25-year old Mikey Madison is now an Oscar winner, taking home Best Actress for her lead role in “Anora” (but her character prefers “Ani”). Madison’s Anora is a mid-20s sex worker and a second-generation Russian immigrant who stumbles into a relationship with an oligarch’s son, Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn). Her Cinderella story turns into a screwball comedy, and then leaves her right back where she started when Vanya’s disapproving parents learn of the elopement.
We at /Film are big fans of “Anora,” and have proudly called it the best movie of 2024. Madison’s performance is a big part of why we love it so much, and her Oscar win will doubtlessly propel her career even higher. “Anora” unquestionably proves she has the screen presence and talent to keep reaching even higher heights.
I first saw Madison act in “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood,” but the first time I noticed her was when she played Amber Freeman in “Scream.” Her big eyes and smile gave her the perfect face for a faux-innocent killer; as my colleague BJ Colangelo noted, Madison is the first Ghostface to become an Oscar winner!
“Anora” director Sean Baker also noticed Madison’s performance in “Scream” and, once he did, he knew that he wanted to work with her. I liked Madison in “Scream,” but her performance in “Anora” blew me away. She’s hysterical, bursting with moxie and charisma, and reveals just the right amount of vulnerability. Her affected Brooklyn accent is thick, but it doesn’t feel like a caricature. Ani, rather than Madison, feels like she’s playing herself up as a tough girl of the Noo Yawk streets. The actress makes Ani feel like such a real person that she fits right in with the real-life sex workers playing Ani’s coworkers.
Mikey Madison rode the wave of Anora to an Oscar
Looking at the complete list of winners, “Anora” was the big winner of this Oscars, no two ways about it. Baker also took home Best Director, Best Editing, and Best Original Screenplay, while the film itself got Best Picture.
Before this, Madison had racked up some wins on the awards circuit, including Best Performance at the Independent Spirit Awards, Best Actress at the Online Film Critics Society, Breakthrough Performance at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, and Leading Actress at the BAFTAs. However, the presumed favorite going in was Demi Moore for “The Substance” — Moore had won Best Actress at the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice Awards, and crucially, at the Screen Actors Guild awards, which is a voting body made up of her fellow performers. And since actors have such an overwhelming majority in the Oscars voting ranks, it was a good bet that Moore would win another trophy at the Academy Awards.
It’s going to be tempting for Moore’s fans to dismiss Madison as just the shiny new thing (especially given what “The Substance” is about…) but that does a disservice to “Anora.”
Madison now stands as the ninth-youngest woman to ever win Best Actress. “This is very surreal,” she opened her acceptance speech. She’s shed Anora’s accent, but her words showed signs of the dreamer her character is: “I grew up in Los Angeles, but Hollywood always felt so far away from me, so to be here standing in this room today is really incredible.”
You can watch Madison’s full acceptance speech (where she included the sex worker community among the people she thanked) here:
Anora may have lost out on her fairy tale ending, but the Oscars crowned Mikey Madison as their newest acting queen.
