‘I’m Still Here’ Star Fernanda Torres’ Charmed Night at the Oscars
Ever since Walter Salles’ Brazilian political drama I’m Still Here debuted to acclaim at last September’s Venice Film Festival, Brazilian star Fernanda Torres has been cutting a historic path through Hollywood’s awards season. That continued Sunday night at the 2025 Oscars, where the 59-year-old South America screen diva was nominated for best actress for her powerful performance as grieving mother of five whose politician husband has disappeared amid the darkest days of 1970s Brazil’s military dictatorship.
Torres didn’t take home the Oscar for best actress, though I’m Still Here significantly won the best international feature film category. On the carpet before the ceremony, she dazzled in an embellished Chanel dress, cementing her star quality on the big night.
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Going into the ceremony, Torres was considered a longshot against best actress category frontrunner Demi Moore for The Substance which later went to Mikey Madison for Anora. But in many ways Torres and her I’m Still Here collaborators had already won a far bigger prize, since the film, a runaway blockbuster in Brazil and based on painful real-life history, has provoked a nationwide reckoning with the country’s authoritarian past and near present.
Alongside the best actress nom, I’m Still Here was also up for best picture and was nominated (and won) in the best international feature category.
Torres is only the second Brazilian to be nominated for an acting Oscar. The first was her own mother — 95-year-old Fernanda Montenegro, perhaps the only actor more legendary than her daughter in the South American country. Montenegro was nominated for 1998’s Central Station, also directed by Salles, and lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow. Montenegro also appears in I’m Still Here, playing an older version of the lead character inhabited by her daughter.
Montenegro wasn’t in attendance during the 2025 Oscars, though her presence wasn’t entirely absent. After I’m Still Here grabbed the win for international feature film, director Walter Salles’ sang praises to Torres and Montenegro during his acceptance speech, where he paid tribute to Eunice Paiva, the woman who inspired the film that they both portray at varying moments in her life.
Torres awards campaign wasn’t without a little drama, too. Fellow nominee Karla Sofía Gascón, star of Netflix’s multi-nominated Emilia Pérez, publicly complained that Torres’ legions of Brazlian fans were bullying her online — before the Spanish star’s own racist tweets derailed her campaign. One theory that circulated among Hollywood award pundritry posited that Gascón’s scandals were unearthed by those fans, who combed through years of her Spanish-language social media posts looking for dirt.
Nonetheless, Torres spoke highly of Gascón in an Instagram video shared Jan. 25 in which she urged fans of I’m Still Here to avoid speaking negatively about Gascón and the other best actress nominees Demi Moore, Mikey Madison and Cynthia Erivo. Amid her scandal, Gascón seemingly skipped walking the Oscars red carpet and was made fun of by host Conan O’Brien in his opening monologue.
At the Golden Globes in January, Torres was the surprise winner of the best actress in the drama category, beating out boldface names including Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Tilda Swinton, Pamela Anderson, and Kate Winslet. After shaking off her surprise at finding herself at the podium, Torres dedicated her Golden Globe win to her mother.
In I’m Still Here, Torres plays Eunice Paiva, wife to former Brazilian congressman Rubens Paiva. When Rubens is “disappeared” by the Brazilian regime, during the country’s military dictatorship — which ran from 1964 to 1985 — Paiva reinvents herself as a human rights lawyer and activist, fighting for justice for herself and families like hers. The film is based on a memoir written by one of Paiva’s sons.
I’m Still Here‘s historic Oscars moment was major news and widely watched back in Torres’ native Brazil.“[The Oscars] fall in the middle of Carnival, so everyone will be out celebrating — but all will stop for the ceremony,” Marcelo Rubens Paiva, whose 2015 memoir of the same name served as the source material for I’m Still Here, told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview in February. “It will be like the moon landing.”
The 97th Academy Awards, hosted by Conan O’Brien, aired live coast-to-coast on Sunday, March 2, from the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood on ABC and Hulu. See the star-studded Oscars red carpet 2025 arrivals and the full winners list here.
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