Sean Baker, Adrien Brody & More Record-Setters at the 2025 Oscars
Sean Baker won four Oscars for Anora at the 2025 Academy Awards, which were presented on Sunday (March 2) at the Dolby Theater at Ovation Hollywood. This tied Walt Disney’s 1954 record for most Oscars won in one night.
Baker won best picture, best director, best original screenplay and best editing. At the Oscars in February 1954, Walt Disney won four Oscars (all for different films): best documentary feature (The Living Desert), best documentary short subject (The Alaskan Eskimo), best cartoon short subject (Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom) and best two-reel short subject (Bear Country).
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Anora won five awards in all (Mikey Madison also won best actress), which made it the night’s most awarded film. The Brutalist was second with three awards.
Adrien Brody, Kieran Culkin and Zoe Salda?a won the other three acting awards. But this being Billboard, let’s turn first to the winners in the music categories.
“El Mal” from Emilia Pérez won best original song. It’s the second time in three years that the award has gone to song in a language other than English. “El Mal” is sung in Spanish. “Naatu Naatu” from RRR, an Indian Telugu-language song, won in this category two years ago.
Four other such songs have won over the years – “Mona Lisa” from Captain, Carey, U.S.A. (which is performed in Spanish by a troubadour in the 1950 film, though it is best known for Nat King Cole’s smash cover version in English); “Never on Sunday” from the film of the same name (which is performed in Greek in the 1960 film); “Al Otro Lado Del Río” from The Motorcycle Diaries (which is performed in Spanish in the 2004 film); and “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire 14 years ago (which was performed in Hindi).
“El Mal” was co-written by Clément Ducol and Camille, who are a romantic couple, and Jacques Audiard, who directed the film. Ducol and Camille are the sixth romantic couple to win in this category following Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager, Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Sainte-Marie, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, and Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez.
Audiard is just the second person in Oscar history, and the first in nearly 50 years, to win an Oscar for writing or co-writing a song from a film he directed. The first was Joe Brooks, who wrote “You Light Up My Life,” which won in 1978.
“El Mal” beat the latest song by Diane Warren, who has now gone 0-16 in the category, and two-time winner Elton John, who went home from an Oscar ceremony where he was a nominee without an Oscar for the first time. With her 0-16 track record, Warren ties sound and sound mixing specialist Greg P. Russell for the most nominations without a competitive win (yet).
Daniel Blumberg won best original score for The Brutalist. This was one of two awards for Brady Corbet’s film, which stars Adrien Brody as a Hungarian Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and builds a new life in America. Blumberg, 35, is an English artist, musician, songwriter and composer. In addition to composing all the music, Blumberg served as producer and recording engineer and played piano, harmonica, keyboards and synthesizer.
Adrien Brody won his second Oscar for best actor for The Brutalist, 22 years after he won his first for The Pianist. He is just the third actor to win twice in that category since 2000, following Sean Penn (Mystic River and Milk) and Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood and Lincoln).
Mikey Madison won best actress for playing the title role in Anora. The 25-year-old actress won in what was seen as a close race with Demi Moore, 62, nominated for The Substance. Madison is the youngest winner in this category since Jennifer Lawrence won at age 22 in 2013 for Silver Linings Playbook.
Kieran Culkin won best supporting actor for A Real Pain. He’s the first winner in that category from a movie that wasn’t nominated for best picture since Christopher Plummer won in 2012 for Beginners. His co-star in the film, Jesse Eisenberg, was nominated for best original screenplay, but lost to Sean Baker for Anora.
Zoe Salda?a won best supporting actress for Emilia Pérez, becoming the fifth actress to win in this category for a musical performance since 2000. She follows Catherine Zeta-Jones for Chicago (2003), Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls (2007), Anne Hathaway for Les Misérables (2013) and Ariana DeBose for West Side Story (2022). Salda?a also became the first actor of Dominican descent to win an Oscar.
Salda?a performed the best original song winner, “El Mal,” in Emilia Pérez. This is only the fifth time an actor has won a competitive acting Oscar for a performance that included singing an Oscar-winning song.
Emilia Pérez won just two awards from its 13 nominations – best original song and best supporting actress. Netflix’s crime musical holds an unwelcome Oscar record: It won fewer Oscars than any other film that received 13 or more nominations. The old record was held by The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which won three awards from its 13 nods in 2009.
Paul Tazewell won best costume design for Wicked. He’s just the second Black costume designer – and the first Black man – to win in this category. Ruth E. Carter is the only other Black costume designer to win here. She won for both Black Panther and its sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Flow won the Oscar for best animated feature, becoming the first indie film to win in this category. It was also the first Latvian film to win in any category.
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