DUBAI: US singer and actress Jennifer Lopez stole the show on the red carpet at the 2019 Governors’ Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday, wearing a statuette-like column gown by Lebanese designer Reem Acra.
Lopez resembled a golden Oscars statuette in the silky, golden-hued gown, which came complete with an oversized bow on the back.
The singer accessorized her red carpet look with diamond-encrusted jewelry and wore her hair in an intricate braided up-do.
The singer accessorized her red carpet look with diamond-encrusted jewelry. (AFP)
Other stars at the glitzy ceremony in Hollywood’s Ray Dolby Ballroom included Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Quentin Tarantino, Eddie Murphy and Scarlett Johansson, AFP reported.
Honorees included actress Geena Davis and director Lina Wertmuller, who collected honorary Oscars at the star-studded ceremony where they set out their plans to achieve gender equality.
“Thelma and Louise” star Davis told the annual Governors’ Awards audience how the feminist road movie had prompted her lifelong campaign for gender balance at the movies.
“It made me realize in a very powerful way how few opportunities we give women to come out of a movie feeling excited and empowered by female characters,” said Davis of “Thelma and Louise.”
Davis, already an Academy Award winner, received the special statuette for her work to highlight the lack of women in films. She founded an institute compiling data on gender bias in 2004.
She called on filmmakers to immediately go back to their ongoing projects and “cross out a bunch of names of ensemble characters and supporting characters and make them female.”
Director and actress Olivia Wilde said Davis “was ahead of the #TimesUp conversation by about 20 years.”
“She really bangs the drum on this issue… She’s the real deal,” Wilde told AFP.
“Last of the Mohicans” star Wes Studi became the first Native American actor to receive an Oscar.
“I’d simply like to say — it’s about time,” said Studi, to a raucous ovation. “It’s been a wild and wonderful ride,” he added.
Studi was introduced by Joy Harjo, the first Native American US poet laureate, and actor Christian Bale, who called it a “long overdue moment.”
“Too few opportunities in film, on both sides of the camera, have gone to native or indigenous artists — we are a room full of people who can change that,” said Bale, who starred with Studi in 2017’s “Hostiles.”
Studi’s award comes almost half a century after Marlon Brando declined his best actor Oscar for “The Godfather” in protest at the movie industry’s treatment of Native Americans.
The night kicked off with an honorary Oscar for David Lynch, the surrealist auteur who has been nominated three times for best director but never won.
Regarded as one of the greatest American filmmakers of his generation, Lynch is the enigmatic director of cult classics such as “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive,” as well as television’s “Twin Peaks.”
