Night of Oscar glory for golden girls!
Veteran stars Curtis, 64, and Michelle Yeoh, 60, steal show
MICHELLE Yeoh – a ballerina turned beauty queen turned action hero turned Oscar winner – was in no doubt of the significance of the 95th Academy Awards last night.
‘Tonight, we frickin’ broke that glass ceiling,’ she said. ‘We need this because there are so many that have felt unseen, unheard. Not just the Asian community.
‘This is for the Asian community, but for anybody who’s been identified as a minority. We deserve to be seen.
‘We deserve to have equal opportunity so we can have a seat at the table. That’s all we’re asking for. Give us that opportunity, let us prove that we’re worth it.’
Ms Yeoh, 60, made history as the first person of Asian descent to win Best Actress for her performance as Evelyn Wang in Everything Everywhere All at Once. Her co-star Ke Huy Quan was the second Asian to get the Supporting Actor award and the first Oscar winner of Vietnamese descent.
It was a night of resurgence and revival, of comeback kings and queens, and a night when actors of a certain age found that cherished long-held dreams came true.
Of the four winners for Best Actor/Actress and Best Supporting Actor/Actress, all were over 50, all were returning to the spotlight after periods out of favour, or out of the industry. And all were huge sentimental favourites with the crowd at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
All were also first-time nominees. Jamie Lee Curtis, the daughter of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, started acting when she was a teenager and was rewarded aged 64 with her first Oscar nomination – Best Supporting Actress – and first win.
She dedicated it to her parents, saying: ‘This is the thrill of my life. My mother and my father were both nominated for Oscars in different categories and I just won an Oscar.’
Afterwards she added: ‘I don’t believe in a world where there are a bunch of people up there looking down on us. I believe that we are them with our actions and our deeds and we pass them on to our children and live through them. I am a product of them and a proud product of them and I know that they would be incredibly proud of me.’
Ms Yeoh was a first time nominee for her role as laundry owner Evelyn Wang, and said of her award which, like Ms Curtis’s, came after a 40year career: ‘ Dream big, and dreams do come true – and ladies, don’t let anyone tell you that you are past your prime.’ Ms Yeoh said she would be bringing the little gold man home to visit her 84-year- old mother in Malaysia.
She spent a relatively brief time at the parties after the Oscars, saying at around 2am at the film’s party in Soho House, West Hollywood: ‘ I’m going back to my place and going for a long swim – I’m going to do it now.’ She was mobbed all night by well-wishers, Killing Eve actress Sandra Oh among them. Brendan Fraser, who won Best Actor for his performance as obese teacher Charlie in The Whale, had cause to celebrate that truth in his own life as he pulled off the final triumph in his ‘Brenaissance.’
The once hunky leading man, the star of the George of the Jungle films and The Mummy, he wept throughout his acceptance speech and again backstage. British actress Lily James said that she had been moved to tears by his performance and said that she was hoping to bump into him at the Vanity Fair party in the Wallis Annenberg Centre for the Performing Arts.
‘He is the most serene, beautiful person,’ she said.
Perhaps the most astonishing story belongs to former child actor Ke Huy Quan. His first role was in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1984 as a child actor playing Short Round. He returned to acting only three years ago.
On Sunday night he was honoured for his performance as Waymond Wang, in the multiverse hopping, genre-busting action comedy film Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Quan was saluted with an ovation, kissed the Oscar and wept. He said: ‘Thank you! My Mum is 84 years old and she’s at home watching.
‘Mum I just won an Oscar. My journey started on a boat. I spent a year in a refugee camp and somehow I ended up here on Hollywood’s biggest stage.
‘This, this is the American dream.’ Quan’s habit of grabbing delighted selfies with every famous person he has met over the course of the Oscars campaign has made him probably the most beloved figure of this year’s event.
Top Gun, nominated for six ix Oscars including best picture, re, only took home one – for or sound. Perhaps its star Tom m Cruise had divined that it wasn’t going to be his night ht and therefore stayed away.
As ever, Sunday night marked ed a high point for parties in town. n. Jay Z threw one at the Chateau afe Marmont with wife Beyonce which was a seriously sly hot ticket.
Madonna’s manager Guy uy Oseary also hosted a big party ty in the Hollywood Hills although gh by 2am it was apparently getting eted dangerously overcrowded and organisers stopped organising ney shuttles to it.
Elvis’ granddaughter Riley Keough and the British actress ss Suki Waterhouse, who star ar together in the TV show Daisy sy Jones and the Six, were among ng those at Vanity Fair party – which seems to have become e the one everyone passes through on their way to another bash.