Oscars 2021 – live: Winners, acceptance speeches and highlights from the Academy Awards
Chloé Zhao wins Best Director while Frances McDormand earns Best Actress prize
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Your support makes all the difference.Road movie Nomadland won the top prize at the 93rd Academy Awards, which fulfilled many expectations but threw in a couple of surprise wins in an unusual ceremony.
The film’s director Chloe Zhao also made history, becoming the first woman of colour to win the award for directing, and the second woman in history — and the film scooped the Best Actress prize for its star Frances McDormand.
Sir Anthony Hopkins won the Best Actor Oscar — his first since The Silence of the Lambs in 1992 — for his performance in The Father, about a man slipping into dementia, defeating presumptive favourite Chadwick Boseman, who died last year aged 43 following a private four-year battle with colon cancer.
Daniel Kaluuya, who was born in London to Ugandan parents, is the first black British winner of the best Supporting Actor prize for his turn as community organiser and member of the Black Panther Party Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah.
There were a number of surprise wins. David Fincher’s Mank led the pack with 10 nominations, but ultimately won two.
Due to coronavirus, the Oscars moved out of their usual venue, the Dolby Theatre, and were based out of Los Angeles’s Union Station instead. The ceremony’s format was overhauled too, with attendees observing social distancing and some joining via video link from other parts of the world.
Nomadland had been a favourite to win Best Picture; it fulfilled that expectation, beating The Father, Judas and the Black Messiah, Mank, Minari, Promising Young Woman, Sound of Metal, and The Trial of the Chicago 7.
Minari actor Youn Yuh-jung also won over the crowd in her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress, which was presented to her by Brad Pitt. “Mr Brad Pitt, finally, nice to meet you!” she told him after making her way onto the stage. She then proceeded to acknowledge the ways in which her name has been mispronounced throughout the awards season, telling the crowd: “Tonight, you are all forgiven.”
With her win, Youn became the first Korean actor to take home an Academy Award.
Follow our liveblog for highlights from the ceremony and the buzz-worthy aftermath.
OK so, one of the big questions... Who do you think SHOULD have been nominated this year? What were the big omissions?
On 4 March 1943, Greer Garson stepped behind a lectern at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub inside the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Garson, 38, was accepting the Academy Award for Best Actress for her work inMrs Miniver, a romantic war drama directed by William Wyle. She was only the 15th actor in the history of Hollywood to take home the trophy. That was an achievement in itself, but Garson made history in another, more unexpected way that night.
Her acceptance speech remains, to this day, the longest in the history of the Academy Awards. While today’s winners are asked to keep to 45 seconds (although they frequently go beyond, at which point a music cue lets them know it’s time to wrap up), Garson spoke for a comparatively generous seven minutes.
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Oscars 2021: Who will win (and who should win) at this year’s Academy Awards...
The most unpredictable awards season in living memory is nearing a close, with this year’s Academy Awards set to take place on 25 April – two months after they were originally scheduled. There’s already been plenty to celebrate, thanks to a groundbreaking, diverse set of nominees.
For the first time in history, more than one woman has been nominated in the Best Director category: Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman and Chloé Zhao for Nomadland. Sound of Metal’s Riz Ahmed has become the first Muslim actor to be nominated for Best Actor, while Minari’s Steven Yeun is the first Asian-American actor to do so. With her fourth Oscar nomination for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Viola Davis is now the most-nominated Black actress ever, and the only Black woman with two Best Actress nominations.
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