Mel Brooks and Angela Bassett received an honorary Oscar: the best of the evening (photos + videos)
Under the eyes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, Robert Downey Jr., Natalie Portman, Glenn Close…
The 14th Governors Award ceremony took place this week, shortly after the Golden Globes and while waiting for the 2024 Oscars. All the Hollywood elite gathered to cheer the personalities honored this year, Angela Bassett (previously nominated for her biopic of Tina Turner And Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), Mel Brooksthe creator of cult comedies The Producers, Frankenstein Junior Or The Crazy Space Story, Carol Littletoneditor notably famous for her work on ANDAnd Michelle Satterproducer who has supported the Sundance festival since its launch in 1981.
Many stars of the event films of the 2023-2024 season came to cheer them on: Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon), Margot Robbie and America Ferrera (barbie), Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt and Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer), Bradley Cooper (Maestro)… Here they are gathered in photos:
At 97 years old, welcomed in song by Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane, Mel Brooks caused a sensation with his mischievous speech, in which he made fun of “loss” from his previous statuette, received at the end of the 1960s for his original screenplay of Producers.
“I miss this Oscar so much…I should never have sold it!”he blurted out in front of a laughing audience. “I won’t sell this one, I swear!”he adds before greeting his loved ones with emotion, and ending with a little joke: “I’ve said everything I had to say. Now I’m giving way to the other winners. Good luck to them in coming after me!”
Angela Bassett, for her part, delivered a long, engaged speech. She first thanked all the women who inspired her, then saluted the black pioneers in Hollywood, including the only actress to have received an honorary Oscar before her, Cicely Tyson (it was in 2018 for her career prolific from the 1950s to 2010).
She also recalled that Hattie McDaniel, honored for her supporting role in Gone with the wind, in 1940, was not allowed to sit in the room with the other named personalities. After her, it took half a century before Whoopi Goldberg was in turn the holder of an Oscar, for The Color Purpleby Steven Spielberg.
Angela dreams of a future where black women will no longer be an exception in Hollywood, and concludes, well beyond her own journey: “I hope that we participate in enriching this cinema industry. That it is more inclusive and avant-garde after us than when we joined it.”
Angela Bassett wins first acting prize for Marvel at the Golden Globes
