Kieran Culkin has won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at the 2025 Oscars.
The actor dedicated the latter half of his acceptance speech to his wife, telling a story about how she told him they could have four kids “if he wins an Oscar.” Culkin turned to his wife in the audience and mused, “Ye of little faith.”
Culkin has taken home the gold for his role as Benji Kaplan in A Real Pain, starring opposite Jesse Eisenberg (who also wrote and directed the movie). In the run-up to the Oscars, Culkin was easily the favorite to win after securing a BAFTA, Golden Globe, and SAG award. Culkin, of course, thanked Eisenberg in his speech, praising his talent and joking that this was the only time he would ever do so.
He beat Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown), and his former Succession co-star Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice).
A Real Pain follows cousins Benji and David (Eisenberg) on a Jewish heritage guided tour of Poland after the death of their grandmother, who was a Holocaust survivor.
The movie filmed at the Majdanek State Museum, and Eisenberg talked to GamesRadar+ about shooting in the real historical location. “It was an amazing privilege to shoot there. It took a long time to negotiate with them, to express what I was trying to do, which was to show this place as it is now, see a tour group go through it,” he explained. “Essentially, that’s their mission statement too, showing the place as it is now, explaining to people. In my case, it’s for a movie audience and in theirs, it’s tourists.”
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