The Critics Choice Awards 2025 have crowned their best actress: Demi Moore!
The Substance star took home the top female acting trophy on Friday, Feb 7 in Santa Monica, California, besting fellow nominees Cynthia Erivo (Wicked), Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez), Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths), Angelina Jolie (Maria) and Mikey Madison (Anora).
After taking the stage at the Barkar Hangar and accepting the trophy, the actress, 62, began her speech by thanking the Critics Choice Awards and expressing shock over her win.
“I just want to say the very recognition, not just for me, but for what this film is about, what it’s trying to convey, your acknowledgement is almost like the elixir. It is the healing balm to the very issue the film brings forward,” she explained. “And I am so grateful not just for my performance, but that you have highlighted this film, this genre of, normally horror films, that are overlooked and not seen for the profundity that they can hold.”
Moore also took a moment to acknowledge her fellow nominees while onstage including Karla Sofia Gascón, who was not present at the show.
“To the other women this category, Cynthia, Carla, who I know is not here, and Marianne, Angelina Mikey — this has been the greatest gift of this whole process, is getting to spend time getting to know you and to share in your stories,” she said.
Gascón deactivated her X account on Jan. 31, after coming under fire for past inflammatory tweets which criticized Muslim culture, George Floyd and diversity at the Academy Awards. She has made various statements to the media and on her Instagram account.
Moore concluded in her speech, “I’ll wrap it up quick and just say for anybody out there who is still on their journey, still struggling to find their way trying to get a script made or whatever it is that you do, [just] because it hasn’t happened, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. So just stick with it and know that dreams do come true.”
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Moore had a roaring start to awards season, nabbing best actress in a comedy or musical film at the 2025 Golden Globes earlier this month for her role as a successful actress who attempts to reverse her aging process in Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror satire flick, costarring Margaret Qualley. The Substance is up for seven Critics Choice Awards, including best picture.
In her Globes acceptance speech, Moore said she was “in shock,” “humbled” and “grateful” upon winning, explaining, “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.”
Moore went on to say in her speech that a producer once dismissed her as a “popcorn actress” 30 years ago, recalling, “At that time, I made that mean that this wasn’t something that I was allowed to have, that I could do movies that were successful, that made a lot of money, but that I couldn’t be acknowledged. 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.”
“And as I was at kind of a low point, 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,’ ” she added in part.
Wicked: Part One, director Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, went into this year’s Critics Choice Awards tied for the most nominations at 11, alongside the drama-thriller Conclave.
Erivo, 38, and her costar Ariana Grande notched recognition for their work as the future witches of Oz — Elphaba and Galinda/Glinda, respectively — while the movie is also up for best picture and best director for Chu, 45.
Madison, 25, leads Anora in the titular role, a sex worker experiencing a whirlwind Cinderella story.
Critics Choice nominators also recognized supporting actor Yura Borisov and filmmaker Sean Baker in the directing and original-screenplay categories, as well as the cast for best acting ensemble.
The Critics Choice Awards are one of several awards shows where Madison’s acclaimed performance is honored; she was also nominated at the Golden Globe Awards and is nominated the upcoming Film Independent Spirit Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards and more.
Anora previously clinched the prestigious Palme d’Or at 2024’s Cannes Film Festival, the annual event’s highest prize.
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Maria, Pablo Larraín’s biopic about the tragic final days of opera star Maria Callas, brings Jolie, 49, her seventh Critics Choice Awards nomination.
The actress previously won best supporting actress for her performance in 1999’s Girl, Interrupted, a role that also earned her the Academy Award.
In the musical crime drama Emilia Pérez, Gascón, 52, plays Manitas, a Mexican cartel leader who hires a lawyer named Rita (fellow nominee Zoe Saldaña) to help him transition into living as a woman named Emilia Pérez. Things get even more complicated when Pèrez decides years later that she wants to reunite with the family she left behind.
For her work in Emilia Pérez, from French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, Gascón made history as the first out trans woman to be nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award.
The movie also costars Selena Gomez, who is recognized in the best category at the Critics Choice Awards for her track “Mi Camino” for the film.
Jean-Baptiste, 57, reunites with director Mike Leigh for Hard Truths, 28 years after their movie Secrets & Lies that nabbed her an Oscar nomination.
Hard Truths sees Jean-Baptiste as Pansy, “a woman wracked by fear, tormented by afflictions, and prone to raging tirades against her husband, son, and anyone who looks her way,” according to an official synopsis.
“Meanwhile, her easygoing younger sister (Michele Austin), is a single mother with a life as different from Pansy’s as their clashing temperaments — brimming with communal warmth from her salon clients and daughters alike,” the synopsis adds.
It concludes, “This expansive film from a master dramatist takes us into the intensities of kinship, duty, and the most enduring of human mysteries: that even through lifetimes of hurt and hardship, we still find ways to love those we call family.”
See PEOPLE’s full coverage of the 30th annual Critics Choice Awards as they’re broadcasting live on E! from Barker Hangar in Santa Monica. The show will also be available to stream the following day on Peacock.
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