Finally, after what can feel like a seemingly endless build-up, the biggest night of awards season came and went. It’s not always smooth sailing, despite months of planning and 98 years of practice.
Think “the slap”, muddled best picture announcements and various bafflingly mispronounced names over the decades. Shock victories and losses are par for the course, as well as sobbing speeches. It was a tight race for the big categories, but in the end, Paul Thomas Anderson was the man of the night.
Here are some of the most memorable moments. What did you think of the show? Who do you think was snubbed or rightly rewarded? Let us know in the comments.
1. One Battle After Another won one Oscar after another
Paul Thomas Anderson, who took home a clutch of OscarsJordan Strauss/Invision/AP
The frazzled political caper was the big winner of the night, taking six awards, and that was sweet vindication for its writer-director.
He is maybe the most feted filmmaker of his generation but Anderson hadn’t won a single Oscar, despite nominations for Boogie Nights, Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, Inherent Vice, Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza.
Here he finally won, and won big, taking home awards for best picture, director and adapted screenplay. “I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess we left in this world we’re handing off to them,” Anderson said in the first of his speeches.
2. Jessie Buckley won, as we knew she would
She was the one dead cert of the entire Oscar campaign, for her full-on role as William Shakespeare’s grieving wife in Hamnet. Nothing could stop the emotional onslaught and her victory speech carried on where Hamnet left off — no subtly, no light and shade, just make them bawl.
Jessie Buckley at the Vanity Fair afterpartyKarwai Tang/WireImage
“That you for teaching us to dream,” said the Irish actress like a true American, before mentioning her husband, eight-month-old daughter and, suitably enough, Mother’s Day.
In a year of dirty tricks — One Battle After Another is racist! Timothee Chalamet hates the arts! F1 is a bit thick! — it was refreshing that the actual favourite, from the start, overcame the noise and won. Voters did not even care about an interview in which she admitted she does not like cats — proof, perhaps, that Hollywood is still scarred by Cats.
3. Conan O’Brien dared to laugh at Andrew
Conan O’BrienMike Blake/REUTERS
While the Baftas was conspicuously free of jokes about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the Oscars host Conan O’Brien had no such qualms. His sideways reference to Andrew’s arrest got a hearty laugh — perhaps the Baftas should have been bolder.
O’Brien also landed a decent gag about Timothée Chalamet’s disparaging remarks on high culture, saying that tighter security at the Oscars was due to “concerns about attacks from both the opera and ballet communities”.
4. Michael B Jordan is the star the industry needs now
He was killed off in The Wire aged 15 and feared that might be it — no chance.
This man is simply too charismatic to hold down and his best actor win for his role in Sinners was warmly received by an audience who know Jordan is the movie star the movie industry desperately needs now. He makes films that people actually go to see: Sinners grossed £277 million worldwide (One Battle After Another, for context, made £156 million). This year, he directs and stars in a remake of The Thomas Crown Affair.
Jordan eagerly awaiting his engraved statueArturo Holmes/Getty Images
Sinners is a blast and Jordan — playing twins — nails it, but this could be seen as an award for a lifetime of work too. Excellent in the TV show Friday Night Lights, devastating in the tragic Fruitvale Station — also by Sinners director, Ryan Coogler — and by far the best Marvel villain yet in Black Panther; he lights up the screen. And, indeed, a room.
Years ago, I was interviewing him in Los Angeles when he managed to get an admirer’s phone number mid-chat. He has that old-school charm.
5. Timothée Chalamet lost out again
Chalamet has three acting Oscar nominations, three losses. Not quite the form of a man who effectively self-proclaims as the best in the business.
The 30-year-old has called his role as the titular table tennis guru in Marty Supreme “probably my best performance” to add to the “top-level shit” he had been doing in recent years, in films like Wonka. Yet like Call Me By Your Name and A Complete Unknown before, his all-in performance as Marty Supreme went unrewarded (as did the film as a whole, winning no awards from nine nominations) — despite Chalamet’s mammoth campaign.
Kylie Jenner and Timothée ChalametKevin Winter/Getty Images
The reasons seem obvious. First, if you want to attract older Oscar voters, perhaps focus on something other than viral moments. Also, do not be so arrogant as to believe yourself better than the entire mediums of both ballet and opera. A welcome lesson in humility was dished out here. “I’m in pursuit of greatness,” he said last year. Greatness will have to wait.
6. Where was Sean Penn?
It was perhaps the hardest fought category of the night but the winner of best supporting actor, Sean Penn, didn’t show up to claim his victory over his Delroy Lindo, Stellan Skarsgard, Jacob Elordi and his One Battle After Another co-star Benicio del Toro.
He also skipped picking up his prizes at the Baftas and the Actors’ Awards this season. The New York Times reported that he was on his way to Ukraine at the time of the ceremony.
This was the actor’s third Oscar win putting him in an elite club, whose members include Meryl Streep, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jack Nicholson and Ingrid Bergman, though the fact he has already given away one of his previous statues to President Zelensky of Ukraine (“They can be melted down to bullets they can shoot at the Russians”, he said at the time) implies that fact might not interest him too much.
In the event, it was Kieran Culkin (last year’s winner and presenter of the award) who accepted it on his behalf saying, with rare candour for an awards ceremony: “He couldn’t be here this evening — or didn’t want to.” Lindo, noticeably, did not applaud.
Kieran Culkin accepting the award on behalf of Sean PennPatrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
7. The Brits weren’t coming (mainly)
It wasn’t a night of glory for the UK. British actors came home empty handed for a fifth year in a row — we haven’t endured a drought of this length since the 1990s.
Britain’s Nina Gold is widely seen as the top casting director in the business but she lost out in her category, making its Oscar debut, to the American Cassandra Kulukundis, for One Battle After Another.
The UK had a posthumous win for Adam Somner, a producer on best picture winner One Battle After Another, who died in 2024, and there were also Oscars for Warrington’s Mike Hill, for make-up and hairstyling on Frankenstein, and Gareth John for best sound for the racing film F1. John, a Londoner, cut his teeth on Footballers’ Wives. Now that’s going up in the world.
8. There was a smattering of politics
O’Brien set the tone by saying to viewers: “I warn you, tonight could get political.”
ICE out badges were visible, including on Sinners star Wunmi Mosaku’s dress. Javier Bardem shouted “no to war and free Palestine” while presenting the best international film award. Joachim Trier who picked up that award for Sentimental Value then used his speech to say: “All adults are responsible for all children. Let’s not vote for politicians that don’t take this seriously into account.” Accepting the best documentary award for Mr Nobody Vs Putin, the producer David Borenstein noted, “When a government murders people on the streets of our major cities, when we don’t say anything, when oligarchs take over the media and control how we could produce it and consume it — we all face a moral choice. But luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think.” Backstage, he added, “Trump is moving a lot quicker than Putin in his early years.”
Jimmy Kimmel also took a swipe at CBS for appeasing Trump while presenting the best documentary short: “As you know, there are some countries whose leaders don’t support free speech. I’m not at liberty to say which. Let’s just leave it at North Korea and CBS.”
9. Babs came out of retirement…
Barbra Streisand may be one of the finest vocalists of her generation, but she left viewers wanting more during her Robert Redford tribute. After speaking about the man she called an “intellectual cowboy” who would tease her by calling her “Babs” (“I’m not a Babs!” she insisted), she finished with a moving but brief rendition of part of The Way We Were, her first time singing live since 2019, when she vowed to stop. Elsewhere, ballerina Misty Copeland joined the Sinners blues-rock celebration on stage, dancing during the best song-nominated I Lied To You — a pointed decision given Chalamet’s derogatory comments about ballet. The K-Pop Demon Hunters also got their moment to shine, or rather, be golden, as they performed their winning song Golden, but were less lucky during their speech which was cut off and had to be finished backstage.
10. Rob Reiner was remembered in style
Billy Crystal gave a moving tribute to his friend, Rob ReinerCHRIS TORRES/EPA
The murder of the director and his wife Michele in December left Hollywood reeling and the Oscars paid tribute in poignant style.
“Their loss is immeasurable,” said Billy Crystal, Reiner’s good friend and frequent star of his movies, which included This is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me and When Harry Met Sally. Crystal talked about meeting Reiner in 1975 when he played his best friend in the sitcom All in the Family.
“It went so well, Rob said, ‘You know, it was fun playing your best friend, why don’t we keep it going?’”
The curtain then opened to reveal cast members from some of Reiner’s films, including Meg Ryan, Demi Moore, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, Mandy Patinkin and Cary Elwes. A moving moment.