Anora sweeps Oscars - winning best director, best picture and best actress for lead Mikey Madison

3 March 2025, 05:22 | Updated: 3 March 2025, 09:22

Anora has swept the Oscars picking up the prize for best director, best actress and best picture.

The story follows Mikey Madison who plays a New York stripper who has an ill-fated romance with the spoilt son of a Russian oligarch.

Accepting her first Academy Award, Madison called the experience "very surreal", and added: "I grew up in Los Angeles but Hollywood felt so far away."

She added: "I want to recognise and again honour the sex worker community, I will continue to support (them) and be an ally."

She then thanked her "incredible family, my mum and my dad and my sister and my little brother, and my twin brother ... thank you for being my best friend, not that you have a choice."

She also thanked Brooklyn's Brighton Beach "for lending us your beautiful backdrop and incredible community".

"I also want to again recognise and honour the sex worker community," she said.

"I will continue to support and be an ally, all of the incredible people, the women that I've had the privilege of meeting from that community, has been one of the highlights of this entire incredible experience.

Madison also said that she wanted to thank the "intelligent, beautiful and breathtaking work" of her fellow nominees.

The film also won best picture, film editing, original screenplay and best director for Sean Baker, who used his speech to make a plea for the return of theatregoers to cinemas following the pandemic.

American director Sean Baker used his speech to make a plea for the return of theatregoers to cinemas following the pandemic, saying when "the world is so divided" that people need this "communal experience".

He also said "happy birthday mum" to his mother, who he explained introduced him to cinema.

Brody, 51, now a double-Oscar winner, took home the leading actor gong for The Brutalist, a film about a Jewish-Hungarian architect who flees the horrors of the Second World War for a better life in the US.

On stage, Brody said he felt "so fortunate" adding: "Acting is a very fragile profession. It looks very glamorous and (at) certain moments it is, but the one thing that I've gained, having the privilege to come back here, is to have some perspective."

As music played him off stage mid-speech, he added: "I'm here once again to represent the lingering traumas and the repercussions of war and systematic oppression and of antisemitism and racism and of othering and I pray for a healthier and a happier and a more inclusive world."

American actress Zoe Saldana declared she is a "proud child of immigrant parents" during a tearful acceptance speech after winning the best supporting actress Oscar.

Saldana, 46, was named the winner in the category over stars including actor and singer Ariana Grande, British star Felicity Jones, Monica Barbaro and Italian stalwart Isabella Rossellini.

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She won the Oscar, her first, for her role in Netflix's Spanish-language film Emilia Perez, in which she plays a lawyer called Rita who helps a Mexican drug lord change gender.

The film, which had led the Oscar nominations with 13, did not emerge as a leader on the night, with only two wins, after one of its stars, Karla Sofia Gascon, made headlines over historic social media posts.

As the 2025 ceremony got under way, the event showed a video of places in California and the Hollywood Hills sign in what appeared to be a tribute to the Los Angeles wildfires.

It ended saying: "We love LA."

On stage, Wicked star Ariana Grande launched into The Wizard Of Oz song Somewhere Over The Rainbow in a red dress and ruby slippers before being joined by her Wicked co-star Cynthia Erivo.