Mikey Madison is now one of the youngest Best Actress Oscar winners ever
The 2025 Best Actress Oscar race was one for the ages. Mikey Madison won the award Sunday night for Anora to enter the Oscar annals as one of the youngest champs in the category ever.
At 25 years and 342 days old, Madison is the ninth youngest Best Actress winner. She displaces Vivien Leigh from the top 10 youngest list. Leigh was 26 years and 116 days old when she won her first Oscar for 1939's Gone with the Wind. Here is the new youngest top 10 (their ages calculated at the time of the award):
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1. Marlee Matlin, Children of a Lesser God (1986): 21 years, 218 days
2. Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook (2012): 22 years, 193 days
3. Janet Gaynor, 7th Heaven, Street Angel, and Sunrise (1927/28): 22 years, 222 days
4. Joan Fontaine, Suspicion (1941): 24 years, 127 days
5. Audrey Hepburn, Roman Holiday (1953): 24 years, 325 days
6. Jennifer Jones, The Song of Bernadette (1943): 25 years, 0 days
7. Grace Kelly, The Country Girl (1954): 25 years, 138 days
8. Hilary Swank, Boys Don't Cry (1999): 25 years, 240 days
9. Mikey Madison, Anora (2024): 25 years, 342 days
10. Julie Christie, Darling (1965): 26 years, 4 days
SEE The complete list of Oscar winners
It should come as no surprise that the 10 youngest winners are all in their 20s. That age range has been sweet spot for Best Actress winners since, well, the very first one (Gaynor). Madison's win does buck a recent trend though. Prior to this, the last seven Best Actress champs were over 35, with six over 40 and three over 60. Madison defeated odds-on favorite Demi Moore, whose film The Substance, of course, is a takedown of beauty standards in youth-obsessed Hollywood. Had Moore, 62, prevailed, she would've been the sixth oldest winner in the category.
Madison is the first twentysomething to win Best Actress since Emma Stone nabbed her first Oscar at 28 for 2016's La La Land. Stone, who presented the award to Madison, was 35 when she won last year for Poor Things. She's also the second person born in the 1990s to win Best Actress after Lawrence prevailed at 22 for Silver Linings Playbook 12 years ago. With the last two champs under 40, are we in for a new streak of younger winners now?
Madison, who turns 26 on March 25, was the youngest nominee in the category, and Moore was the oldest. Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here) is 59, Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez) is 52, and Cynthia Erivo (Wicked) is 38.
The frontrunner at the start of the season, Madison was dethroned in the odds by Moore following the latter's Best Comedy/Musical Actress Golden Globe victory. Moore also won the Critics Choice and Screen Actors Guild Awards, but Madison proved she wasn't done yet with a BAFTA win. It also wasn't just a two-woman race to the end as Torres was the wild card with the Oscars being the first time she was competing against her fellow nominees.
However, Anora had its best night all season on Sunday, winning five of its six categories, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing -- all for Sean Baker. It only lost Best Supporting Actor for Yura Borisov, who fell to Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain).
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