Emma Stone wins the Oscar for Best Actress 2024 for Poor Things

Emma Stone won the Best Actress Oscar for the second time in her career on Sunday, for her performance in Poor Things. Stone’s latest Academy Awards success comes just ten years after her first nomination. In 2014 and 2018, she was a candidate for Best Supporting Actress for Birdman and The Favourite, respectively, and in 2016 she showed all of Hollywood that she was capable of being the queen of the industry by winning Best Actress for La La Land.

Stone, who secured the 2024 award ahead of bookmakers’ favourite Lily Gladstone, did so thanks to a film that is an ode to freedom and surrealism by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. She plays Bella Baxter, a young woman hungry for the world who escapes with a lawyer to live a libertarian journey; her peculiarity is her origin, her life force: she is born by being brought back to life by a doctor who puts an infant brain in her head. It’s both a Victorian and current version of Frankenstein, of the modern Prometheus - one that Stone manages to embody with chilling naturalness.

“The best part about making movies”

In an emotional acceptance speech, the 35-year-old said: “This is not about me. It’s about a team that came together to make something greater than the sum of its parts. And that is the best part about making movies. It’s all of us together, and I am so deeply honoured share this with every cast member, with every crew member, with every single person who poured their love and their care and their brilliance into the making of this film.”

Stone also paid tribute to her fellow Best Actress nominees. “Sandra [Hüller], Annette Bening, Carey [Mulligan], Lily, I share this with you,” she said. “I’m in awe of you, and it has been such an honour to do all this together. I hope we get to keep doing more together.”

Technical specifications

Original title: Poor Things

Year: 2023

Duration: 141 minutes

Country: Ireland

Direction: Yorgos Lanthimos

Screenplay: Tony McNamara (novel: Alasdair Gray)

Music: Jerskin Fendrix

Photography: Robbie Ryan

Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, Jerrod Carmichael, Kathryn Hunter, Margaret Qualley, Hanna Schygulla, Vicki Pepperdine, Suzy Bemba, Tom Stourton, Wayne Brett

Production companies: Film4 Productions, Element Pictures, TSG Entertainment

Distributor: Searchlight Pictures, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Genre: fantasy, science fiction, comedy, drama, erotic, magical realism

Winners of the Oscar for Best Actress in the 21st century