Key PointsChristopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic Oppenheimer swept the major Oscars at the 96th Academy Awards. Ryan Gosling donned a hot pink suit to perform the song I’m Just Ken from the film Barbie. A handful of celebrities, including Billie Eilish and Mark Ruffalo, wore red pins calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Oppenheimer, a solemn three-hour biopic that became a billion-dollar box-office sensation, has swept the major Oscars at the 96th Academy Awards in Los Angeles.
Christopher Nolan’s film out seven awards, including Best Actor for Cillian Murphy, Best Supporting Actor for Robert Downey Jr and Best Director for Nolan, while Emma Stone took out Best Actress for her role in the dark comedy Poor Things.
Meanwhile, Billie Eilish and Mark Ruffalo were among the artists who wore red pins calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, as pro-Palestinian protesters slowed traffic in the streets outside.
In anointing Oppenheimer, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences did something it hasn’t done for more than a decade: hand its top prize to a widely seen, big-budget studio film.
Oppenheimer brought droves of moviegoers to cinemas with a complex drama about J Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb.
“For better or worse, we’re all living in Robert Oppenheimer’s world,” said Murphy in his acceptance speech.
“I’d like to dedicate this to the peacemakers.”
Cillian Murphy won Best Actor in a Leading Role for the film Oppenheimer at this year’s Academy Awards. Source: AAP / Allison Dinner/EPA
Emma Stone wins Best Actress
The most closely watched contest of the Academy Awards went to Emma Stone, who won Best Actress for her performance as Bella Baxter in Poor Things.
In what was seen as the night’s most nail-biting category, Stone won over Lily Gladstone of Killers of the Flower Moon.
The win for Stone, her second best actress Oscar following her 2017 win for La La Land, confirmed the 35-year-old as arguably the pre-eminent big-screen actor of her generation.
The list of women to win Best Actress two or more times is illustrious, including Katharine Hepburn, Frances McDormand, Ingrid Bergman and Bette Davis.
“Oh, boy, this is really overwhelming,” said Stone, who fought back tears and a broken dress during her speech.
Emma Stone takes home best performance by an actress in a leading role for Poor Things at the 96th Academy Awards. Source: AAP / John Locher/AP
Robert Downey Jr takes home first Oscar
Earlier, Downey Jr and The Holdovers star Da’Vine Joy Randolph claimed their first Oscars.
Downey was named Best Supporting Actor for his role as the professional nemesis of J Robert Oppenheimer.
“I’d like to thank my terrible childhood and the Academy, in that order,” Downey joked before he saluted his wife Susan, who he said found him as a “snarly rescue pet” and “loved him back to life”.
Randolph won the Best Supporting Actress trophy for playing a grieving mother and cafeteria worker in the comedy set in a New England boarding school. She shed tears as she accepted her award.
“For so long, I always wanted to be different, and now I realise I just need to be myself,” she said.
“I thank you for seeing me.”
Ryan Gosling performs I’m Just Ken
Jimmy Kimmel, hosting the show for the fourth time, opened the ceremony by complimenting, and taking jabs at, many of the nominees and their films.
The comedian praised Barbie for remaking a “plastic doll nobody even liked anymore” into a feminist icon.
Before the film, there was “a better chance of getting my wife to buy our daughter a pack of Marlboro Reds” than a Barbie, Kimmel said.
Barbie ended the night with one Oscar.
Ryan Gosling, who played Ken in the Barbie movie, donned a hot pink suit, gloves and a cowboy hat to belt out the film’s campy musical number I’m Just Ken, surrounded by male dancers dressed in black.
Ryan Gosling performs I’m Just Ken from the film Barbie during the 96th Oscars. Source: AAP / USA TODAY Network/Sipa USA
Artists wear pins in support of Gaza ceasefire
Amid the upbeat moments, international conflicts, including the Hamas-Israel war and the war in Ukraine, were on the minds of attendees, winners and protesters outside the theatre.
A year after the film Navalny — about the Russian opposition leader, — won the same award, Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol, a harrowing chronicle of the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, won Best Documentary.
A handful of celebrities, including Billie Eilish, Mahershala Ali and Mark Ruffalo, wore red pins calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Sunrise Coigney (left) and Mark Ruffalo (right) arrive for the 96th Academy Awards ceremony, with Ruffalo wearing a red pin in support of a ceasefire in Gaza. Source: AAP / Kyle Grillot/EPA
Before the awards ceremony, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters angered by the war shouted and slowed traffic in the blocks surrounding the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
“While you’re watching, bombs are dropping,” one sign read.
