“Forty-five!” shouted back Hollywood’s biggest stars, from Timothee Chalamet and Ariana Grande to Ralph Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini.
Just five days before the Oscars, this year’s nominees gathered in Los Angeles on Tuesday for an intimate dinner — and a few words of warning about the length of their acceptance speeches.
Nobody really expects Oscar winners to stick to those exact limits, but it is the job of Academy President Janet Yang to at least try.
“I feel like a schoolmarm,” joked Yang, as she politely requested this year’s crop of movie stars to keep their moments in the spotlight “heartfelt, humorous if you’d like, poignant, inspirational, but brief.”
As if to exemplify the challenge, “A Complete Unknown” director James Mangold arrived several minutes late for the annual nominees “class photo,” which had finally been taken, forcing a hasty reshoot.
“It’s the Mangold edition!” quipped one star, as “Wicked” actors Grande and Cynthia Erivo sat politely, side-by-side and front-and-center of the group, while “A Complete Unknown” star Chalamet chatted to “Anora” director Sean Baker in the back rows.
In a typical year, the Academy holds a celebratory, champagne-soaked luncheon for nominees and invites press in early February.
This year, it was scrapped in the wake of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires.
Instead, a smaller, scaled-back dinner was held at the last minute, with Yang emphasizing “an atmosphere of support for so many amongst us who are recovering from the fires that devastated large swaths of Los Angeles.”
Still, the event allowed nominees the chance to catch up and swap stories at the end of the lengthy campaign trail.
