TMS Spotlight: The Oscar Ingénue
(Michael Tran)
Last Sunday night, Mikey Madison made film history as the first Gen Z actor to win an Academy Award at age 25 for her performance in Sean Baker’s Anora (2024). While a surprise to many, some are already claiming this is the latest example of how the Academy loves to award younger women more than younger men. Mikey’s peer, Timothée Chalamet, also had a big chance of winning Best Actor for James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown (2024), but lost to Adrien Brody for Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist (2024)—his second win after already becoming the youngest Best Actor winner [age 29] two decades ago for Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002). Even though Mikey had gained a ton of momentum these past few weeks from winning Lead Actress at the BAFTAs and the Indie Spirits, the narrative was that fellow nominee Demi Moore would probably take the big trophy home for Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (2024). If the Oscars love one thing more than young Best Actress winners it’s a comeback story, which Demi had successfully utilized this past season. Instead, Demi became the Michael Keaton/Sylvester Stallone of the 2024 Oscar season, and Mikey is now the most recent young, pretty, talented starlet to take home the little golden man.
Over the years, plenty of movie fanatics have critiqued and theorized how winning the Oscar at such a young age can impact the artist’s future career, especially women since they are more likely to win early in their career. We’ve seen those who quickly lose popularity over time, such as Tatum O’Neal, Mira Sorvino, Helen Hunt, Hilary Swank, Halle Berry, Alicia Vikander and Brie Larson. This has created the narrative that winning so soon stunts your potential. To date, Marlee Matlin remains the youngest Best Actress winner—for Randa Haines’ Children of a Lesser God (1986)—at age 21, and her legacy is primarily held by this stat. In this case, one could argue that’s because the options for deaf actors are a lot slimer, even for the token ‘hot deaf chick.’ Besides Marlee though, if you look through the past winners, the opposite is actually more common than not.
(Al Seib / Handout)
A lot of Best Actress and Supporting Actress winners before the 2000s were relatively young and went on to respected, long term careers, i.e. Katharine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Bette Davis, Jennifer Jones, Anne Baxter, Shirley Jones, Patty Duke, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Jodie Foster, Anna Paquin and Angelina Jolie, to name some. Both Bette and Jodie even won Best Actress twice before age 30. The Best Actress awardee Mikey’s been compared to often this past season is Audrey Hepburn, who also won her Oscar for her first lead role with William Wyler’s Roman Holiday (1953). Additionally, Audrey was famously nominated for portraying a call girl in Blake Edwards’ Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), 63 years before Mikey’s win for playing a stripper in Anora. Audrey’s Oscar glory was only a couple years into her acting career and resulted in her rising into one of the most iconic movie stars of all time with lots of classic films on her resume. Between her looks, versatility and impressive film choices already, I don’t think it’s crazy to feel Mikey could build her own status as a modern leading lady.
Two other Best Actress alums who crossed my mind when Mikey was announced as this year’s winner were Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone, the latter of whom presented Mikey her award on stage. Jennifer won her Oscar at 22 for David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook (2012) right amid breaking through as a superstar with Lionsgate’s Hunger Games franchise (2012-15). Emma received her first Oscar when she was 28 for Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (2016). Like both, Mikey began her career as a teen actress before crossing over to grown-up parts via indie/artsy pictures. While Jennifer’s mega hype has waned a bit since the late 2010s, we still see her occasionally pop up in interesting projects like Lila Neugebauer’s Causeway (2022) and Gene Stupnitsky’s No Hard Feelings (2023). Emma on the other hand, just keeps getting better and better, most regarded through her movie collaborations with filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, Cary Fukunaga’s “Maniac” (2018) and Showtime’s “The Curse” (2024- ). Ultimately, it should be a no-brainer for Mikey to blossom into stardom, whether with more high quality independent features or fun studio flicks. There haven’t been any casting announcements yet, since she spent the past four months doing press and attending awards shows, and probably wants to enjoy her success at the moment. But I hope the name Mikey Madison is one we see again on the big and small screens.
