Oscars 2024: Emma Stone wins Best Actress for ‘Poor Things’

Emma Stone picked up her second Oscar for Best Actress Sunday night for her role as Bella Baxter in director Yorgos Lanthimos’ film Poor Things.

Her speech got off to a funny start, with Emma acknowledging her broken dress, noting she thought it happened during “I’m Just Ken,” the show-stopping number by her La La Land co-star Ryan Gosling.

She then acknowledged the five Best Actress winners who announced the nominees, last year’s winner Michelle Yeoh, Sally Field, Charlize Theron, Jessica Lange and Jennifer Lawrence.  She then turned to her fellow nominees, Annette Bening, Sandra Hüller, Carey Mulligan and Lily Gladstone.

“I share this with you. I am in awe of you and it has been such an honor to do all of this together,” Stone said through tears. “I hope we get to keep doing more together.” 

She then recalled some advice she got from her director ahead of the show.

“The other night I was panicking … that maybe something like this could happen and Yorgos said to me, ‘Please take yourself out of it,’” she said. “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 and that is the best part about making movies.” 

The Best Actress category was considered one of the few tight races of the evening as many experts suggested it could go to either Stone or Gladstone, who already won the Golden Globe, BAFTA and the Screen Actors Guild awards for Killers of the Flower Moon.

Emma previously won Best Actress for 2016’s La La Land and was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Birdman and The Favourite. She was also nominated this year for producing Poor Things.

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