The Oscars have all been distributed, the diamonds must soon be returned to their owners and the obligatory post-show burgers are being grilled as we speak. I’m off to the Vanity Fair party in my head, better known as “sleep”.
I’d like to thank my family, God (aka Ryan Gosling), my agent, my stylist, my aesthetician, my childhood mentors, my local cinema, my broadband provider, RTÉ, Big Marshmallow and everyone who has helped me achieve my waking dreams. Without you, I would… already be asleep. Special thanks to Rebecca Daly of The Irish Times.
Reports and analysis from our chief film correspondent, Donald Clarke, will be online soon, while some time after dawn breaks we will resume basking in the glow of Jessie Buckley’s historic victory for best actress – not forgetting Richard Baneham’s third Oscar for visual effects – and check in on how everyone is faring in Killarney.
Look, those champagne corks aren’t going to pop themselves.
And that’s the end of the show.
To recap: One Battle After Another won six Oscars: director, adapted screenplay, supporting actor (Sean Penn), casting, editing and best picture. Its main rival, Sinners, came away with four wins: actor in a leading role (Michael B Jordan), original score, original screenplay and cinematography.
Both films were released by Warner Bros, which is currently in the process of being sold to Paramount, with the studio mopping up 11 Oscars overall – the other one was Weapons star Amy Madigan’s triumph in supporting actress.
Frankenstein collected three Oscars – makeup and hairstyling, costume design and production design – and KPop Demon Hunters did the double, taking animated feature and original song.
Marty Supreme, Bugonia, The Secret Agent and Train Dreams came away with nothing, while an elated Jessie Buckley was the lone winner for Hamnet.
Moulin Rouge duo Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor have the honour of presenting the Oscar for best picture.
It goes to... One Battle After Another.
Nominated for 13 awards tonight, it managed to convert six of them into Oscars, including the big one, with producers Adam Somner, Sara Murphy and the now three-time Oscar winner Paul Thomas Anderson collecting their statuettes.
Its cast, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti and Benicio del Toro, are thrilled as they join the producers on stage.
“Let’s have a Martini,” says Anderson. No, Paul, let’s have three.
“Thank you so much, this is really something,” Buckley says after a short bout of hysterical laughter, then she tells her fellow nominees that she wants to work with every single one of them.
They might want to take a little bit of a break from each other first?
“My family, my Irish family, they’re all here,” she continues, scanning the nosebleed seats in vain. Then she rashly says she wants 20,000 more babies with her husband, Freddie Sorensen, with whom she has an eight-month-old daughter, Isla.
She thanks Hamnet author Maggie O’Farrell and director Chloé Zhao, and mentions it is Mother’s Day back home (though not anymore, Jessie, it’s 2.30am) to the delight but also the relief of the Hollywood-based attendees, who still have another two months to sort out their gifts.
“I would like to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart,” she says.
It’s a lovely moment for Buckley. No, we did not bother preparing any “shock loss” headlines. This one was in the bag, and the campaign to rename March 16th as Jessie’s Day starts here.
And now it’s finally time for the Oscar for actress in a leading role. Will it be Jessie Buckley for Hamnet, Jessie Buckley for Hamnet, Jessie Buckley for Hamnet, Jessie Buckley or maybe even Jessie Buckley for Hamnet?
The Oscar goes to… Jessie Buckley for Hamnet.
No plot twist here.
Commiserations to Rose Byrne for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Kate Hudson for Song Sung Blue, Renate Reinsve for Sentimental Value and Emma Stone for Bugonia. Byrne and Reinsve were especially sublime, but there’s only one Jessie Buckley.
She covers her face with her hands and shakes her head before hugging co-star Paul Mescal and director Chloé Zhao, then she does a big, healthy exhale as she makes her way up onto the stage. Like Jordan before her, she receives a standing ovation and seems really touched by it.
It’s the third last award of the night now: actor in a leading role. Will it be Timothée Chalamet for Marty Supreme, Leonardo DiCaprio for One Battle After Another, Ethan Hawke for Blue Moon, Michael B Jordan for Sinners or Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent?
The Oscar goes to… Michael B Jordan for Sinners.
It doesn’t seem like 24 years ago since we first saw a 15-year-old Jordan play Wallace in the first season of The Wire. He was a standout then, and he’s a standout now.
He wins his first Academy Award for playing identical twins Smoke and Stack in Ryan Coogler’s vampire film – in which he gave not one but two enjoyable and stylish performances.
This is a much-deserved Oscar, though it is bad luck for Chalamet, who has now been nominated three times without a win. (His loss has zero to do with his observation that ballet and opera are more niche artforms than cinema and everything to do with the Academy’s love for Jordan in Sinners.)
Jordan looks genuinely stunned.
“God is good,” he begins. “I love you, too, bro. I love you to death,” he then says to Coogler. That’s very vampire of him.
The Oscar for directing goes to… Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another.
Anderson had previously received directing nods for There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza, and a total of 11 nominations across various categories before tonight’s three. But until earlier this evening he had not won a single statuette.
It was one loss after another.
Now he’s a two-time winner, adding the one you suspect he values most – best director – to his adapted screenplay gong.
“You make a guy work hard for one of these,” he says.
The otherwise much-garlanded American has put his time in over a long, auteur-like career and, whatever happens in the best picture race, this best director win feels right.
One Battle After Another is an epic action thriller set in a dystopian near-future version of the US – it is funny, audacious and scarily timely.
The Oscar for original song goes to… Golden from KPop Demon Hunters.
How could it not? The clue was in the lyrics.
Altogether now: “We’re goin’ up, up, up, it’s our moment / You know together we’re glowin’ / Gonna be, gonna be golden.”
Justice for Takedown, I say. (Ask your kids.) It turned out the Academy was ready for K-pop. It just wasn’t ready for a K-pop diss track.
Commiserations to songwriter Diane Warren, who has now lost out for the 17th time. The Academy did give her an honorary Oscar in 2022, but she has not won competitively. Maybe the 18th time will prove the charm?
“No to war, and free Palestine,” says Javier Bardem as he and Priyanka Chopra Jonas present the Oscar for international feature.
It goes to... Sentimental Value from Norway.
This one was always going to be between Joachim Trier’s film and the other best picture nominee in the category, The Secret Agent from Brazil.
Sentimental Value is one of only three best picture nominees that is ostensibly set in the present day and – given the other two are F1 and Bugonia – it is also the one that will be most relatable to most people.
Its unpretentiously written themes of family dysfunction, depression, the legacy of past trauma, the dawn of understanding and the renewal of close relationships are universal. And with its four main cast members – Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgard, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning – all nominated tonight, it is superbly acted.
It also marks Norway’s first win for international feature.
“I’m just a film nerd from Norway. Honestly, this means the world to me,” says Trier, flanked by his proud cast.
Sometimes when I’m in need of a fast and reliable mood-enhancer, I watch back Ryan Gosling’s rendition of I’m Just Ken from the 2024 ceremony.
Golden from KPop Demon Hunters isn’t in the same league, obviously, but it’s still the lift the audience needs at this stage of proceedings. I can see Jessie Buckley in the front row waving one of the glowing bulb things they have given everyone. She’s either totally into it or, you know, she’s a very good actor.
The Oscar for editing goes to... One Battle After Another.
Andy Jurgensen wins in a category that sees Paul Thomas Anderson’s film beat its biggest rival for best picture, Sinners.
The Oscar for cinematography, however, goes to... Sinners.
History is made. Amazingly, Autumn Durald Arkapaw becomes the first woman to win in this category as well as the first black cinematographer to take the award.
She has said she was “blown away” by Ryan Coogler’s “once in a lifetime” script and immediately had visuals in her head of what 1930s-era Clarksdale, Mississippi, should look like on screen.
Hers is a very popular win in the room.
“I really want all the women in the room to stand up, because I feel like I don’t get here without you guys,” she says. Luckily, they oblige.
We’re into the diehards and insomniacs portion of the night courtesy of the annual spiel about what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences does when it’s not hosting the starriest event on the calendar bar Taylor Swift’s forthcoming wedding.
There are still six more awards to go before we get to actress in a leading role, which will be the penultimate award of the night.
Are you flagging? I’m flagging. Only my emergency stash of marshmallows – inspired by some of the dress choices tonight – will save me now.
The cast of Bridesmaids arrive to do some comedy and present the Oscar for original score, which goes to... Ludwig Goransson for Sinners.
This is the second award tonight for Sinners and the third Oscar for Goransson in his career. The Swedish composer previously won for Black Panther and Oppenheimer.
He talks about his love of the guitar and how it led him into the path of Sinners writer-director Ryan Coogler. “Ryan, thank you for your vision,” he says.
Now it’s the award for sound, which goes to... F1, aka F1: The Movie. I’ve seen it, but I’ve also got nothing to say about it at this hour.
Jimmy Kimmel, after some apposite remarks about media censorship, presents the Oscar for documentary short to Joshua Seftel and Conall Jones for All the Empty Rooms.
Then it’s time for the Oscar for documentary feature, which goes to... Mr Nobody Against Putin.
This chilling BBC Storyville documentary, filmed covertly over two years, presents the quiet resistance of Pavel Talankin, a school videographer in a small industrial town in Russia’s Ural Mountains, following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Instructed to send filmed proof to the authorities that his school was obeying a new curriculum of Kremlin diktats, he found himself capturing the ways in which propaganda starts to infiltrate everyday life and children are caught up in the machinery of war. Talankin turned whistleblower, sending the footage via encrypted servers to the Copenhagen-based director David Borenstein.
“Mr Nobody Against Putin is about how you lose your country,” says Borenstein.
“In the name of our future, in the name of all of our children, stop all of these wars now,” says Talankin, who is now in exile from Russia. It’s a sombre moment.
The Oscar for visual effects goes to... Avatar: Fire and Ash.
It’s our first Irish winner of the night, with Richard Baneham, aka Richie, collecting the third Oscar of his career.
He gets up on stage with fellow nominees Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett and says “go raibh míle maith agat” to Avatar director James Cameron.
Baneham, who is from Tallaght, becomes only the second Irish person – after Daniel Day-Lewis – to win three Oscars. Each one of them has been for the Avatar films. It’s a huge achievement.
“Welcome back,” says Conan O’Brien in a tone that strongly implies none of us are getting any younger.
We move onto the Oscar for production design, which goes to... Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau for Frankenstein.
Deverell remembers to thank “Mary Shelley, for the story”, which is nice.
When Harry Met Sally star Billy Crystal arrives to introduce an emotional tribute to director Rob Reiner, who was found dead alongside his wife Michelle Singer Reiner in December. “What fun we had storming the castle,” says Crystal, as a phalanx of other stars, including Meg Ryan, join him on stage.
The In Memoriam segment begins in earnest and features clips of Terence Stamp and Claudia Cardinale. Ireland’s Michèle Burke, a two-time Oscar-winning makeup artist who died last October aged 75, is among those honoured.
Actor Rachel McAdams comes on and pays special tribute to Catherine O’Hara and Diane Keaton, then the reel continues with clips of Graham Greene, Val Kilmer, Robert Duvall and Robert Redford.
Barbra Streisand appears to share her memories of her time working with Redford. “I miss him now more than ever,” she says, then gives us a few bars of The Way We Were.
The Oscar for original screenplay goes to… Ryan Coogler for Sinners.
Coogler’s film, set in the Mississippi Delta in 1932, is indeed original. It’s a blues-infused vampire-horror set in the Jim Crow-era American south that unfolds at its own pace, makes time for some lovely contemplation near the end and in the middle blends frenzied slaying with a vampiric rendition of Rocky Road to Dublin. This is not the kind of thing that traditionally tends to be Oscar-friendly, so more power to Coogler.
This is the first award of the night for his film. How many more will it pick up?
The Oscar for adapted screenplay goes to… Paul Thomas Anderson for One Battle After Another.
PTA wins his first Oscar.
Anderson’s film is “inspired by” Vineland, the 1990 novel by Thomas Pynchon, rather than being a straight adaptation of it. Alarmingly, its vision of the near-future – which features detention camps, government raids, total surveillance and a cabal of white supremacists – does not feel all that wild.
“I’ve got a huge debt of gratitude and love for Thomas Pynchon,” he says. One Battle After Another now has a hat-trick of Oscars and the night is still young.
It’s time for the Oscar for actor in a supporting role. Will it be Benicio Del Toro for One Battle After Another, Jacob Elordi for Frankenstein, Delroy Lindo for Sinners, Sean Penn for One Battle After Another, or Stellan Skarsgard for Sentimental Value?
The Oscar goes to… Sean Penn for One Battle After Another.
Penn – a narrow favourite ahead of Lindo and Skarsgard – chews the scenery in deeply entertaining fashion as the villainous yet pathetic Colonel Steven J Lockjaw in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film.
This is his first win in this category, but he is already a two-time best actor for Mystic River in 2004 and Milk in 2009.
Unsurprisingly, he is not in the Dolby Theatre tonight. He also skipped the Actors and the Baftas and has a track record of not showing up when nominated (though he was there for his two previous victories).
“Sean Penn couldn’t be here this evening, or didn’t want to [come], so I’ll be accepting the award on his behalf,” says the presenter, last year’s winner Kieran Culkin.
One Battle After Another draws level with Frankenstein with two Oscars apiece.
The Oscar for live action short goes to... oh, it’s a tie! A rare tie. Who, apart from awards tabulators PwC, knew this category was going to yield such interest tonight?
The first winners are Sam A Davis and Jack Piatt for The Singers.
The second winners are Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata for Two People Exchanging Saliva.
This is the seventh ever tie in Oscars history and it happened in this same category in 1995. These are facts I’ve just plucked from my mind palace and definitely not from Google.
Paul Mescal is one of the “Fab Five” actors here to introduce the inaugural Academy Award for casting, which is destined to forever take its place in the “other awards presented tonight” segment of the next-day highlights show.
The very first Oscar for casting goes to... Cassandra Kulukundis for One Battle After Another.
She’s understandably delighted and hugs actor Chase Infiniti, who she cast in her first feature role. “I have one before you, which is also crazy,” she tells the Oscar-less (so far) writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson. He laughs, because that is indeed quite funny.
In any other year, the nine nominations garnered by Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein would be more of a headline, but not only did Marty Supreme and Sentimental Value equal that feat this year, they were all bettered by Sinners with 16 and One Battle After Another with 13 nods.
Still, the opportunity now arrives for Netflix’s Mary Shelley adaptation to collect some awards for its trouble.
A sunglasses-free Anna Wintour, the inspiration for The Devil Wears Prada, and the film’s star, Anne Hathaway, duly arrive to present the Oscar for costume design. By all means move at a glacial pace, you know how that thrills me.
The Oscar for costume design goes to... Kate Hawley for Frankenstein.
And the Oscar for makeup and hairstyling goes to... Mike Hill, Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey for Frankenstein.
A Frankenstein double, then. The dresses are beautiful and the makeup team definitely put the hours in. But I think the real message here is that The Devil Wears Prada 2 is in cinemas from May 1st.
The Oscar for animated short goes to... The Girl Who Cried Pearls.
This means, sadly, that Ireland’s John Kelly and Andrew Freedman have not won for their nominated short, the poignant Retirement Plan.
But it’s good news for Canadian duo Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski. “Thank you, Canada!” they controversially say.
The Oscar for animated feature goes to… KPop Demon Hunters.
The most popular Netflix film of all time, with a whopping 500 million views and counting, it always looked set to have a golden night.
Directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans, it follows a female K-pop trio called Huntrix who double-job it as demon slayers and wind up in a musical rivalry of sorts with the devilish Saja Boys. It’s a lot of fun, and Netflix and Sony Pictures Animation have already confirmed a sequel.
“This is for Korea and for Koreans everywhere,” says an emotional Kang.
First up tonight, it’s the Oscar for actress in a supporting role.
Will it be Elle Fanning or Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas for Sentimental Value, Amy Madigan for Weapons, Wunmi Mosaku for Sinners or Teyana Taylor for One Battle After Another?
The Oscar goes to… Amy Madigan for Weapons.
In what was thought to be a three-way battle with Mosaku and Taylor, Madigan has emerged the victor for her role as Aunt Gladys in Zach Cregger’s horror film Weapons.
Her win – which arrives 40 years after her first Oscar nomination for Twice in a Lifetime – is probably recognition for her decade-spanning career more than anything else, but it also marks a rare acting win for a performance in a horror film. Gladys is red-lipped, prone to maniacal laughter and just generally terrifying.
“This is great,” she says, calling it a “dream part”, though it’s more of a nightmare to watch. She goes on to thank her “beloved” husband, Ed Harris.
Conan says he is honoured to be the last human host of the Oscars. “Last year when I hosted, Los Angeles was on fire. But this year everything is going great,” he ventures.
Security is tight at the Dolby Theatre, he says, because of concerns about attacks from the opera and ballet community. (An early Timothée Chalamet joke, not unexpected.)
In Hamnet, Agnes gives birth by herself in the woods, he notes. “Or, as we call that in America, affordable healthcare.”
The monologue will continue until morale improves.
It’s 4pm local time – not local to me, I’m in Finglas – and bewigged host Conan O’Brien is about to run screaming onto the stage at the Dolby Theatre, pursued by children. This skit will mean nothing to anyone who hasn’t seen horror film Weapons.
Who will be overwhelmed by tears? Who will acknowledge the miserable state of the world? Who will be forced to squint in despair at the autocue? Whose speech will be cruelly cut off?
Whose happy-loser face will betray their inevitable disappointment? And who will win viewers’ hearts along with their gold statuette?
Popcorn and therapists on standby, we’re about to find out.
There is potential Oscar history to be made all over the place tonight, but let’s hope the one record that stays intact is the one for longest acceptance speech.
Adrien Brody, best actor winner for The Brutalist, smashed it only last year when his speech went on for five minutes and 40 seconds. It felt longer.
He beat the previous record holder, Greer Garson – who won best actress for Mrs Miniver way back at the 15th Academy Awards in 1942 – by a whole 10 seconds.
Wait, but aren’t all these awards shindigs a bit silly? How can one piece of art be judged against another piece of art?
It will all seem more logical if we remember that the point of any awards ceremony, whether it’s the Sausage Roll Awards or the Oscars, is to market the industry in question as a whole. Never mind who was robbed or who “deserved” it most, the ultimate job tonight is to make everything seem not just glamorous and praiseworthy, but also magical and awe-inspiring in some ineffable way.
Over to Norwegian actor Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, nominated in the supporting actress category for her beautiful performance in Sentimental Value. She told Variety that while she’s grateful for the first-time recognition, she likes to keep things in perspective.
“My value as a person is not reliant on me being nominated or anything or being snubbed,” she said. (She also said the word snub was “insane”).
“It’s such a constructed reality. It’s not a real competition. We made something months ago, and now we’re putting it in a pot, and somebody’s going to choose one.”
This all sounds very reasonable and mature.
Woman-of-the-moment Jessie Buckley has arrived at the Dolby Theatre for what should be a very big night for her – though she might have to wait until after 7pm, or 2am Irish time, for her category to come up in the running order.
She looks as relaxed as it is presumably possible to be in this situation and is wearing a Very Nice Dress*.
Buckley is on track to become Ireland’s first ever winner of the Oscar for actress in a leading role. (Brenda Fricker won the best supporting actress gong in 1990 for My Left Foot.)
*Not a fashion expert. But the internet tells me this red-pink extravaganza is Chanel.
“I can’t get a good joke for Train Dreams,” Conan O’Brien, our host tonight, told predecessor Jimmy Kimmel earlier this week. “It’s a beautiful movie, but no joke sticks to it.”
Judging by the big grin on his face here, he’s got plenty of others in his tux pocket.
The inclusion of Hamnet’s Chloé Zhao stopped the director category from becoming a clean sweep for men this year, but there are some who argue that she shouldn’t have been the only woman director to make the cut.
“So many of the best films I saw this year were made by women,” said actor Natalie Portman in an interview at the Sundance festival in January. “You just see the barriers at every level because so many were not recognised at awards time.”
The “extraordinary” films Portman said were “not getting the accolades they deserve” were Sorry, Baby (written and directed by Eva Victor, its non-binary-identifying star), Shih-Ching Tsou’s Left-Handed Girl, Nia DaCosta’s Hedda and Mona Fastvold’s The Testament of Ann Lee, all of which were completely shut out of the Oscar nominations.
To this list I would add the aforementioned If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, written and directed by Mary Bronstein, which picked up just a single nomination for best actress.
Incidentally, we might see our first ever female cinematographer winner if Autumn Durald Arkapaw takes the prize for Sinners.
Awards presenters tonight include last year’s acting winners Adrien Brody, Mikey Madison, Kieran Culkin and Zoe Saldana.
We will also see the traditional smattering of people who could conceivably have been nominated for films that got a best picture nod, among them Chase Infiniti from One Battle After Another, Gwyneth Paltrow from Marty Supreme and Will Shakespeare himself, Paul Mescal.
The brilliant Rose Byrne, who was thought to be Jessie Buckley’s biggest rival for best actress before drifting out of contention, has arrived on the red carpet.
The Australian star of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You – in which she puts in a searing, breathless performance as an overwhelmed mother – is expected to take part in a mid-ceremony Bridesmaids reunion, specially timed just for when everybody had finally forgotten about Bridesmaids.
Here are some things to expect from tonight’s show, which we must – at least until YouTube takes over the rights from 2029 – refer to as the Oscars telecast.
Our host is “100 per cent Irish” Conan O’Brien, who survived the 2025 ceremony intact enough to be hired for a second consecutive year and has been out workshopping his script in comedy clubs. Yes, we can disown him if he bombs.
In a valiant bid to keep the running time down – or, alternatively, in a stunning act of Nick Cave erasure – only two of the five original song nominees will be performed: I Lied to You from Sinners and the irrepressible Golden from KPop Demon Hunters.
The producers have, however, sensibly decided to run an extended In Memoriam segment to pay tribute to recently departed stars, including Robert Redford, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall, Catherine O’Hara, Terence Stamp and actor-director Rob Reiner.
Happily, we will see clips of the acting nominees emoting their best in the films they’re in, not those cringe-inducing praise-fests from an assembly of random A-listers (a recent Oscars telecast horror known as the “Fab Five”).
A total of 10 nominations involve Irish productions or talent.
Alongside the ones we mentioned earlier, Maggie O’Farrell is nominated for adapted screenplay for Hamnet (together with its director, Chloé Zhao). She’s an early arrival at the Dolby Theatre tonight.
Meanwhile, Blue Moon – filmed at Ardmore Studios with Irish production company Wild Atlantic Pictures on board – received two nominations (Ethan Hawke for best actor and Robert Kaplow for best original screenplay).
Representatives of Screen Ireland, the State’s development agency for the film industry, were in Los Angeles this week on a trade mission to promote Ireland as a location for co-production, discussing “opportunities for increased collaboration” at meetings with Netflix, Sony, Amazon MGM and Paramount, among others.
Sometimes, as Conor Capplis explains in his feature on Ireland doubling for overseas locations, this can involve making the Gaiety Theatre look like Broadway – no mean feat – or transforming a dingy Dublin alley into, well, a dingy New York alley.
It has been a long journey from Hamnet publicity duties to campaign trail madness for Jessie Buckley, who has also been out promoting new film The Bride! of late. I wouldn’t blame her if she wanted to lie down in a dark room after this.
Her status as clear favourite for best actress springs not only from her compelling performance as Agnes Hathaway in Hamnet – I think the technical term is “barnstorming” – but also from her clean sweep of all the main precursor awards to the Oscars. She won at Critics’ Choice, Bafta, Screen Actors Guild (now the Actors) and the Golden Globes.
This hasn’t been achieved in her category since Renée Zellweger in 2020 for the biopic Judy (a film Buckley coincidentally co-starred in), and Zellweger did indeed go on to win the Academy Award. It will be the Oscars shock of the century if Buckley doesn’t do the same.
She has recently spoken about how her love of music and theatre helped her cope with an eating disorder and depression as a teenager.
“You know, you can’t walk through life not being affected, but you can transform that into something that allows you to be more human and alive in the way that you want to be,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.
In her native Killarney, there is much pride on display, as Anne Lucey reports.
Patrick who? St Patrick, you say? What’s he in again?
It’s the Oscars! The 98th Academy Awards will soon be shimmering onto screen live from sunny Hollywood, where the temperature is 29 degrees and many big names will shortly be sweating on the red carpet – if only because Ireland’s Jessie Buckley is one of the few clear favourites to win.
Killarney’s finest is poised to become the first ever Irish winner of actress in a leading role and will – “barring Los Angeles sliding into the sea”, as our chief film correspondent, Donald Clarke, puts it – collect her Oscar for Hamnet.
But the other key awards are either wide open or ajar just enough to promise an unusually decent ratio of surprises to inevitabilities in a ceremony that begins on RTÉ One at the almost-civilised hour of 11pm.
The local start time of 4pm means no vampires will be braving the Dolby Theatre, though vampire-horror Sinners does arrive with a record-smashing 16 nominations. Has Ryan Coogler’s film enough momentum to translate those nods into a mantelpiece of statuettes?
Or will it be one bauble after another for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, the narrow frontrunner for best picture?
Is Buckley’s biggest rival for the title “most unstoppable force on the night” the trio of Rumi, Mira and Zoey, better known as the KPop Demon Hunters? Or is it, perhaps, Dubliner Richard Baneham, a two-time winner for his visual effects work on the Avatar films, who is in line to win his third Oscar tonight for Avatar: Fire and Ash?
With Bugonia – produced by Dublin-based Element Pictures – picking up a quartet of nominations, and John Kelly and Andrew Freedman in the running for best animated short for Retirement Plan, the green wave is back in town and vying to make history once again.
So, welcome to the Unpredictable Oscars. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night (except for Jessie).
One link after another
- Donald Clarke predicts who will win and who should win
- Oscars 2026: Everything you need to know
- All of Ireland’s Academy Awards wins
- Where to watch Hamnet, Sinners, One Battle After Another and all the other best picture nominees
