By Lisa Richwine
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Ke Huy Quan, a former child star who gave up acting for two decades, and Hollywood veteran Jamie Lee Curtis on Sunday won the Oscars for their roles in the offbeat adventure ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ won. “
A crying Quan, who was born in Vietnam, kissed his gold Oscar statuette as he held it up to show business’s biggest names on stage at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles.
“My journey began on a boat. I spent a year in a refugee camp. Somehow I ended up here on Hollywood’s biggest stage,” Quan said.
As a boy, Quan starred in an Indiana Jones film in 1984 and The Goonies in 1985. The 51-year-old said he quit acting for years because he saw little opportunity for Asian actors on the big screen.
“They say stories like that only happen in movies,” he added. “I can’t believe this is happening to me. This is the American Dream.”
Quan’s co-star Jamie Lee Curtis, who has built a career in horror films like Halloween, won Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of a dowdy tax inspector named Deirdre Beaubeirdre.
Looking up, Curtis, 64, addressed her late parents, Oscar nominees Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. “I just won an Oscar,” she said through tears.
Among the other early awards was Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio for Best Animated Feature.
A crisis response team was on standby for any unexpected turn of events. The group was formed after Will Smith beat Chris Rock on stage last year, marring the film industry’s most prestigious ceremony.
Host Jimmy Kimmel, who parachuted onto the Oscars stage as a tribute to Best Picture nominee Top Gun: Maverick, joked in his opening monologue about the audience’s reaction to Smith’s attack last year.
“If something unpredictable or violent happens at the ceremony, just do what you did last year — nothing,” he told the crowd of A-list celebrities. “Maybe hug the attacker.”
The film “Navalny,” about the poisoning that nearly killed Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, and his imprisonment after returning to Moscow in 2021, won the Oscar for Best Documentary.
The 95th Academy Awards were broadcast live on the Walt Disney Co ABC network. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hoped to overcome the slap and stage a glitzy show and boost the declining TV ratings.
Before the awards ceremony, nominees dressed in designer dresses and tuxedos presented their films on a champagne carpet instead of the traditional red.
Several of the multiplex’s biggest hits of 2022 competed for best picture, from “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Everything Everywhere” to “Elvis” and “Avatar: The Way of Water.”
Last year, television viewership for the Oscars was the second-lowest ever, at 16.6 million viewers.
The big films on Sunday’s poll could help attract more viewers rather than some of the little-watched films nominated in recent years. The musical performances can also increase audience numbers.
Lady Gaga showed up at the last minute to sing her nominated Top Gun song Hold My Hand. Oscar producers said last week that Gaga couldn’t make it because she was in the middle of filming a sequel to the 2019 movie Joker.
Pop superstar Rihanna will also take the stage and perform “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
“Everything Everywhere”‘s Michelle Yeoh competes in the Best Actress category against Cate Blanchett, who played a devious orchestra conductor in “Tar.” The best actor could be a duel between “Elvis” star Austin Butler and Brendan Fraser, who played a severely overweight man in “The Whale.”
The approximately 10,000 actors, producers, directors and filmmakers at the Film Academy decide on the winners.
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Mary Milliken and Howard Goller)
