“45 seconds!”: Oscar Nominees Urged To Tighten Speeches

This year, Oscars nominees will have to conclude their acceptance speech within 45 seconds

“How many seconds do we have?”

“Forty-five!” shouted back Hollywood’s biggest stars, from Timothee Chalamet and Ariana Grande to Ralph Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini.

The Oscars 2025 nominees gathered for an intimate dinner before the final Oscar night, where it was revealed that this year all the nominees will get 45 seconds to conclude their acceptance speech.

Though it is not likely for the nominees to wind up their speech in 45 seconds, the President of The Academy, Janet Yang, took an attempt to convey the information to the nominees. 

She joked, “I feel like a schoolmarm”,  and requested the nominees to keep their speech ‘heartfelt, humorous if you’d like, poignant, inspirational, but brief.'”

At the same time, A Complete Unknown director James Mangold reached several minutes late for the annual nominees class photo, which was reshot hastily. The Wicked actor Grande and Cynthia Erivo can be seen sitting politely while A Complete Unknown star, Chalamet, can be seen chatting with the Anora director, Sean Baker, in the last row.

Every year, the Academy hosts a celebratory, champagne-soaked luncheon for nominees and also invites the press in early February. This year, due to the devastating Los Angeles wildfire, it was scrapped.

For this year, a small, scaled-back dinner was held at the very last minute, where Yang emphasised, “An atmosphere of support for so many amongst us who are recovering from the fires that devastated large swaths of Los Angeles.”

This gave a chance to the nominees to interact and share stories at the end of the lengthy campaign trail.

“Well, here we are!” said Mikey Madison, taking a brief break from chatting with Rossellini.

“I’ve never gone before” to the Oscars. I’m excited; we’ll see what happens,” she told AFP. 

Mikey Madison is nominated for Best Actress for the role of a sex worker in Anora against Demi Moore, who is nominated for her role in The Substance.

While speaking to AFP, Moore was concerned that she had not brought her dog Pilaf, a minuscule Chihuahua who accompanied her to the Cannes Film Festival last May. “They were expecting her; I should have!” she told AFP. 

Fiennes, who has been nominated twice for the Oscars in the 1990s but didn’t win, praised a “great crop of movies this year.” 

His twisty Vatican-set thriller Conclave is competing for a two-horse race for Best Picture with Hollywood’s ultimate accolade, with Anora.

Insisting the dinner was “good fun,” British actor Fiennes admitted he had been flying back and forth across the Atlantic “quite a bit.” 

Indeed, other than excitement for Sunday’s gala, a repeated sentiment among the Oscar nominees was relief that soon the campaigning marathon would be over.

“What am I working on next? I’m working on sleeping for a week,” said Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl director Merlin Crossingham.