baker’s work probably spotted his fingerprints from the moment the film starts. (And not just because Baker emulates John Carpenter, Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick and Wes Anderson by sticking with one typeface for the titles of all his films — Aguafina Script Pro, if you were wondering.)One of Baker’s hallmarks, the one people most often associate with him, is a focus on people who live on the margins of society, especially but not exclusively sex workers.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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      Morgan Freeman Honors Gene Hackman at Oscars

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      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

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      Zoe Saldaña Wins Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in ‘Emilia Perez’

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      Zoe Saldaña won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for her performance in the Spanish-language musical “Emilia Pérez.”She plays Rita, a downtrodden Mexico City lawyer who decides to accept an offer to help Emilia Pérez, a drug cartel boss played by Karla Sofía Gascón, set up a new life after receiving gender-affirming surgery.Saldaña anchors what many critics pointed to as the film’s standout song, “El Mal,” during which Rita confronts corrupt politicians during a gala. (“El Mal” won the Oscar for best original song.)“Thank you to the academy for recognizing the quiet heroism and the power in a woman like Rita,” Saldaña said.In her acceptance speech, Saldaña said her grandmother, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1961, would be proud of her win.“The fact that I’m getting an award for a role where I got to sing and speak in Spanish, my grandmother, if she were here, she would be so delighted,” Saldaña said.The film headed into the ceremony with 13 nominations, the most this year. Its awards buzz was quieted, though, when a journalist resurfaced a series of racist comments posted by Gascón on social media years ago. Gascón apologized but in the wake of the scandal, Netflix refocused its awards campaign on Saldaña’s performance.She won in a category that included Monica Barbaro for her performance as Joan Baez in “A Complete Unknown”; Ariana Grande as Glinda the Good in “Wicked”; Felicity Jones in the period drama “The Brutalist”; and Isabella Rossellini in the papal election thriller “Conclave.” More

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      Paul Tazewell Is First Black Man to Win Oscar for Best Costume Design for ‘Wicked’

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      Paul Tazewell became the first Black man to win the Oscar for best costume design Sunday. Honored for his work on the Broadway musical adaptation “Wicked,” Tazewell stepped to the dais and said, “I am the first Black man to receive the costume design award.” The remark prompted a standing ovation as Tazewell continued with his brief acceptance speech, in which he thanked “my Oz-ian muses, Cynthia and Ariana,” referring to the actresses Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.In 2019, Ruth E. Carter became the first Black designer to win the Oscar for costume design, for her work on “Black Panther.” More

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      Halle Berry and Adrien Brody Recreate Famous Oscars Kiss on Red Carpet

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      Plenty of kisses were shared on the Oscars red carpet on Sunday night — but none could have been as nostalgic as the moment Adrien Brody and Halle Berry locked lips.More than two decades after Brody planted a shocking kiss on Berry at the 2003 Oscars after winning the best actor statuette for his role in “The Pianist,” she returned the favor in grand fashion as onlookers cheered. The moment, captured by Access Hollywood, quickly spread across social media.“That was one hell of a night for him, and for me as well,” Berry told Variety after smooching Brody, who is nominated for best actor for his role in “The Brutalist.” “Tonight I had to pay him back.”A reunion 22 years in the making. #Oscars pic.twitter.com/MkaF2xb6SE— The Academy (@TheAcademy) March 2, 2025

      Berry told the outlet that she had seen Brody around Hollywood at various parties, but Sunday night was the first time in decades that they had seen each other on a red carpet.“He’s nominated this year,” she said. “He deserved that.”Their kiss onstage in 2003 made headlines and has become one of the most talked about Oscar moments in history.After kissing Berry that night, Brody quipped, “I bet they didn’t tell you that was in the gift bag.”Over the years, both actors have discussed the moment at length. On “Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen” in 2017, Berry said that the kiss was not planned and that she was as shocked as everyone else.Berry said that she went along with it “because I was there the year before, and I know the feeling of being out of your body.” Berry made history in 2002 for her role in “Monster’s Ball,” becoming the first Black woman to win an Oscar for best actress.Brody also revisited the kiss in a profile with Variety last month. “We live in a very conscious time, which is a wonderful thing,” he said. “And nothing that I ever do or have done or would’ve done is ever done with the intention of making anyone feel bad.” More

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      Conan O’Brien’s Oscars Monologue: Little Roasting, No Politics, Very Silly

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      Conan O’Brien brought the bizarre back to Oscar hosting.In a studiously silly (and sniffily) performance that began with the gross-out humor of his emerging out of the body of Demi Moore from “The Substance,” O’Brien evoked some of his delightfully experimental bits from his old late-night show.For winners whose speeches go on too long, he promised to cut to a shot of a game John Lithgow “looking slightly disappointed.” He continued a fun Adam Sandler bit from the Golden Globe Awards. And in a concise joke delivered deftly, he said: “Bob Dylan wanted to be here, but not that badly.”The whole thing had a light touch: little roasting and no politics. The edgiest joke might have been when he promised that no A.I. was used in making the Oscars, before fessing up: “We used child labor.” But you got the sense this punchline mattered less than his follow-up, when Conan added out of nowhere: “We lost little Billy.” Not since David Letterman, the most underrated Oscar host of the modern era, has a monologue been this loopy. More

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      Kieran Culkin Wins Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for ‘A Real Pain’

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      Kieran Culkin won the Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role as the descendant of a Holocaust survivor who makes a family pilgrimage to Poland in the dramatic comedy of manners “A Real Pain.”This was the first Oscar nomination for Culkin, 42, who was a favorite to take home the honor. His performance as Benji Kaplan, a disinhibited and emotionally unstable charmer who embarks on the trip with his anxious cousin (Jesse Eisenberg), earned Culkin a shelf’s worth of statues this awards season, including from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.Culkin’s nomination is one of two for “A Real Pain,” which is also competing for best original screenplay. Eisenberg wrote the script and directed the film.The other candidates in the best supporting actor category were Yura Borisov, for the modern rags-to-riches fable “Anora”; Edward Norton, who plays Pete Seeger in the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown”; Guy Pearce, for his role as an architect’s predatory patron in “The Brutalist”; and Culkin’s “Succession” co-star Jeremy Strong, who portrayed Donald J. Trump’s mentor Roy Cohn in “The Apprentice.”In a charming, casual speech that was largely pointed toward his wife, Jazz Charton, Culkin told a short story about asking her for a fourth child if he won an Oscar. It was a memory they had not discussed in years, and he chose this moment to remind her. “Let’s get cracking on those kids,” he quipped.Culkin also thanked his manager, his team and his co-star Eisenberg.“Thank you for this, baby,” he said. “You’re a genius. I’d never say that to your face. Thank you for this movie.” More

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      Conan O’Brien Pokes Fun at Top Movies and Stars in Oscars Monologue

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      Conan O’Brien was literally born to host the Oscars.After a pretaped sketch on Sunday in which O’Brien emerged out of the back of Demi Moore, the star of “The Substance,” before turning around to dig into her spine cavern for a lost shoe, the comedian broke into his monologue.He poked fun at many of the show’s nominees, and himself, starting with a list of recent films — “A Complete Unknown,” “A Real Pain,” “Nosferatu” — that he joked he was called on the red carpet. “I think two were fair,” he said.The monologue also razzed Netflix’s 18 nominations (and price increases), the length of “The Brutalist” and the recent controversy about “Emilia Pérez” actress Karla Sofia Gascón’s offensive social media posts.“Little fact for you: ‘Anora’ uses the F-word 479 times,” he said. “That’s three more than the record set by Karla Sofia Gascón’s publicist.”O’Brien also called out best actor nominee Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of the musician Bob Dylan from the stage, and the absence of Dylan himself: “Bob Dylan wanted to be here tonight, but not that badly.”He also riffed on the recent news that Amazon has taken control of the James Bond franchise, joking that it had found its next 007: Amazon’s senior vice president of global affairs, Steve Belsky. “Ladies love him,” O’Brien said. (According to an Amazon corporate website, the real senior vice president and chief of global affairs is David A. Zapolsky.)After a joke about Adam Sandler’s fashion sense, O’Brien suddenly changed tone to address the devastation of the wildfires in Los Angeles, and how an awards show can seem self-indulgent if that context was not addressed. He praised the craftspeople and others behind the camera who devoted their life to film, and how the ceremony was to celebrate their work too.“Even in the face of terrible wildfires and divisive politics, the work, which is what this is about, the work continues,” he said. “For years to come through trauma, and joy, this seemingly absurd ritual is going to be here.”“I will not,” he continued. “I’m leaving Hollywood to run a bed-and-breakfast in Orlando. And I’d like to see you there.”O’Brien closed his monologue by promising not to waste time, before breaking into a musical number about how he would not waste time, complete with a dancing Deadpool and the sandworm from “Dune: Part Two” playing “Chopsticks” on a piano.“Well, we’re 40 minutes over,” O’Brien joked. More