Oscars: A Surprised Emma Stone Tells Lily Gladstone She Is “In Awe” of Her During Best Actress Speech

Emma Stone told fellow best actress nominee Lily Gladstone she was “in awe” of her while accepting the award for best actress at the 2024 Oscars on Sunday night.

Stone acknowledged all of her fellow nominees but took an extra moment to address Gladstone, whom many pundits had expected to win the award after collecting several previous honors for her performance in Killers of the Flower Moon. “I share this with you,” she said to Gladstone. “I am in awe of you. And it’s been such an honor to do all this together; I hope we get to do more together.”

Stone won the award for her performance as Bella Baxter in Poor Things, a film for which she also served as producer. Her second collaboration with director Yorgos Lanthimos, the movie is screenwriter Tony McNamara’s adaptation of the 1992 Frankenstein-inspired novel of the same name by Alasdair Gray.

Stone teared up throughout her speech, taking deep breaths before thanking Lanthimos and the rest of her film’s team. “It’s not about me,” she said. “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, is all of us together. I am so deeply honored to 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.”

To Lanthimos specifically, she said, “Thank you for the gift of a lifetime and Bella Baxter. I’m forever thankful for you. Thank you for inviting all of us to be members of this team.”

To finish, Stone thanked her family, her husband, Dave McCary, and their nearly 3-year-old daughter. “[She] has turned our lives Technicolor,” she said. “I love you bigger than the whole sky, my girl.”

After her name was called as the winner, Stone arrived onstage noting that her dress had broken, joking that it happened during Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” performance.

Stone’s Bella begins as an an undeveloped human whose brain has been transplanted into the body of a woman. As she matures, she encounters a range of men seeking to control her, including characters played by Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe and Ramy Youssef.

The film was nominated for 11 Oscars at this year’s ceremony, including an acting nod for Ruffalo and a shot at best picture. Heading into this weekend, Poor Things was the highest-grossing limited release of 2023, at $105 million, and Lanthimos’ top-grossing film ever.

This is Stone’s second Oscar, following a win for her performance in La La Land in 2017. Previously, she has also been nominated for The Favourite in 2019 and Birdman in 2015. She beat Annette Bening (Nyad), Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon), Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall) and Carey Mulligan (Maestro) for the trophy.

See the star-studded Oscars red carpet 2024 arrivals.