
Oscars 2025 latest: Earthquake hits LA as ceremony wraps up; host's joke at Trump's expense; Brutalist actor refuses to leave stage
Backstage highlights: From Mikey Madison's puppies to Adrien Brody's grandparents
By Lauren Russell, news reporter
After seeing off the competition and collecting their statuettes, the winners at this year's Academy Awards head to the winners' room.
Here are some of those backstage highlights:
Anora director calls for decriminalisation of sex work
Anora director Sean Baker said his last four films have covered the topic of sex work, with his latest - which just scooped five gongs at the Oscars - being the culmination of his work.
Asked what his message is to those who criticise sex workers, Baker said: "I have been pretty outspoken about my stance on sex work.
"It is our oldest profession, yet it has an incredibly unfair stigma attached to it, and what I have been trying to do with my films is chip away at that very unfair stigma
"Personally I think it should be decriminalised and through my work through humanising my characters... it will help do that."
Adrien Brody honoured his grandparents in The Brutalist
Taking one of the big three awards of the night, Adrien Brody said appearing in The Brutalist gave him the opportunity to be a part of something with "importance".
The actor, who has Jewish family, said he was able to honour his grandparents in the film - which focuses on a Hungarian-Jewish architect who escapes the Holocaust and rebuilds his life in the US.
"My grandparents' struggles and their loss and their resilience paved a way for my own good fortune, and I had an opportunity to honour them in this film," he said.
Mikey Madison's new furry friends will help keep her feet on the ground
Still high off her win for best actress, Anora's Mikey Madison said she never thought anything like this would happen in her lifetime.
"I dreamed of being an actress that could be in a film like Anora. [It is a] huge honour, one that will sink in later down the line," she said.
Quizzed on what she thinks the future holds for her, the actress said she did not know her long-term plans, but tonight she needs to go back to being a dog parent.
She said: "Tonight I will go home to my new puppies and probably clean up their mess, and it will bring me right back down to earth."
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