If you’d been following along the 2025 awards season, you’d know that heading into the Oscars – the final and most coveted event – Demi Moore, 62, was the favourite to win Best Actress.
She’d already won the Golden Globe, Critics Choice Award and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award, but when it came time to announce the Oscar, the Academy threw a spanner in the works.
Mikey Madison, 25, ended up taking home the win for her performance in Anora and now, a day after the ceremony, Moore has broken her silence on the shock loss.
READ MORE: Everything you need to know about Anora star and Oscar winner Mikey Madison
“As this awards season comes to a close, I’m so overwhelmed with gratitude for this journey,” she wrote on Instagram sharing a Reel with a compilation of clips of her getting ready for the event.
“It’s been the ride of a lifetime and we’re just getting started! So grateful for my team, my fellow nominees, and everyone who has made this experience so full of joy and light.”
Moore went on to thank the cast and crew of The Substance – the film that scored her the nomination – saying it had been “an honor” to work alongside, learn from and celebrate the movie with director Coralie Fargeat and co-star Margaret Qualley.
“And a huge congratulations to #MikeyMadison,” Moore added, “Can’t wait to see what you do next.”
For a daily dose of 9honey, subscribe to our newsletter here.
Going into the beginning of awards season, Madison and Anora were favourites to sweep every category after receiving a seven-and-a-half-minute standing ovation when the film premiered at Cannes International Film Festival, ultimately taking home the top prize, the Palme d’Or.
However, when the Golden Globes kicked things off on January 6, the film and its cast walked away with nothing.
All the 2025 Oscars behind-the-scenes moments you missed
Madison and Moore were once again up against one another in the actress in a musical or comedy motion picture category, with Moore taking home the win and delivering a moving speech.
“I really wasn’t expecting that. I’m just in shock right now,” she said.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, like over 45 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor and I’m just so humbled and so grateful.”
READ MORE: Adrien Brody addresses controversial Oscars act
Moore recalled an exchange with a movie producer about 30 years ago who called her a “popcorn actress.”
“At that time, I made that mean that this wasn’t something that I was allowed to have,” she said of her win.
“And I bought in and I believed that and that corroded me over time to the point where I thought a few years ago that maybe this was it. Maybe I was complete, maybe I’ve done what I was supposed to do.
“[Then] I had this magical, bold, courageous, out of the box, absolutely bonkers script come across my desk called The Substance, and the universe told me that you’re not done.”
READ MORE: All the behind-the-scenes moments you missed from the 2025 Oscars
The film depicts the pressures put on women to defy aging and serves as a cautionary tale of the dangers of blindly chasing youth.
“I’ll just leave you with one thing that I think this movie is imparting,” Moore said of the film.
“In those moments, when we don’t think we’re smart enough, or pretty enough, or skinny enough, or successful enough, or basically just not enough: I had a woman say to me, ‘Just know, you will never be enough, but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick’.”
FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.
