Goldie Hawn left viewers of the 2025 Academy Awards stunned after she gave a heartbreaking health update on stage.

The 79-year-old Oscar winner — who presenting with Andrew Garfield — stopped part of the way through her scripted presentation speech because she was unable to read what was projected on the teleprompter.

‘I was so lucky [to] make movies… and making people laugh,’ Goldie said. ‘And maybe some didn’t, but that’s OK.’

‘In the meantime,’ she continued, before suddenly pausing and turning to Garfield.

‘OK. Sweetheart, can you read that. I can’t read that,’ she said, going off script.

‘I’m completely blind. I mean, I am!’ she continued, before revealing the cause of her vision issues: ‘Cataracts.’

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Goldie Hawn left viewers of the 2025 Academy Awards stunned after she gave a heartbreaking health update on stage with Andrew Garfield

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She paused her prepared speech after being unable to read the teleprompter. ‘I’m completely blind. I mean, I am!’ she said, before revealing the cause of her vision issues: ‘Cataracts’

Garfield played it cool, responding, ‘OK, I’ve got you.’

Cataracts develop when the usually clear lens of the eye begins to develop a cloudy texture, which can make it feels as if one is viewing things through a fog.

The condition can impact any activity requiring sight, but it can make things like reading or driving — particularly at night — difficult.

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Cataracts often aren’t noticed for some time, as the condition tends to develop slowly.

However, the good news for affected individuals is that surgery to remove cataracts is usually safe and effective, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Before Goldie’s admission, Andrew was responsible for one of the most touching moments of the night

The two-time Oscar nominee, 41, was joined by Goldie as they presented the award for Best Animated Feature Film.

But Andrew took her by surprise when he brought her to tears as he revealed her surprise impact on his late mother.

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Andrew Garfield was responsible for one of the most touching moments at the 2025 Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday when he made Goldie Hawn tear up at the mention of his late mother

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The Social Network star thanked Goldie for giving his late mother ‘the most joy, the most comfort’ through her long career peppered with classic film and television performances

Goldie Hawn is joined by Kurt Russell at 2025 Academy Awards

2025 Oscar Winners: AT A GLANCE

Best Picture: Anora

Actress in a Leading Role: Mikey Madison — Anora

Actor in a Leading Role: Adrien Brody — The Brutalist

Actress in a Supporting Role: Zoe Saldaña — Emilia Pérez

Actor in a Supporting Role: Kieran Culkin — A Real Pain

Adrien Brody, Mikey Madison, Zoe Saldana and Kieran Culkin are seen left to right

Best Director: Sean Baker — Anora

Original Screenplay: Sean Baker — Anora

Achievement in Film Editing: Sean Baker — Anora

Adapted Screenplay: Conclave — Peter Straughan

International Feature Film: I’m Still Here (Brazil)

Documentary Feature Film: No Other Land

Achievement in Costume Design: Paul Tazewell — Wicked

The Social Network star, who lost his mother Lynn Garfield to cancer in 2019, thanked Goldie for giving his mother ‘the most joy, the most comfort’ through her long career peppered with classic film and television performances.

Goldie was visibly moved by the seemingly impromptu speech and started to cry, before she partially covered her face with the winner’s envelope and tried to wipe her eyes.

Andrew, who looked stylish in a brown tux with a lustrous satin shirt, turned toward Goldie at the microphone and held her hand between his as he shared his sweet praise.

‘Can I tell you something?’ Andrew asked mysteriously as soon as he and Goldie were ready to start their presentation.

‘There’s someone, there’s a person who gave my mother during her life the most joy, the most comfort, and tonight, I feel very lucky, because I get to thank that person from the bottom of my heart,’ he said before revealing that the person was standing right next to him.

‘You’ve given us movies full of joy. You’ve lifted our spirits and you’ve made us feel it all was right with the world, over and over again,’ he said while holding Goldie’s hand.

Goldie, whose face crumpled up as she tried to hold back her tears, responded: ‘Thank you so much, that really touches me.’

‘I was so lucky [to] make movies… and making people laugh,’ she continued in what seemed to be the start of her preplanned speech. ‘And maybe some didn’t, but that’s OK.’

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Garfield lost his mother Lynn Garfield (R) to cancer in 2019; they’re pictured with his father Richard Garfield at a Tony Awards after party in 2018 in NYC

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‘You’ve given us movies full of joy. You’ve lifted our spirits and you’ve made us feel it all was right with the world, over and over again,’ he said while holding Goldie’s hand

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‘I was so lucky [to] make movies… and making people laugh,’ she continued in what seemed to be the start of her preplanned speech. ‘And maybe some didn’t, but that’s OK.’

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Andrew, whose latest film We Live In Time was released in October in the US and on New Year’s Day in the UK, spoke about his mother last year during the film’s publicity campaign, as his love interest in the film, Florence Pugh, battles cancer

Andrew, whose latest film We Live In Time was released in October in the US and on New Year’s Day in the UK, spoke about his mother last year during the film’s publicity campaign.

In the film, Florence Pugh plays his love interest who battles Ovarian cancer, and the storyline prompted comparisons to Andrew’s mother Lynn’s own battle with cancer before her death.

While speaking with the Hollywood Reporter last year, Andrew said that filming We Live In Time had helped him to heal from the loss of his beloved mother.

‘Every species of every living thing on this earth has lost a mother. Young dinosaurs were losing their mothers,’ he said, adding that his experience wasn’t ‘special.’

‘We’re lucky if it’s that way around, rather than the other. And of course, countless parents lose their children in one way or another too, I can’t even imagine what that must feel like,’ he continued.

‘So in terms of my own personal experience, yeah, it felt like a very simple act of healing for myself, and hopefully healing for an audience.’

Andrew and Goldie’s special moment at the 97th Academy Awards comes as the ceremony honors the best films of 2024

The star-studded ceremony is being held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, with Conan O’Brien, 61, making his debut as Oscars host, after joking: ‘I only agreed to host so that I could get invited.’

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Emilia Pérez leads this year’s Oscar nominees with 13 nominations, including for best picture, actress (for Karla Sofía Gascón), supporting actress (for Zoe Saldaña) and director

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The Brutalist landed in second place with 10 nominations, including for best picture, director (for Brady Corbet), actor (for Adrien Brody), supporting actor (for Guy Pearce), supporting actress (for Felicity Jones), and original screenplay

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Conan O’Brien is hosting the ceremony, which is being held at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, for the first time; pictured Wednesday in Hollywood

This year’s ceremony has an unusually unsettled field in many of the most high-profile categories, including best picture and most of the acting categories.

Emilia Pérez leads the nominations this year with 13, including for best picture, actress (for Karla Sofía Gascón), supporting actress (for Zoe Saldaña), director (for Jacques Audiard), adapted screenplay and original song.

Gascón stars as the title character, a former Mexican drug lord who comes out as a transgender woman and fakes her own death in order to reinvent herself as a pro-social force, while Saldaña plays an ethically challenged lawyer who helps set up her new identity.

The Brutalist landed in second place with 10 nominations, including for best picture, director (for Brady Corbet), actor (for Adrien Brody), supporting actor (for Guy Pearce), supporting actress (for Felicity Jones), and original screenplay.

Brody stars as a Jewish Hungarian architect who immigrates to the US after surviving the Holocaust. The epic historical drama follows his character László Tóth’s attempts to realize his creative vision even as it conflicts with the petty desires of his wealthy benefactor (Pearce).

Wicked tied it for 10 nominations, including for best picture, actress (for Cynthia Erivo), and supporting actress (for Ariana Grande).

The blockbuster musical is an adaptation of only the first half of the musical of the same name, a reimagined prequel to The Wizard Of Oz starring Erivo as Elphaba, future Wicked Witch of the West, and Grande as Galinda Upland, who becomes Glinda the Good

Other best pictures nominees include Anora, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part Two, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys and The Substance.

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Wicked tied it for 10 nominations, including for best picture, actress (for Cynthia Erivo), and supporting actress (for Ariana Grande)

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This year’s best lead actor race is up in the air after Timothée Chalamet’s recent SAG win for A Complete Unknown

Brody is also a favorite for The Brutalist, but Ralph Fiennes has gotten plenty of awards-season attention for the papal-selection drama Conclave

The closely watched race for best actor in a leading role got a major shakeup just a week before the Oscars at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, when Timothée Chalamet scored a shock win for his Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown.

Prior to that win, Brody was seemingly the favorite after winning best actor awards at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Movie Awards.

Ralph Fiennes has also doggedly stayed in the running for his role as a British Cardinal struggling to keep a secretive papal election from dissolving into competition and intrigue.

The critically acclaimed film has scored multiple actor wins at smaller ceremonies and festivals for Fiennes, as well as multiple awards for the entire acting ensemble, which Fiennes has accepted on more than one occasion.

Those three co-frontrunners are competing against Colman Domingo for Sing Sing and Sebastian Stan for his performance as a young Donald Trump in The Apprentice.

The best actress category also has no clear frontrunner. Demi Moore has been lauded for her comeback performance in the satirical body-horror film The Substance, which earned her best actress honors from the Critics Choice Awards and the Golden Globes, as well as several critics’ organizations.

But her win a week before the Oscars at the SAG Awards suggests she may be in a prime spot to snatch the Oscar after being nominated for the first time.

Anora star Mikey Madison, who plays an adult dancer who impetuously marries the son of a Russian Oligarch, was widely acclaimed and was honored by several critics’ organizations early in the season.

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Anora’s Mikey Madison is a late-breaking best actress co-frontrunner after recent wins and controversy that erupted after offensive tweets from Emilia Pérez’s Karla Sofía Gascón resurfaced

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Demi Moore is the other major frontrunner for the satirical body-horror film The Substance. She has won multiple major awards this season

Her chances increased significantly after she won the BAFTA for best lead actress, which she followed up with an Independent Spirit Award win in the gender-neutral lead performance category.

Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón was once a favorite for the award, but she was widely criticized after racist and Islamophobic tweets — some quite recent — that had somehow gone unremarked upon were translated into English and reported on.

Since then, Gascón has sat out awards ceremonies after her posts came to light. After multiple half-hearted apologies, Netflix reportedly opted to stop paying for Gascón’s travel and accommodations for awards shows, though a source told People that she still plans to attend the Oscars.

Before the controversy, her nomination was seen as historic, as she is the first openly transgender woman to be nominated in the best actress category.

The other nominees are Wicked star Cynthia Erivo, who has failed to capture any major awards, and the Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres, who stars in the historical drama I’m Still Here. She had her own controversy after a clip of her appearing in blackface in a comedy sketch from a Brazilian TV series 17 years ago resurfaced in January.

In the supporting actress category, the nominees including Monica Barbaro for A Complete Unknown, Ariana Grande for Wicked, Felicity Jones for The Brutalist, Isabella Rossellini for Conclave and Zoe Saldaña for Emilia Pérez

Saldaña appears to be the current favorite after a string of wins at the Golden Globes, BAFTA Awards, SAG Awards and Critics Choice Awards.

But some of those early awards had voting periods that cut off prior to the controversy around Gascón surfacing, which could potentially harm her chances from voters who were turned off of Emilia Pérez altogether.

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Saldaña appears to be the favorite in the supporting actress category after a string of wins

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Kieran Culkin has dominated the supporting actor categories in recent weeks for Jesse Eisenberg’s drama A Real Pain

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After Gascón’s offensive tweets surfaced, Emilia Pérez’s best picture frontrunner status seemed in question, and Anora has snatched up the top award at multiple ceremonies considered major predictors of the Oscars

The supporting actor category seems the easiest to predict, Kieran Culkin’s string of wins for A Real Pain making him the favorite.

The other nominees include Yura Borisov for Anora, Edward Norton for A Complete Unknown, Guy Pearce for The Brutalist and Jeremy Strong for The Apprentice.

Among the best picture nominees, Emilia Pérez once seemed like the most likely winner, but Gascon’s offensive posts have threatened its chances.

The Palme d’Or–winning Anora got a late boost with wins for best picture at the Directors Guild of America Awards and the Producers Guild of America Awards, which are considered two of the best predictors of Oscars success by awards-season prognosticators, and its win at the Independent Spirit Awards didn’t hurt.

The best director category seems likely to be a three-man race between Anora’s Sean Baker, The Brutalist director Brady Corbet and Emilia Pérez’s Jacques Audiard.

This year’s original song category features two cutes from Emilia Pérez, El Mal and Mi Camino, the new Elton John song Never Too Late, from the documentary of the same name about him, Like a Bird from Sing Sing, and the latest Diane Warren effort The Journey.

The Academy Awards begin at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT and can be watched on ABC and, for the first time, on a streaming service, Hulu.

Subscribers to premium services including Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV, AT&T TV and FuboTV can also also catch the ceremony live.