Emma Stone was crowned the Best Actress in a Leading Role winner at the 2024 Oscars for her performance in Poor Things, and she gave a special shout-out to her family.
“I know I have to wrap up, but I really just want to thank my family,” Stone, 35, said toward the end of her acceptance speech on Sunday, March 10. “My mom, my brother Spencer, my dad, my husband, Dave [McCary], I love you so much. And most importantly, my daughter who is going to be 3 in three days and has turned our lives technicolor. I love you bigger than the whole sky, my girl.”
Stone was nominated alongside Nyad’s Annette Bening, Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone, Anatomy of a Fall’s Sandra Hüller and Maestro’s Carey Mulligan at the awards show, which was held at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday.
“This is really overwhelming,” the winner said as she initially took the stage. “Sorry, I’m — OK, my voice is also a little gone. Whatever. The women on the stage, you are all incredible, and the women in this category, Sandra, Annette, Carey, Lily, I share this with you. I’m in awe of you. It’s been such an honor to do all of this together, I hope we get to keep doing more together. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
Stone found her words while thinking about Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos‘ advice.
“The other night, I was panicking — as you can kind of see, happens a lot — that maybe something like this could happen and Yorgos said to me, ‘Please take yourself out of it.’ And he was right, because it’s not about me. It’s about a team that came together to make something greater than the sum of its parts.”
She went on to thank her cast, crew and director. “Yorgos, thank you for the gift of a lifetime in Bella Baxter,” she gushed. “I’m forever thankful for you. Thank you for inviting all of us to be members of this team. Thank you.”
Ahead of the ceremony, Stone was the only previous Academy Award winner in the category after earning Best Actress for La La Land in 2017. Her other past nominations include Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Birdman in 2015 and The Favourite in 2019, while she was also up for Best Picture this year for her work as a producer on Poor Things.
Bening, 65, has been nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role on three other occasions: for American Beauty in 2000, Being Julia in 2005 and The Kids Are All Right in 2011. She also received a nod for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for The Grifters in 1991. Mulligan, 38, similarly earned nominations for Best Actress in a Leading Role for An Education in 2010 and Promising Young Woman in 2021.
For Gladstone, 37, and Hüller, 45, this marked their first-ever Oscar nods.
Gladstone has been a 2024 awards-season favorite. In January, she won Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama at the 2024 Golden Globe Awards, defeating Bening, Mulligan, Hüller, Priscilla’s Cailee Spaeny and Past Lives’ Greta Lee. The following month, she bested Stone, Bening, Mulligan and Barbie’s Margot Robbie in the Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role category at the 2024 Screen Actors Guild Awards.
“It’s so easy to distance ourselves. It’s so easy to close off, to stop feeling, and we all bravely keep feeling, and that humanizes people. That brings people out of the shadows; it brings visibility,” Gladstone said in her SAG acceptance speech. “Thank you for all of the compassionate souls in this room and all of the storytellers here tonight. Keep speaking your truths, and keep speaking up for each other.”
Although Gladstone beat Stone at the SAG Awards, Stone was not without a victory of her own, winning Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy against Robbie, Fallen Leaves’ Alma Pöysti, The Color Purple’s Fantasia Barrino, No Hard Feelings’ Jennifer Lawrence and May December’s Natalie Portman at the Golden Globes.
Stone noted in her acceptance speech that she views Poor Things as a romantic comedy, “in the sense of Bella falls in love with life itself, rather than a person. She accepts the good and the bad in equal measure, and that really made me look at life differently. All of it counts, and all of it is important.”
