'I’m Still Here' Star Fernanda Torres’ Golden Globe Win Made Mother-Daughter History
At the 2025 Golden Globe Awards last night, Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres made history. Not only did the I’m Still Here star become the first Brazilian actress to win a Golden Globe in the Best Actress category, but she followed her own mother Fernanda Montenegro’s footsteps, who was the first to be nominated for the award 26 years ago.
“I want to dedicate it to my mother,” Torres said as she took the stage in shock. “She was here 25 years ago. And this is proof that art can endure through life, even in difficult moments like this amazing story.”
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“There’s something that is happening now in the world with so much fear and this is a film that helped us to think how to survive in tough times like this,” she continued.
26 years before I’m Still Here‘s astounding success, Montenegro received a nomination for her role in 1998’s Central Station. While she lost the Best Actress nod, the movie, which was also directed by I’m Still Here‘s director Walter Salles, won in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
On Instagram, their family members shared Montenegro’s reaction to her daughter’s win. As presenter Viola Davis announces Torres’ name, the 95-year-old raises her arms in pure happiness. Between hugs with her family, she claps in excitement.
“How incredible it is to see history happen ?? ???? ??,” wrote one commenter to the video. “She’s doing justice for her mother, I’m gonna cry,” wrote another.
Ahead of yesterday’s major win, the production team on the movie was already excited with the nomination. “It’s an emotional moment because 25 years ago, Fernanda Montenegro was nominated for Central Station and Central Station was also nominated,” Salles told Deadline. “And then this year it happens again with a film that is very dear to us and Fernanda is also recognized as her mother was, so it makes this moment really unique for us.”
I’m Still Here takes place in Rio de Janeiro during the Brazilian dictatorship in the 1970s and follows the real story of mom of five Eunice Paiva (Torres) after her husband Rubens (played by Selton Mello) is taken into questioning by the military and never returns.
The movie, which got a 10-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival in September was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Non-English Language Movie alongside All We Imagine as Light from India, Emilia Peréz from France, The Girl With the Needle from Poland, The Seed of the Sacred Fig from Germany and Vermiglio from Italy. Emilia Peréz took home the award.
Torres competed in the Best Actress category against major Hollywood powerhouses including Pamela Anderson for The Last Showgirl, Angelina Jolie for Maria, Nicole Kidman for Babygirl, Tilda Swinton for The Room Next Door and Kate Winslet for Lee.
If you looked at that list and thought that Torres had her work cut out for her, you might’ve been right, but she had much more than Brazilian pride on her side. After all, when I watched this movie two weeks ago in the crowded basement theatre of the Angelika in Manhattan’s East Village, I cried, essentially, from the beginning to the end. Sure, watching the scenes in Rio de Janeiro might’ve hit a particular nerve for me, but Torres’ performance had the whole packed theater in awe.
“Torres is a model of eloquent restraint, showing Eunice’s private pain and her necessary fortitude by the subtlest of means,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter‘s Chief Film Critic David Rooney.
In 1998, Montenegro, who also plays an Alzheimer’s-riddled older version of Eunice in the movie, starred in Central Station (or Central to Brasil in Portuguese). In the movie, she plays former schoolteacher Dora who helps a young boy find his dad after his mom is killed in a car crash.
For her role, Montenegro was nominated for Best Actress in a Drama Movie at the Golden Globes in 1999. 25 years later, her daughter has reached the same feat.
“My mom is impressive, isn’t she? She’s a marvel,” Torres gushed of her mom to Globo in November. “She has inside of her all the characters that she’s played. An actor accumulates inside of themselves the emotional experiences that they live through.”
Despite not winning the Golden Globe in 1999, Montenegro’s performance also gave her her first-ever Oscar nomination – the first-ever given to an actress from her country.
Montenegro ended up losing to Gwyneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love, but even some Hollywood stars didn’t keep quiet about how she deserved to win.
“I’ve never understood how you could honestly compare performances, you know?” Glenn Close once told Popcorn, per IndieWire. “I remember the year Gwyneth Paltrow won over that incredible actress who was in Central Station and I thought, ‘What?’ It doesn’t make sense.”
Now that Torres took home the prize, it’s like we’re seeing Brazilian cinematographic history happen right in front of our eyes!
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