Da’Vine Joy Randolph has won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role in The Holdovers at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles.
Randolph, who played the school’s head cook Mary Lamb in the film, was the strong favourite for the award, having won nearly every best supporting actress prize in the run-up to the Oscars, including the Golden Globe, Bafta, Critics’ Choice, Independent Spirit and Screen Actors Guild awards. In the end she saw off competition including Jodie Foster (for Nyad), Emily Blunt (for Oppenheimer) and Danielle Brooks (for The Color Purple).
Alongside lead Paul Giamatti, Randolph achieved considerable acclaim for her role in The Holdovers, about a group of people forced to spend the Christmas break together at a school. Directed by Alexander Payne, the Observer’s chief critic Wendy Ide described Randolph’s performance as a bereaved mother as “brilliant” and “wrenchingly sad”.
A tearful Randolph began her speech by saying “God is good” twice, before thanking her mother for steering her from a career as a singer to one as an actor, as well as a former teacher of a class in which she was the only Black student, who told her to “forge [her] own path”.
“I always wanted to be different. Now I realise I just need to be myself,” said Randolph, who concluded with a heartfelt shoutout to the women who had helped her through her career, and to her publicist. “I pray to God,” she concluded, “I get to do this more than once.”
The Oscar was presented to Randolph by a quintet of previous winners: Jamie Lee Curtis, Mary Steenburgen, Lupita Nyong’o, Rita Moreno and Regina King.
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