Natalie Portman Wears Oscars Dress With Names of Snubbed Women Directors
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Natalie Portman isn’t letting the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences off the hook for snubbing women filmmakers in this year’s Best Director category. Portman, who is set to present Best Adapted Screenplay alongside Timothee Chalamet during the Oscars telecast, wore a custom-made Dior gown to the 92nd Academy Awards that included a cape with the names of women directors snubbed at the Academy Awards in 2020 (via Variety). Names on the cape include Lorene Scafaria (“Hustlers”), Lulu Wang (“The Farewell”), Greta Gerwig (“Little Women”), Marielle Heller (“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”), Melina Matsoukas (“Queen & Slim”) Alma Har’el (“Honey Boy”), Céline Sciamma (“Portrait of a Lady on Fire”), and Mati Diop (“Atlantics”).
Portman’s Oscar dress is not the first time she’s called out an awards show for snubbing women directors while attending a ceremony. The “Black Swan” Oscar winner shocked the 2018 Golden Globe Awards when she called out the Hollywood Foreign Press onstage while presenting the Best Director category alongside Ron Howard. While announcing the five nominated filmmakers, Portman quipped, “Here are the all male nominees.”
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This year’s Oscar nominees for Best Director include Martin Scorsese (“The Irishman”), Quentin Tarantino (“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”), Bong Joon Ho (“Parasite”), Sam Mendes (“1917”), and Todd Phillips (“Joker”). Many Oscar pundits expected Greta Gerwig to make the cut. Gerwig was Oscar nominated in the Bets Director category for “Lady Bird,” which made her just the fifth woman nominated in Oscar history. No female filmmaker has been nominated for Best Director since then. Gerwig’s “Little Women” earned Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress, among other categories, and Gerwig still missed out on a Best Director nomination.
“I’m really happy that the Academy recognized [Gerwig] for Adapted Screenplay and Picture, and I feel like if you’ve been nominated for Best Picture, you have essentially been nominated for Best Director,” Ronan told Deadline after nomiantions were announced. “But to me, Greta, since she started, has made two perfect films, and I hope when she makes her next perfect movie, she gets recognized for everything, because I think she’s one of the most important filmmakers of our time.”
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