Oscars: Nomadland’ Makes History, and Anthony Hopkins, in Upset, Wins Best Actor

Chloé Zhao’s film about the damaged American dream won best picture, best director and best actress. The late Chadwick Boseman, who was considered the frontrunner for best actor, was beat out by Hopkins.
Frances McDormand, who won best actress, on stage as “Nomadland” picked up best picture.Credit...ABC, via Associated Press

By Brooks Barnes and Nicole Sperling
NY TIMES


LOS ANGELES — “Nomadland,” Chloé Zhao’s meditation on grief and the damaged American dream, won Academy Awards for best picture, director and actress at Sunday night’s surreal ceremony, a stage show broadcast on television about films mostly distributed on the internet.

It was a sleepy event until the final minutes, when academy voters served up a dramatic twist ending: Anthony Hopkins, 83, won the best actor Oscar for “The Father,” beating out the late Chadwick Boseman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), who was the runaway favorite going into the night, having been lauded by film organizations and critics’ groups for months.

Frances McDormand was named best actress for “Nomadland,” the third time she has won the award. “Nomadland” gave Searchlight Pictures its fourth best-picture prize in eight years, an astounding run unrivaled by any other specialty film company. “We give this one to our wolf,” McDormand said as she held the best picture statuette, an apparent reference to Michael Wolf Snyder, a “Nomadland” sound mixer who took his own life in March. She then unleashed an unbridled wolf howl.

2021 Oscar Winners: Complete List

In many ways, the 93rd Oscars amounted to a celebration of diversity, an issue that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has emphasized in wake of the #OscarsSoWhite protests of 2015 and 2016, when its acting nominees were all white. This year, nine of the 20 acting nominations went to people of color.

Daniel Kaluuya was recognized as best supporting actor for playing the Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in “Judas and the Black Messiah.” “Bro, we out here!” Kaluuya shouted in joy before changing gears and crediting Hampton (“what a man, what a man”) and ending with the cri de coeur, “When they played divide and conquer, we say unite and ascend.”
ImageDaniel Kaluuya accepting the Oscar for best supporting actor.Credit...A.M.P.A.S/Via Reuters

The supporting actress award went to Yuh-Jung Youn for playing a comically cantankerous grandmother in “Minari.” She was the first Korean performer to win an acting Oscar, and only the second Asian woman; the first was Miyoshi Umeki, a Japanese-born American actress who was recognized in 1958 for playing a bride who encounters racism in “Sayonara.”

“I’m luckier than you,” Youn said to Glenn Close, a supporting actress nominee, to laughter. (Peter O’Toole and Close now jointly hold the record for most nominations in the acting categories without a win — eight apiece.)

In other firsts, Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson became the first Black women to win the makeup and hairstyling Oscar, a prize they shared with Sergio Lopez-Rivera for their work on “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” “I know that one day it won’t be unusual or groundbreaking,” Neal said about her win. “It will just be normal.” Ann Roth won for her “Ma Rainey” costume design, becoming, at 89, the oldest woman ever to win an Oscar.

Zhao, who is Chinese, became only the second woman, and the first woman of color, to win the award for best director. (Kathryn Bigelow was celebrated in 2010 for directing “The Hurt Locker.”)

“I’ve been thinking a lot lately of how I keep going when things get hard,” she said in her acceptance speech, referring to a Chinese poem she used to read with her father that began with the phrase “People at birth are inherently good.”

“This is for anyone who has the faith and courage to hold on to the goodness in themselves and to hold onto the goodness in each other,” she said. (Emerald Fennell was also nominated for “Promising Young Woman,” making this the first time two women had been nominated.)

“Soul,” the Pixar film about a Black musician stuck between Earth and the afterlife, added to the celebration of diversity, winning best animated film and score. The Walt Disney Company, which owns Pixar and Searchlight, won a total of five awards.

Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller won the adapted screenplay prize for “The Father,” about the ravages of dementia. “Another Round,” about middle-age men who decide to get drunk daily, won the Academy Award for international feature film (previously referred to as foreign-language film). The Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg dedicated “Another Round” to his daughter, Ida, who was killed in a car crash in 2019.

The academy did decide to hand out two honorary Oscars during the primary show. (Since 2009, honorary statuettes have been awarded during a nontelevised banquet in the fall.) The nonprofit Motion Picture & Television Fund, which underwrites a nursing home and retirement village for aging and ailing “industry” people (actors, executives, choreographers, lighting technicians, camera operators), received one. The organization, founded in 1921 by stars like Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, also provides a wide range of other services to Hollywood seniors.

The second went to Tyler Perry, who the academy cited as a “cultural influence extending far beyond his work as a filmmaker.” Perry, of course, started his entertainment career as a playwright. Since ending his popular “Madea” film series in 2019, Perry has focused on making television shows like “Bruh,” “Sistahs” and “The Oval” for BET. He owns a studio in Atlanta.