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What's inside the 2025 Oscars gift bag worth six figures?

What's inside the 2025 Oscars gift bag worth six figures?

Independent26-02-2025
Although every Oscars nominee won't be a winner this weekend, they will each walk away with something special: A very pricey gift bag.
Organized by Los Angeles-based entertainment company Distinctive Assets Legendary, this year's gift bags for nominees were given a special title: 'Everyone Wins.'
Some of the Oscar-nominated A-listers who will be taking home a gift bag are Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Adrian Brody, Demi Moore, Kieran Culkin, and Timothée Chalamet.
According to the founder of Distinctive Assets, Lash Fary, some of the gifts in the bag will support families who were victims of the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles last month.
'While our gifts may be famous for being fun and fabulous, they also serve as a means to elevate small businesses, minority-owned brands, female entrepreneurs and companies that give back,' Fary said in a statement. 'This year, on the heels of the historically tragic LA fires, we have found even more ways that our celebrity swag can do good in our community.'
So, what's inside the luxurious bag,s each of which is reportedly worth more than six figures?
Following the wildfires, the 2025 nominee gift bag will feature more than '$1 million of personalized disaster recovery services' from Bright Harbor, according to a press release. In addition, each nominee will receive a 'complimentary home renovation project management' from Maison Construction.
The gift bag also comes with a slew of luxury skincare products from Miage ,and a selection of Parisian-inspired Cosmetics and Hair Care products from L'Oréal Paris.
Nominees can also plan for a vacation after the awards ceremony, as they'll receive a 'four-night luxury all-villa resort stay from JOALI Maldives and JOALI BEING, a five-night luxury wellness retreat' in Sri Lanka.
In preparation for these travel plans, Oscar nominees will be gifted a Travel Pack from Nomatic and a 20-piece luxury gift box, including hydrating lip productsfrom Petty Pout.
Other smaller goodies include a collection of merch and gift cards from Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, an AncestryDNA Kit, an 'L.A. Strong" graphic undershirt from Bored Rebel, chocolate-covered pretzels from Posh Pretzels, and cruelty-free lipstick from VEDI.
'Whether they pamper themselves or share these bountiful gifts as a care package for a friend who may have recently lost their home, we give these gifts not based on the recipients' need but out of a desire to brighten someone's day and to acknowledge a job well done,' Fary added in his statement.
You can find the full list of everything included in the 2025 Oscars nominees gift bag here.
The biggest contenders at the 2025 Academy Awards include Netflix 's divisive Emilia Pérez, Brady Corbet's sweeping epic The Brutalist, and the pope drama Conclave, starring Ralph Fiennes. Meanwhile, Grande and Erivo were both nominated for their roles in Wicked, while Moore received a nomination for her role in The Substance.
Emilia Pérez 's Karla Sofía Gascón became the first-ever openly trans individual to be nominated for an Academy Award in any acting category. Within days of making history, however, Gascón found herself at the center of controversy when journalist Sarah Hagi drew attention to a series of problematic tweets made from the actor's X account between 2020 and 2021.
While Gascón sought to apologize for her mistakes — insisting she was 'not racist' in a tearful, hour-long interview with CNN en Español — Netflix erased her name and face from its 'For Your Consideration' campaign adverts.
Although she missed the SAG Awards on February 23, amid the controversy, Gascón will reportedly attend the 97th Academy Awards on Netflix's dime this weekend.
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Martin Shaw: ‘Lewis Collins behaved so badly'
Martin Shaw: ‘Lewis Collins behaved so badly'

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Martin Shaw: ‘Lewis Collins behaved so badly'

Passing through the corridors backstage at the Harold Pinter Theatre on the way to meet Martin Shaw, line after line of A Man For All Seasons runs through my head like holy writ. The Robert Bolt play, turned into an Oscar-winning film in 1966, includes some of the most powerful but perfectly weighted dialogue of the 20th century. Shaw is making his second appearance in the play as Sir Thomas More – Henry VIII's martyred chief minister – for a summer West End run. 'I never got this play or Sir Thomas More out of my system,' he says. Shaw's career has oscillated between high theatre and high-profile TV roles such as Judge John Deed, Inspector George Gently and – most famously for those of a certain vintage – as Doyle in the much maligned cop show The Professionals. When we speak, he is an incredibly spritely 80 in his Hush Puppies, with long white hair falling either side of the face of a man 10 years his junior. That's just as well given the demands of playing More, a man with such integrity he would rather die than endanger his immortal soul by taking an oath confirming Henry VIII as Supreme Head of the Church. More's saintly virtues have been called into question recently, with Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy and the resulting BBC drama adaptation portraying him as a sadistic schemer of the Tudor court who enjoyed torturing heretics in opposition to his great rival Thomas Cromwell. In A Man For All Seasons, these roles are more or less reversed. 'I think Wolf Hall is one of the greatest dramas with the greatest performances ever produced by British television,' says Shaw. 'I've heard Hilary Mantel partly wrote Wolf Hall as a response to A Man For All Seasons. But from what I know, I think her portrayal of More is probably not accurate.' 'I told the casting director I couldn't work with Lewis' Whatever philosophical puzzles Shaw grapples with on stage, it's the legacy of a much less distinguished TV show he still finds tricky to escape. The Professionals, produced from 1977 to 1981, made Shaw a household name – all high cheekbones, footballer's perms and karate chops. It's remembered for the unbridled machismo of lead characters Bodie and Doyle – part police, part secret agents working for the fictional CI5 – who spent most of their time skidding a Ford Capri around the streets of London, shooting terrorists and making off-colour remarks about beautiful women. The trouble is, Shaw hated every single minute of it, in particular his toxic relationship with Lewis Collins, the actor who played Bodie to his Doyle. 'It was truly, truly horrible and there was a sense of blessed relief when it was over. Ten years after the show finished I met Lewis and everything was healed between us. But the trouble all started when I was a villain in The New Avengers in 1977 and he was my sidekick. Lewis behaved so badly on that set. He had a small part but he was so arrogant. It was beyond that. It was bizarre.' Shaw describes how Collins would boast about his physical prowess at the expense of the other actors and confuse the director by talking about how the scenes would play out if he had to fight for real. 'I looked at the script for The Professionals and was offered the part. I'd done a film with Anthony Andrews and we were good mates so we rehearsed together and I thought he was a shoe-in for the other lead. But the production company wanted an abrasive relationship. 'I'd already said to the casting director, 'I can't work with Lewis because we don't get on', but they cast him anyway. I went up to him on the first day of shooting and said: 'You know I didn't want you to do this but let's get on with it and have fun.' And he told me to f--- off and he never forgave me for the next four years.' There is a notorious episode of The Professionals called 'The Klansman' about a far-Right group Shaw's character has to infiltrate. It was never broadcast in the UK because it featured such a prevalence of racist language. Did Shaw think this seemed insane during filming? 'I thought pretty much every episode was insane,' he replies. The thing Shaw found most uncomfortable then as now is that his work up to that point – the Royal Court and the National Theatre, TV and movie roles – 'vanished' once he was in The Professionals. Shaw, born in Birmingham in 1945, attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (Lamda) from 1963, served his time in rep and London theatre, and came to prominence playing Banquo in Roman Polanski's film of Macbeth in 1971. Polanski – who owned a flat in Chelsea – asked him to test for the role of Macbeth, though the lead eventually went to Jon Finch. 'When I saw the people testing for Macbeth, including Antony Hopkins who was my hero and with whom I shared a house, I thought I had no chance. But Polanski called me and offered me the role of Banquo.' Shaw recounts the conversation in a Dracula-esque Polanski accent and says the seven months of Macbeth's production were some of the greatest of his life. He's understandably circumspect about Polanski's ongoing exile in France as a result of his flight from the US in 1971 following his conviction for sex with a minor. 'Polanski was great with actors. My admiration and respect for him carried on through the whole production. There is so much gossip about the case he was involved in but it's a terrible loss to the industry.' 'Rhodes did some very bad things but I didn't mind playing that character' In the four decades since The Professionals, Shaw invariably appeared on British TV as a detective or a judge, which he says is attributable more to television's obsession with the law than anything to do with his persona or slow, sonorous voice. One notable blip on this long list of hits was the eight-part BBC epic drama Rhodes in 1996, which told the story of Britain's most 19th-century empire builder Cecil Rhodes in southern Africa. It seems almost inconceivable that this would be made today, given the bitter controversy over Rhodes's reputation. The show was rounded on by critics and the ratings almost halved between the first and second episode. 'Rhodes was hard enough to make even then,' says Shaw. 'The BBC didn't want to support it. I suspect they wanted to kill it. Eventually it was made for £8m instead of £12m. The South African government withdrew their funding, not because of any sensitivities over the theme of colonialism, but because they didn't like Rhodes being portrayed as a homosexual. 'It was clear even in 1996 that Rhodes did some very bad things. I didn't mind playing that kind of character. Those bad things are there in all of us and having a licence to access them as an actor is great.' 'It's almost impossible to be a person of integrity in public life' 'Bad things' are harder to find in Thomas More, but they must be in there somewhere. A Man For All Seasons is Shaw's happy place, having already taken the role in 2005 at London's Haymarket Theatre. Shaw says he went to see the play and the film over and over again in the 1960s, starring the peerless Paul Scofield. Shaw wants to keep evolving his approach to More, as much to make the most of the character's limitless depth as to step out of the great man's shadow. 'This time I'm playing him as a more life-enhancing, life-loving character who could laugh and get incredibly angry as well as his better known qualities.' This is a play that poses one dilemma after another. At its heart is the question of how far a person is prepared to go to preserve their own conscience, their own sense of truth as they believe it to be. Every other character compromises for gain or self-preservation (other than Henry VIII, who doesn't need to). More goes to the block for his beliefs. 'From my point of view, More's stand was borderline ridiculous,' says Shaw. 'For him, his oath was 'words you say to God' so he could not, as his daughter suggested, take the oath and think differently in his heart.' Among many memorable lines – the quickfire battles with Cromwell, More's stirring defence of the law – the exchange between More and former hanger-on Richard Rich stands out. Rich perjured himself to gain promotion to the Attorney General of Wales and his lies provide the only evidence against More. Knowing his trial is all but over, More asks to see the red dragon on Rich's new badge of office. 'Richard, it profits a man nothing to gain the whole world if he should lose his soul … but for Wales?' The script is all but perfect. Shaw recalls the line, 'When statesmen forsake their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties they lead their country by a short route to chaos.' 'That is true now more than ever,' he adds. 'Think about how important conscience and integrity are. It's almost impossible to be a person of integrity in public life – but I truly believe they are out there.' Shaw is full of contradictions. He has been a vegetarian since 1971 and follows Sant Mat, a mystical philosophy movement influenced by Sikhism and Hinduism. There's no reason why that shouldn't co-exist with sliding over the bonnet of an Escort RS2000 in pursuit of a gun runner, but it feels like it might. Still, despite all Shaw's misgivings, he has made something approaching peace with the worst experience of his career. 'There is another side to The Professionals. Years later an actor walked up to me on set and said 'It's so wonderful to meet you. You're my childhood hero.' So that helped me see the show differently. So many people loved it and got some sort of happiness from it.' It's wisdom of which Sir Thomas More would surely approve.

Dame Helen Mirren: I am such a feminist, but James Bond has to be a guy
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James Bond should be a man, says Dame Helen Mirren
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James Bond should be a man, says Dame Helen Mirren

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