An impressive lineup of stars competed for Best Actress in a Supporting Role at the 2025 Oscars, with Zoe Saldaña ultimately taking home the prize for her performance in Emilia Pérez.
Saldaña, 46, won for her role as Rita during the Sunday, March 2, awards show at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. In her acceptance speech, Saldaña became visibly emotional as she gave a sweet shout-out to her loved ones.
“To my husband with that beautiful hair,” she said, before gushing over her and Marco Perego-Saldaña‘s three kids. “The biggest honor in my life is being your partner. You hung the moon and our beautiful perfect sons — Cy, Bowie and Zen — they fill our skies every night with stars.”
Saldaña cried while celebrating that she is the first American of Dominican origin to accept an Academy Award, noting, “I know I will not be the last.”
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The actress’ fellow nominees in the category included A Complete Unknown’s Monica Barbaro, Wicked’s Ariana Grande, The Brutalist’s Felicity Jones and Conclave’s Isabella Rossellini.
Barbaro, 34, Grande, 31, Rossellini, 72, and Saldaña, 46, each earned their first Academy Award nominations this year, while a decade ago, Jones, 41, received a nod for Best Actress in a Leading Role for The Theory of Everything in 2015. (She lost to Boyhood’s Patricia Arquette.)
Prior to the Oscars, Saldaña swept the 2025 awards season with wins for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role in Any Motion Picture at the Golden Globe Awards in January and Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Best Supporting Actress at the Critics Choice Awards and Supporting Actress at the British Academy Film Awards in February.
Amid her personal triumphs, Saldaña reacted to the backlash surrounding her Emilia Pérez costar Karla Sofía Gascón, who denied allegations of racism and Islamophobia after her past tweets resurfaced.
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“It makes me really sad because I don’t support [it], and I don’t have any tolerance for any negative rhetoric toward people of any group,” Saldaña said during a London Q&A in January. “I can only attest to the experience that I had with each and every individual that was a part, that is a part, of this film, and my experience and my interactions with them was about inclusivity and collaboration and racial, cultural and gender equity. And it just saddens me.”
Rossellini, for her part, has a special connection to the Academy Awards since her late mother, Ingrid Bergman, was a three-time Oscar winner (she earned the accolades for Gaslight in 1945, Anastasia in 1957 and Murder on the Orient Express in 1975) and her late father, Roberto Rossellini, received a screenwriting nomination in 1950.
Of her nod, Rossellini told The New York Times in February, “I was so moved — I think for the legacy because I think my mom would have been so happy.”
