Oscars 2021 – live: Winners, acceptance speeches and highlights from the Academy Awards

Chloé Zhao wins Best Director while Frances McDormand earns Best Actress prize

Chloe Zhao first woman of colour to win Best Director

Road movie Nomadland won the top prize at the 93rd Academy Awards, which fulfilled many expectations but threw in a couple of surprise wins in an unusual ceremony.

The film’s director Chloe Zhao also made history, becoming the first woman of colour to win the award for directing, and the second woman in history — and the film scooped the Best Actress prize for its star Frances McDormand.

Sir Anthony Hopkins won the Best Actor Oscar — his first since The Silence of the Lambs in 1992 — for his performance in The Father, about a man slipping into dementia, defeating presumptive favourite Chadwick Boseman, who died last year aged 43 following a private four-year battle with colon cancer.

Daniel Kaluuya, who was born in London to Ugandan parents, is the first black British winner of the best Supporting Actor prize for his turn as community organiser and member of the Black Panther Party Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah.

There were a number of surprise wins. David Fincher’s Mank led the pack with 10 nominations, but ultimately won two.

Due to coronavirus, the Oscars moved out of their usual venue, the Dolby Theatre, and were based out of Los Angeles’s Union Station instead. The ceremony’s format was overhauled too, with attendees observing social distancing and some joining via video link from other parts of the world.

Nomadland had been a favourite to win Best Picture; it fulfilled that expectation, beating The Father, Judas and the Black Messiah, Mank, Minari, Promising Young Woman, Sound of Metal, and The Trial of the Chicago 7.

Minari actor Youn Yuh-jung also won over the crowd in her acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actress, which was presented to her by Brad Pitt. “Mr Brad Pitt, finally, nice to meet you!” she told him after making her way onto the stage. She then proceeded to acknowledge the ways in which her name has been mispronounced throughout the awards season, telling the crowd: “Tonight, you are all forgiven.”

With her win, Youn became the first Korean actor to take home an Academy Award.

• Full list of winners
• Best-dressed stars on the red carpet
• Daniel Kaluuya’s mum steals show with embarrassed reaction
• Chloé Zhao becomes first woman of colour to win Best Director

Follow our liveblog for highlights from the ceremony and the buzz-worthy aftermath.

[24 April 2021 19:00 · Annabel Nugent]

For the third consecutive year, tomorrow’s ceremony will go ahead without a host.

After Kevin Hart stepped down from the coveted role in 2018 over homophobic tweets, no one has stepped in since.

Not everyone thinks a host-free event is a bad thing, though. Clarisse Loughrey makes a compelling case for the Academy Awards to forego a host for good.

[24 April 2021 20:00 · Annabel Nugent]

Opulent industry affairs are just some of the ways studios romance the press and Academy voters who decide the Oscar winners.

But that all came to a screeching halt this awards season due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Rachel Brodksy speaks to industry insiders about how unprecedented circumstances have impacted the 2021 Oscar campaigns.

[24 April 2021 21:00 · Annabel Nugent]

As with anything, not all Oscar speeches are created equal.

Some are too saccharine, others are too long – and the worst are when an actor thinks only of themselves

From Sean Penn to Gwyneth Paltrow and Matthew McConaughey, these are the 10 worst acceptance speeches of all time.

[24 April 2021 22:00 · Annabel Nugent]

All eyes are on the Best Picture race – an especially crowded category full of worthy winners.

In the first of our series weighing up the contestants, Adam White argues why Chloé Zhao’s anti-capitalist odyssey Nomadland should win the Oscar.

[24 April 2021 23:00 · Annabel Nugent]

Chadwick Boseman, whose death from cancer in 2020 came as a shock to fans, joined the likes of Heath Ledger and James Dean in the rare category of people posthumously nominated for one of their final roles.

The part he is nominated for – virtuoso trumpet player Levee Green in jazz dramaMa Rainey’s Black Bottom– saw the actor shine in his last performance, with vulnerable soliloquies and bursts of charisma.

“A win for Chadwick Boseman would be a triumph at the Oscars for Black artists,” writes Micha Frazer-Carroll.

[25 April 2021 00:00 · Annabel Nugent]

The in memoriam tribute is not only the most melancholy part of any Oscars ceremony – it is by far the thorniest to produce.

Clemence Michallon takes a closer look at a segment that tends to make headlines for all the wrong reasons.

[25 April 2021 01:00 · Annabel Nugent]

Promising Young Woman has been hailed as the #MeToo revenge movie every teenager should watch.

Its Oscar-nominated director, the British actor Emerald Fennell (who stars as Camilla Parker Bowles in Netflix’s The Crown), and Oscar-nominated star Carey Mulligan discuss the details of their buzz-worthy film and how it “weaponises femininity”.

[25 April 2021 02:00 · Annabel Nugent]

Yuh-Jung Youn is a stalwart of Korean TV and film, but the 73-year-old recently made her international debut in Lee Isaac Chung’s phenomenal film Minari.

The role earned the actor her first Oscar nomination in the Best Supporting Actress race – something she had never even dreamed of.

[25 April 2021 03:00 · Annabel Nugent]

Some in Hollywood have celebrated Netflix as the “great disruptors”. Most others, however, deplored them.

But this awards season, the streaming giant has become the dominant player.

From Mank and The Trial of the Chicago 7 to Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Pieces of a Woman, the streamer has 16 Oscar nominated films and 35 nominations.

[25 April 2021 04:00 · Annabel Nugent]

Tom Hanks wasn’t first in line to portray Forrest Gump, yet it’s impossible to imagine anyone else leading the 1994 classic.

The same can be said for a number of iconic and Oscar-winning roles, for which their eventual actor wasn’t the first choice.

Between Lady Gaga in A Star is Born and Russell Crowe in Gladiator, sometimes things really do work out for the best.