Mikey Madison Wins Oscar for Best Actress for ‘Anora’
Mikey Madison, the 25-year-old actress who is at the center of “Anora,” has won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She beat out projected favorite Demi Moore, who stars in “The Substance,” as well as possible spoiler Fernanda Torres for “I’m Still Here.” By this point on Oscar night, “Anora” had already won Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing.
Madison, accepting the award from presenter Emma Stone said, “I grew up in Los Angeles, but Hollywood always felt so far away from me.” She thanked all her collaborators, in front of and behind the camera, as well as Brighton Beach “for lending us your beautiful backdrop and incredible community.”
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“I want to recognize the sex worker community. I will continue to support and be an ally. All the incredible people, the women I’ve had the privilege of meeting… have been among the highlights of this entire incredible experience. I want to recognize the… breathtaking work of my fellow nominees… This is a dream come true. I am probably going to wake up tomorrow. Thank you to Sean. This is all because of you. I adore you.”
Earlier in the night, Sean Baker, accepting the award for Best Director, praised theaters and urged the industry to continue to support them. “We are all here tonight and watching this broadcast because we love movies. Where did we fall in love with the movies? At the movie theater. Watching a film in the theater with an audience is an experience… In a time in which the world can feel very divided, this is more important than ever. It’s a communal experience you simply don’t get at home. Right now, the theater-going experience is under threat. Movie theaters, especially independently owned theaters, are struggling. It’s up to us to support them. During the pandemic, we lost nearly 1,000 screens in the U.S., and we continue to lose them regularly,” he said.
Madison stars as sex worker Ani in Sean Baker’s film, a young woman whose life is thrown into turmoil by the promises made by Russian heir Vanya (Eydelshteyn). The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May 2024, cementing its Oscar chances going ahead.
Baker’s earlier speech continued, “If we don’t reverse this trend, we’ll be losing a vital part of our culture. This is our battle cry. Filmmakers, keep making films for the big screen. I know I will. Distributors, please focus first and foremost on the theatrical releases of our films. Neon did that for me, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Parents, introduce your children to feature films in movie theaters, and you’ll be molding the next generation of movie lovers and filmmakers.”
The Best Actress race has been an unpredictable one all season, with the winner truly anyone’s guess, though Madison won the BAFTA for Best Actress earlier in February. That made the possibilities of her winning the Oscar more likely, even though the narrative behind Moore as an actress who has more than put in her time — and, in “The Substance,” into a role that reflects all the problems of quote-unquote aged-out actresses — has also been strong the last few months.
“Anora” filmed in Brighton Beach beginning in February 2023, a place Madison had not been to before, and living there alongside the filmmakers and cast helped her embed deeper into her character, as she explained to IndieWire last year.
Madison said she’d never been to Brighton Beach, prior to filming starting at the top of 2023, “which is why I wanted to spend as much time as possible. I had spent so many months doing all the other preparation for the character. I was like, ‘If I don’t understand what it’s like to live here, it’s not going to feel real or like something that I recognize.’ I moved there and lived next to the subway station, and I loved it. It’s an amazing community, and it was very interesting. I went and bought a couple pieces of my characters’ costumes as well, and I’d go to my favorite coffee shop, and listen to people. It was part of grounding myself in the character, the environment. It was nice to leave Los Angeles and be in that environment. You can do all of that work, but you’re still living in your own home in L.A., and it [didn’t] feel real to what I was about to do.”
Madison has not announced a follow-up role to “Anora” just yet. She was previously acclaimed for her roles in FX’s series “Better Things,” created by Pamela Adlon who also starred as Madison’s mother, and in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” The Academy loves a young ingenue, and so the narrative supporting her potential win on Oscar night has also had momentum.
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