Oscars 2024: Oppenheimer dominates with 7 awards, including best picture

Christopher Nolan's epic biographical drama Oppenheimer won best picture at the 96th Academy Awards on Sunday after dominating for most of the evening, taking home 7 awards across categories.

Lead actor Cillian Murphy and supporting actor Robert Downey Jr. each took home prizes in their respective categories, while Nolan won the award for best director. The film — which stars Murphy as Robert J. Oppenheimer, the inventor of the atomic bomb — also won awards for editing, cinematography and score.

The night's major upset was Poor Things star Emma Stone's win for best actress over Killers of the Flower Moon star Lily Gladstone, the first Native American contender in the best actress category.

While Gladstone won the Golden Globe for her depiction of Mollie Kyle, a real-life Indigenous woman deceived by her husband during the 20th century Osage murders, Stone had been steadily collecting trophies, including a BAFTA and a Critics Choice award, for playing an adult woman with a child's brain in Yorgos Lanthimos' dark comedy.

Emma Stone accepts the best actress prize for Poor Things onstage during the 96th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre on March 10, 2024 in Hollywood, Calif. (Getty Images)

Poor Things otherwise took an early lead in the creative categories, winning three awards: best makeup and hairstyling, best costume design, and best production design. Experimental Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest won two awards for best international feature and best sound.

Other season favourites took home just one award each, with The Holdovers' Da'Vine Joy Randolph winning the best supporting actress prize and Billie Eilish winning best original song for her Barbie piano ballad, What Was I Made For?

Halifax's Ben Proudfoot was the evening's sole Canadian winner, winning best documentary short film for co-directing The Last Repair Shop. He is a second-time winner after taking home the same prize for 2021's The Queen of Basketball.

Halifax filmmaker Ben Proudfoot, left, and his collaborator Kris Bowers won the best documentary short film award for The Last Repair Shop during the 96th Oscars on Sunday night. (Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)

Director Wes Anderson, who has been nominated for several Oscars over the years, won his first tonight when The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar won the prize for best live action short film.

CBC News reporter Eli Glasner was on the ground at famed Oscars venue the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. A recap of the show will be published later tonight. For more Oscars content, follow along with CBC News on X and on TikTok.

The list of winners

Best supporting actress:

Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple
America Ferrera, Barbie
Jodie Foster, Nyad

Da'Vine Joy Randolph poses on the Oscars red carpet ahead of her best supporting actress win for The Holdovers. (Ashley Landis/Invision/The Associated Press)

Best animated short film:

War Is Over! Inspired By the Music of John and Yoko
Letter to a Pig
Ninety-Five Senses
Our Uniform
Pachyderme

Best animated feature film:

The Boy and the Heron
Nimona
Elemental
Robot Dreams
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Best original screenplay:

Anatomy of a Fall
Past Lives
The Holdovers
Maestro
May December

From left, Arthur Harari and Justine Triet, winners of the original screenplay award for Anatomy of Fall, pose in the press room during the ceremony. Triet directed the French courtroom drama about a woman accused of killing her husband. (Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)

Best adapted screenplay:

American Fiction
Barbie
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest

Best makeup and hairstyling:

Poor Things
Golda
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Society of the Snow

Best production design:

Poor Things
Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
Napoleon
Oppenheimer

Best costume design:

Poor Things
Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
Napoleon
Oppenheimer

Best international feature film:

The Zone of Interest
Io Capitano
Perfect Days
Society of the Snow
The Teachers' Lounge

Best supporting actor:

Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction
Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things

Robert Downey Jr. accepts the best supporting actor award for Oppenheimer during the 96th Oscars on Sunday night. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Best visual effects:

Godzilla Minus One
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3
The Creator
Napoleon

Best film editing:

Oppenheimer
Anatomy of a Fall
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Poor Things

Best documentary short film:

The Last Repair Shop
The ABCs of Book Banning
The Barber of Little Rock
Island In Between
Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó

WATCH | Canadian Ben Proudfoot on how his 1st Oscar changed his career: 

Best documentary feature:

20 Days in Mariupol
To Kill a Tiger
Bobi Wine: The People's President
The Eternal Memory
Four Daughters

Best cinematography:

Oppenheimer
El Conde
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Poor Things

Best live action short film:

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Invincible
The After
Knight of Fortune
Red, White and Blue

Best sound:

The Zone of Interest
The Creator
Maestro
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One
Oppenheimer

Best original score:

Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
American Fiction
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Poor Things

Best original song:

What Was I Made For? from Barbie
The Fire Inside from Flamin' Hot
I'm Just Ken from Barbie
It Never Went Away from American Symphony
Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People) from Killers of the Flower Moon

Best actor:

Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Bradley Cooper, Maestro
Colman Domingo, Rustin
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction

Cillian Murphy accepts the best actor award for Oppenheimer onstage at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. (Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Best director:

Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest

Best actress:

Emma Stone, Poor Things
Annette Bening, Nyad
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Fall
Carey Mulligan, Maestro

Best picture:

Oppenheimer
American Fiction 
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Past Lives
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest

An Oscar statue is pictured at the red carpet, a day ahead of the 96th annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Calif., on March 9, 2024. (Pedro Ugarte/AFP via Getty Images)