Emma Stone at the 29th Annual Critics Choice Awards.Photo:Kevin Winter/Getty
Kevin Winter/Getty
The 2024Critics Choice Awardshave selected their winner for best movie actress of the year:Emma Stone!
Speaking of the role — which saw Stone, 35, take on a woman with an infant’s brain — she spoke about critics' influence in the industry. “Playing Bella was one of the greatest joys of my life. I got to unlearn a lot of things in playing her. Unlearn parts of shame and societal stuff that gets put on us, and I’m still working on it,” she said.
Ending with a joke, Stone added, “This is the Critics Choice Awards — and it is about outside opinion — but I’m very grateful to the critics for this. But I’m just learning not to care what you think.”
Emma Stone accepts the best actress award during the 29th Annual Critics Choice Awards.Kevin Winter/Getty
Stone also honored the other women nominated in the category — personally namingLily Gladstone, who was nominated forKillers of the Flower Moon, Sandra Hüller forAnatomy of a Fall,Greta LeeforPast Lives,Carey MulliganforMaestroandMargot RobbieforBarbie.
“This doesn’t make any sense, so,” she said of winning the award in such good company. “Thank you so much for this, it means so much to me. I was being serious. I don’t know what to say.”
Stone’s Critics Choice win comes shortly after her victory at the 2024Golden Globes, where the star won for best film actress in a comedy or musical.ForPoor Things, directorYorgos Lanthimosand screenwriter Tony McNamara’s follow-up to their Oscar-winningThe Favourite, the producer-star has earned her fifth acting nod from the Critics Choice Association.
Bella Baxter is a woman given a clean slate via an experimental procedure from a mad scientist, after which she gradually discovers the wonders — and dangers — of the world.
Emma Stone in ‘Poor Things’.Searchlight Pictures
Searchlight Pictures
Stone hasbeen open about why she was drawn to the roleof Bella, explaining that it “felt like acceptance of what it is to be a woman, to be free, to be scared and brave.”
“She’s understanding what it is to be a member of society,” the Oscar winner added.
Director and co-writerMartin Scorsese’sKillers of the Flower Moonmarks Gladstone’s first-ever Critics Choice nod, recognizing her work as thereal-life Mollie Kyle, whose family and community in the Osage Nation of 1920s Oklahoma were the targets of serial killings.
Alongside fellow Critics Choice nomineesLeonardo DiCaprioas Ernest Burkhart andRobert De Niroas William King Hale, Gladstone, 37, makes one of 12 overall nods for the acclaimed film. TheGolden Globe winneralso starred in this year’sThe Unknown Country, for which she earned aGotham Award.
Sandra Hüller in “Anatomy of a Fall”.Madman Films
Madman Films
Hailing from Germany, Hüller is making a big splash stateside withAnatomy of a Fall, from director and co-writer Justine Triet. The Golden Globe-winning French courtroom drama stars the actress, 45, as a woman who may or may not have murdered her husband at their snowy chalet.
Although she’s led films like 2006’sRequiemand 2016’sToni Erdmann, this marks Hüller’s first recognition from the Critics Choice Association, Golden Globe Awards and more. In December, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association honored Hüller (and Stone forPoor Things) with their best actress prize — for bothAnatomy of a Falland the Jonathan Glazer Holocaust filmThe Zone of Interest, in which she plays the real-life Hedwig Höss, wife of an Auschwitz concentration camp commandant.
Greta Lee in “Past Lives”.A24
A24
As an actress onThe Morning Showand countless other scene-stealing roles, the 40-year-old Lee is breaking through with the Critics Choice Association for the first time thanks to A24’sPast Lives, in which she plays South Korean expat Nora Moon.
Past Lives,which also features Teo Yoo and John Magaro, is a first-time feature film from playwright Celine Song, now nominated for Golden Globes, Gotham Awards,Spirit Awardsand more.
Carey Mulligan in “Maestro”.Jason McDonald/Netflix
Jason McDonald/Netflix
Maestro, theLeonard Bernsteinbiopic from director, co-writer and starBradley Cooper, earned eight nods from the Critics Choice Awards this year.
For playing the composer’s wife Felicia Montealegre Bernstein, Mulligan, 38, notched her fourth nod from the org. The British star won in the same category in 2021 forPromising Young Woman.
Continuing her collaboration with filmmakerEmerald Fennell, Mulligan also stars in this year’s three-time Critics Choice-nominated filmSaltburn.
Margot Robbie in “Barbie”.Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros.
Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros.
Only Robbie, 33,could have predictedthe meteoric success of 2023 box office championBarbie. But even she, however, may have been surprised that director and co-writerGreta Gerwig’s live-action Mattel adaptation broke the record for most Critics Choice movie nominations in a single year, with a whopping 18.
The producer and star has been Critics Choice nominated six times. Robbie won on her first two go-rounds in 2016 for best action movie actress inSuicide Squadand in 2018 for best comedy movie actress inI, Tonya.
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SeePEOPLE’s full coverageof the 29th annual Critics’ Choice Awards as they’re broadcasting live from The Barker Hangar in Los Angeles on The CW.
source: people.com
