Mikey Madison: Why She DID Deserve To Win The Best Actress Oscar Over Demi Moore – And How ‘Anora’ Showcased The Realism Of Womanhood And Sexuality Compared To ‘Pretty Woman’

It’s pretty safe to say that this year’s Oscars ceremony was…interesting and filled with questions. It saw us, or at least me, scratching our heads and rolling our eyes. If we were to continue the discussion on Selena Gomez from our previous blog entry, she had an eventful, somewhat drama-filled night. She had her ‘Emilia Perez’ co-star, Karla Sofía Gascón, come up to her while sitting at the audience after Gascón’s tweets that are now harming her career, with one calling Gomez a rich rat, came to light. Gomez then hilariously presented an award with Samuel L. Jackson, and in a twist of fate, ‘No Other Land’, a Palestinian movie, won the award she presented. I’m saying it was a twist of fate because Gomez is a supporter of Israel. Israeli actress Gal Gadot awkwardly presented an award with her ‘Snow White’ co-star, Rachel Zegler, who’s very vocal on her stance in being pro-Palestine. You can find a blog entry about their uncanny collaboration on this blog too. Following the awards season, Gadot received the International Leadership Award for her endless courageous advocacy in her support of Israel. In her speech, she said, ‘Our love will always be stronger than their hate’. POWERFUL.

Also, this year’s Oscars marked the first time that Jewish actors won the Best Actor and Best Actress Awards. Adrien Brody won Best Actor for his role in The Brutalist. He famously took his gun out of his mouth and threw it at his girlfriend, Georgina Chapman, who was previously married to Harvey Weinstein. Brody’s acceptance speech was a whopping 5 minutes and 40 seconds in length – marking the longest ever acceptance speech in history. After 45 seconds, music played as a timer, to which Brody responded, ‘I’m wrapping up, please, please. I’m wrapping up; I will wrap up. Please turn the music off. I’ve done this before — thank you. It’s not my first rodeo.’ I won’t be reciting his speech. If I go, we’ll be here forever. My blog entries are already long enough as it is. BUT…he did use that time to speak out on antisemitism. He said, ‘I’m here once again to represent the lingering traumas and the repercussions of war and systematic oppression, and of antisemitism and racism and othering. I pray for a healthier and a happier and a more inclusive world, and I believe if the past can teach us anything, it’s a reminder to not let hate go unchecked.’

The award for Best Actress went to Mikey Madison for her role in ‘Anora’. The movie is often described as what ‘Pretty Woman’ the cult classic starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, was afraid to be. That’s because the original script for ‘Pretty Woman was a much darker take, much like ‘Anora’ was. It had to be heavily revised after production was taken over by Disney. Overall, the movie won 4 Oscars, including Best Actress, of course, Best Director, Best Picture, and Best Original Screenplay. In her acceptance speech at the BAFTA Awards, Madison said of sex workers, ‘I just want to say that I see you.’ Then, in her Oscars speech, she said, ‘You deserve respect and human decency. I will always be a friend and an ally, and I implore others to do the same.’ Catherine Shoard wrote an article for The Guardian following Oscars night titled, ‘Anora has swept the Oscars. I can’t help feeling that shouldn’t have happened’. Many agreed with her. In fact, I think most of the 8 billion people in the world agreed with her. Mostly, the public perception was that Demi Moore, who was nominated for her work in ‘The Substance’, was more deserving of winning the award. After a career in the entertainment industry that’s lasted 45 years, Moore won her first-ever award this year when she won a Golden Globe award. Nevertheless, Moore took her loss to Madison with pride. She posted an Instagram reel where she ended the caption congratulating the fellow actress. Madison then revealed that Moore even texted her to congratulate her on her success.

Moore’s loss to Madison was ironic. ‘The substance’ was a horror film about a woman battling ageism. ‘Anora’ was about a woman expressing her sexuality in the modern world in her work. It would’ve made a definite statement had Moore won the Oscar instead of Madison, in a sense that a woman doesn’t have to be defined by her age in her success. This is only true if we make this assumption solely based on Moore’s critically acclaimed horror film. Otherwise, we have the year 2023, when Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress respectively for their work in ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’. Both women are now in their 60’s. There’s a lot of talk about how men are treated more fairly than women, particularly in the entertainment industry. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Oscar win for ‘The Reverent’ is usually the most used example for that argument. In the world of journalism, his win marked to be obvious that the Academy had awarded someone for something more than just their performance in one film, instead choosing to symbolically reward them for their body of work. That might be true, but what it proves that it’s more than just about gender. Men like Tom Cruise, Bradley Cooper, Jim Carrey, and Samuel L. Jackson were never recognized by the Academy even though they had deserving performances. Then again, we have to remember that Adrien Brody first won an Oscar in 2003 for his role in ‘The Pianist’ at the age of 29. The general public is now saying that male actors have to be of ‘old age’ to win an Oscar, and it’s because of that that Timothée Chalamet was never meant to win an Oscar even though he was nominated in the same category with Brody this year, but we now understand that’s just simply not the case.

It was actually Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis’ wins at the 2023 Oscars that gave hope to many that Hollywood was finally putting more value in the acting skills of older women. It was Curtis’ first Oscars win AND nomination, even though she’s been in the entertainment industry since the 70s, and her parents are legendary actors Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. And yet, when Curtis first began acting, people told her she should attend acting classes and receive more training. She went to Allan Rich, a once-blacklisted Hollywood figure who later found his niche in hundreds of roles, most notably 1973’s ‘Serpico’, 1994’s ‘Quiz Show’, and 1998’s ‘Amistad’. After their first meeting, he told her, ‘Okay, so you know how to act. You know how to be someone else. So you don’t need me. What you need is to expand your vocabulary. Watch movies, listen to music, go to museums, read, and expand the choices that will make you as an actor. You need to expose yourself to art.’ While accepting her award, Yeoh said, ‘Ladies, don’t let anyone tell you, you are past your prime.’ Curtis credited Yeoh for her win. As to what she thought the secret to success was, she told Variety following her win, ‘There is no prerequisite to be in this business. Hustle, talent, timing, hard work…boom! And if you have the acumen of a film degree, does that help you? Of course, but it’s not a requirement. It’s about something coming alive on the screen, and I don’t think you can teach that.’

In the same interview, Curtis referred to herself as an ‘unemployed actor’. All I could do was LOL (Laugh Out Loud). It just seems all too funny to me, because I consider her to be one of the most respected actresses of our generation, and it has nothing to do with her being a nepotism baby. She’s talented in her own right. She’s since starred in ‘The Last Showgirl’, also critically acclaimed, and is next set to star in ‘Freakier Friday’, with Lindsay Lohan, ‘Ella McCay’, and ‘The Lost Bus’. On the other hand, however, her testament of her seeing herself as an unemployed actor is understandable. In a 2021 AARP survey, 78% of older workers said they had seen or experienced age discrimination in the workplace, the highest level since the group began the survey in 2003. Sixty-four percent of women said they faced age discrimination compared with 59% of men. But times are now changing, and Yeoh and Curtis’ wins are proof of that. Women are now being recognized beyond their youth and child-bearing years. But now, there’s a problem…

We now live in a world where success is measured by victimhood. The more oppressed someone is perceived, the more likely we are to celebrate them. Where we used to celebrate high achievement and winning success, we haven’t done that for a long time. Often than not, our votes are driven by empathy and sympathy, less so for true greatness. Now that the doors have been opened for older women to pave the way and be recognized beyond their child-bearing years, they’re somehow seen as victims if they lose to younger women, and the younger women are villainized.

Demi Moore was wonderful in ‘The Substance’, but that’s not to take away from Mikey Madison and her performance in ‘Anora’. Somehow, in the real world Mikey Madison has been cast as the ‘Sue’ who robbed Demi Moore of her Oscar by the public perception. But it’s only the public that sees her this way; not Moore herself. The entire world was rooting for Demi Moore to win, but unintentionally, turned her into a victim when Mikey Madison, a 25 year old rising star won instead. Of what happened after her win, Madison told The Hollywood Reporter, ‘I adore Demi; she is one of the sweetest and kindest women I have ever met. I am so grateful that I was able to meet her and witness her greatness in person. I’m still floating in a dreamlike state; it was a very surreal night. I think that I still need time to digest it. I met Fernando (I’m Still Here) and texted Demi Moore. It’s an honour to be recognised, and I hope that throughout all stages of my life, I will be able to continue working in this capacity and keep playing interesting characters.

We’ve become so obsessed with advocacy and bringing awareness to causes such as the value in older women that we completely forgot that younger women have value too, and that they might be actually great at what they do. They work hard, too. Instead of seeing that younger women have a place in this world too, and are deserving of winning, sometimes over older women, we undermine their worth. Demi Moore herself never won a single award until this year’s Golden Globes after a 45 year career, and somehow, we’re punishing Madison for this exact reason. In her acceptance speech, Moore said, ‘Thirty years ago I had a producer tell me I was a popcorn actress. And at that time, I made that to mean that I wasn’t allowed to have this. That I could do movies that were successful and made a lot of money but that I wouldn’t be acknowledged and I bought in and I believed that. A few years ago I thought that this was it, maybe I’ve done what I was supposed to do and 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 you’re not done.’’

Moore starred in movies such as ‘’Ghost’, ‘G.I Jane’ and ‘A Few Good Men’. All such beloved movies that are absolute classics, even now, more than 30 years later. And yet, when she appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991, naked and pregnant, the story shaded her. Industry professionals claimed that she was lucky and married well (she was married to Bruce Willis at the time, who starred in ‘Die Hard’). It seemed that no matter how hard she worked, the public would only see Moore as only good enough to be a wife and mother, and if she did get a good work opportunity, Willis would be the one who got the credit for it. She was never recognized as her own individual being in her career. And we, the public, the people who were supposed to support her, cared more about and invested more in Moore’s personal life, especially in her relationship, marriage, and eventual divorce with Ashton Kutcher. We scrutinized her for being in love with a man 15 years her junior. When they got together, she was 40, and he was 25. But even during that time, she made great movies. These include ‘Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle’, ‘Bobby’, ‘Mr. Brooks’, and ‘The Joneses’. It was only this year that she finally was being recognized for her body of work. She won a SAG, Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award, and was, of course, the perceived runner-up to take home the Academy award.

Mikey Madison is a 25 year old rising star. She wasn’t even born yet when Demi Moore was at the height of her career. She got her career beginnings when her mom signed her up for an acting class. It wasn’t long before she had herself a manager, jumping into the deep end helped the star overcome her shy nature. She started off acting in independent short films until 2016 when she scored a role in the TV show ‘Better Things’, as well as the low budget feature, Liza, Liza, Skies Are Grey’ by Oscar Winning director Terry Sanders. I was introduced to her work when she starred as the younger version of Maddie, played by Israeli actress Inbar Lavi on ‘Imposters’. She then starred in ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’, and ‘Scream’. Madison has credited Quentin Tarantino for inspiring her to get into acting as a professional, and of meeting the director and getting to audition for him, she told Jimmy Kimmel in 2024, ‘I think I was 19 years old, and I was like ‘This is my one opportunity to meet Quentin Tarantino, so I was like ‘I’m just going to go all out.’ So I did a lot of research into the Manson family, and I found out that they would take a lot of acid trips together. So I painted this painting like my character was on this wild acid trip, and I wrote a very dramatic poem to Charles Manson on the back. I cut off a piece of my hair and sewed it in, and I like very dramatically performed it to Quentin, and I guess he liked it.’

It was Madison’s work in ‘Scream’ that got the attention of Sean Baker, ‘Anora’ director, writer, and editor. He’s very much known for his Indie films, often focused on people living on the fringes of society. When Baker met Madison for coffee, there was absolutely nothing prepared for the movie to be made. There was no audition process. There was no script. Madison just took a leap of faith and agreed to star in the movie. She worked hard to get her role of Anora right. She learned the Russian dialogue her character speaks to ingratiate herself with Vanya, a wealthy oligarch’s son. She took classes for the pole-dancing her character performs throughout the first act of the movie and insisted on doing her own stunts. And that hard work really payed off. It wasn’t until her starring role in ‘Anora’ that the world got to see the true essence of her talent. This marked to be her ‘break out’ role. It was a role that saw Madison deliver a performance that was raw, dynamic and deeply human. The role required her to balance Anora’s toughness and vulnerability, her street-smart boldness. and underlying desperation.

While ‘The Substance’ dove deep into the world of an aging woman, ‘Anora’ dove deep into the hardships of being a woman in a society that’s all about monetary gain. It’s an exploration of class and power dynamics, told through the lens of its titular character. Anora, better known as Ani, works as a sex worker – not as a stripper or a hooker. A sex worker. It’s a career that’s often looked down upon. For Ani, sex is her power dynamic. She lives in a world where a woman is viewed as smaller, weaker, and victimizable. But she has the upper hand – not in spite of these things, but because of them.

‘Pretty Woman’ followed Vivian Ward, played by Julia Roberts. She works as a sex worker to pay rent, all while she dreams of the man who will finally rescue her from this life that she never wanted. She found it in Richard Gere’s Edward. At the end of the movie, Edward He climbs out of the white limousine’s sunroof and ascends the fire escape to ‘rescue’ Vivian, just like the knight in her childhood fantasy. When he asks her what happens after the knight rescues her, she responds ‘She rescues him right back’, and kisses him. Vivian got her ‘happy ending’, with Edward rescuing her from the life that she so desperately to get out of. And while Vivian was in Edward’s world of wealth, she was looked down upon by Phil, an acquaintance and business associate of Edward, when he made a move on her. He blamed her for Edward’s changes in behaviour since she arrived to be with him for the week. Philip hit her and attempted to rape her. Edward came in the room just in time to pull Philip off of Vivian. This was important in my eyes, because it made me question: Did Vivian love Edward or did she love the idea of him? Did she love him for the person that he was or did she love him only because he saved her from a dangerous situation, and therefore saw him as someone who could save her from the life she was tying to get out of? Did she actually love him or did she use him as her way out of being a sex worker?

‘Anora’ was different. ‘Anora’ saw the title character working as sex worker, but she’s not a damsel, nor is she a victim. There’s an early scene in the movie where she stands outside the club where she works, chatting with a fellow stripper. They pass a cigarette back and forth, trading stories of the various boys they’ve encountered that night, who they describe with laughing contempt. The boys are categorically pathetic: so old, so awkward, so weird, so…meh. These boys aren’t taking advantage of Ani. It’s actually the other way around. Unlike Vivian, she doesn’t look to be saved by a man. It’s actually her being ‘saved’ that ends up almost destroying her life.

Ani meets Ivan, a 21 year old spoiled, wealthy young man. He pays Ani $15,000 to spend time with him in his world and pretend to be his girlfriend…for a week. It’s just as Edward paid Vivian to spend time with him for $3,000. Initially, she hesitated to have anything to do with him, but caved to the idea of leaving her life as a sex worker. Not only does she pretend to be his girlfriend, but she marries him too. When news of Vanya and Ani’s marriage reaches Russia, Vanya’s mother, Galina, orders his Armenian godfather, Toros, to find them and arrange for the marriage to be annulled. Garnik and Igor are sent to the house. They inform Vanya that his parents are taking him back to Russia and enrage Ani by calling her a prostitute and suggesting Vanya only married her for a green card. This is where the story of Ani differs to that of Vivian.

Like Vivian, Ani is taken advantage of. When she says she thinks she was raped, she’s laughed at. A woman who gets paid to have sex can’t be raped, right? Ani was never really in love with Vanya, but she wanted to believe that she could grow to love him. She wanted to believe that they could actually love one another and build a life together outside of the life that she knew in sex work. It was only at the end of the film, when Ami finds him at the strip club she works at after she looked for him the entire night, that it was all an illusion and wishful thinking. Vanya never actually showed any empathy or respect towards Ani as a woman. Instead, it was Igor who did so. He was the only man that showed her kindness, even though he was the one who almost raped her. The end of the movie sees Ani and spending one final night at the mansion she stayed in with Vanya. She confronts Igor about their earlier encounter, accusing him of assault and saying he would’ve raped her if they’d been alone – an accusation Igor denies. In the morning, Igor gives Ani the promised money and drives her home. In the car, he returns her wedding ring, which was taken away from her by force, as a goodwill gesture. Ani initiates sex with him but stops when he tries to kiss her. She breaks down, sobbing in his arms.

Unlike ‘Pretty Woman, ‘Anora’ doesn’t have a ‘happy ending’. Better yet, it doesn’t have the ‘happy ending’ that’s been romanticized by society and movie-goers. Ani doesn’t have a Prince Charming to save her. She doesn’t have a man climbing up to her window to profess his love for her. She doesn’t have a man…period. And when she sees a man doing something nice for her for a change, she sees it as him wanting sex in exchange. She doesn’t see that a man could be nice to her for no reason. The ending of ‘Anora’ was left open-ended. It was up to the viewer to decide what the ending of the movie was. In an interview with Mashable, director Sean Baker said of the ending, ‘I’m worried about giving my opinion on it in any way, shape, or form because then it’s taking away from…what my intention of the ending was. We [Madison and I] felt that it was always going to be a disservice to Ani to discuss it publicly. I need to know I have a solid ending before writing a screenplay. Recently, we actually looked back at our first draft, and it is pretty much dead-on from what we have in the final film. It just took away from the moment. And then we realized, I think especially Mikey and I realized, that this was one of the first times that she’s actually communicating with somebody else in the film and being heard. And we thought it would be much more interesting if that was a non-verbal communication, and so we cut all the dialogue out of that last shot.’

With that said, I figured I’d share my own take on the ending of ‘Anora’. You see, Ani spends much of her time throughout the movie endlessly talking, trying to defend herself and her actions, or lack of. Time and time again, men pay her for sex. Men, and women, see her as someone who’s only good for sex. Hence she constantly tries to prove everyone wrong. She demands respect that isn’t given to her. She demands to be taken seriously, but is ever so laughed at most of the time. No one, besides her co-workers at the strip club, saw her for who she was. They only saw her for what she was – a sex worker. At least that was the case for when she got herself into marriage with Vanya. The man she thought she could be falling in love with turned out to be on in the same. Vanya was only nice to her because he paid her, and so was any other man out there that she’d ever encountered. That’s why when Igor gave her the ring the was confiscated by Vanya’s family, her first instinct was that he wanted sex in return. She climbs on top of him, but immediately stops it as soon as reciprocates; almost like a test, to see whether or not he’d rape her. When she sees he respects her boundaries and doesn’t push forward, as he previously said he wouldn’t, she breaks down in tears because she’s not used to that feeling of being seen as more than just sex.

I resonated with Ani. I saw myself in her. Not because I was a sex worker, because I wasn’t. I resonated with her as someone who also saw sex as a tool, and that’s because I was raped. My first sexual experience was that of someone taking away my innocence. My life was shattered by hopelessness and loss of dignity. I had no hope; I had no dignity. There’s an entire psychology to sex. It explores the mental and emotional aspects of sexual behavior, encompassing factors like desire, arousal, fantasies, and the impact of sex on relationships, mental health, and well-being. I myself didn’t see sex as anything of value. I didn’t see it as an emotional compass, but rather just a need – the same way animals need sex. The night I was raped was the night my body was used as an object. Hence, I used sex as merely a matter of principle; not the law. What I mean by that is that I used sex as my freedom. Meeting my husband didn’t change that. He wasn’t the man of my dreams by any means. He wasn’t my Prince Charming. He wasn’t there to rescue me. I needed to rescue myself…from myself. I was my own worst enemy. It wasn’t up to my husband to save or to make me see my worth. It wasn’t his responsibility to do so. It was mine. And that was exactly the message of ‘Anora’.

‘Pretty Woman’ is, of course, a cult classic. When we think of Julia Roberts, we automatically think of her as ‘Pretty Woman, even though she’d made dozens of wonderful films since then such as ‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’, ‘Ocean’s 11’, ‘Notting Hill’, ‘Erin Brockovich’ and more. But we can’t forget that ‘Pretty Woman is practically a fairytale story, made almost not to be taken seriously. ‘Anora’ gave us the realism of womanhood and sexuality, which is exactly why it deserved to be an Oscar winning film. Sean Baker and Mikey Madison might’ve made a film that was meant to show the realities of cases worker, but they gave us much more than that. It gave us the definition of womanhood in a world where a woman is defined by sex. It gave us the definition of sex in a world where it’s associated with womanhood. Unlike ‘Pretty Woman’, ‘Anora’ showed us that a man isn’t there to rescue you from your inner self. The only person that can do that is you; only you. There’s no such thing as a Prince Charming in the real world. So to end this blog post, I wanted to include some of my favourite Mikey Madison quotes, for they each lit up a spark in me, and really explored what’s to come next following her Oscar winning moment:

• When I was 14, I had no idea who I was, and it was so confusing. So to see strong, confident girls, that I get to be around all the time, it’s so amazing. It’s reinvigorating for me.
• I’m just a sucker for a good script and people that are passionate about it. I love independents.
• I was just painfully shy. I couldn’t talk to anyone. Going up in front of class, I would have to mentally prepare myself to raise my hand.
• I definitely gravitate toward characters that have a lot of integrity and it’s so important to be to be working on shows that tell great stories.

Yes, Mikey Madison DID deserve that Oscar.