Zoe Saldaña Shouts for Her Mom Through Tears as She Wins First Oscar: ‘I Am Floored by This Honor’

This year’s nominees in the category also included Monica Barbaro, Ariana Grande, Felicity Jones and Isabella Rossellini

The Emilia Pérez star, 46, took the stage at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday, March 2, to accept the Oscars 2025 statuette for Best Supporting Actress.

Before beginning her speech, Saldaña shouted, “Mami! Mami!” and waved at her mother through tears, before telling the crowd, “My mom is here; my whole family’s here. I am floored by this honor.”

After an emotional speech that honored her team and family (including husband Marco Perego and his “beautiful hair”), Saldaña said, “I am a proud child of immigrant parents with dreams and dignity and hardworking hands, and I am the first American of Dominican origin to accept an Academy Award and I know I will not be the last. I hope.”

Zoe Saldana accepts the Best Actress In A Supporting Role award for "Emilia Pérez" onstage during the 97th Annual Oscars at Dolby Theatre on March 02, 2025 in Hollywood, California.

Zoe Saldaña wins Best Supporting Actress during the 97th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on March 2, 2025.Kevin Winter/Getty

Saldaña entered the Academy Awards as the favorite to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress after she won at the Golden Globe Awards, Critics Choice Awards, BAFTA Awards and SAG Awards.

In Emilia Pérez, a Spanish-language musical and crime drama, the actress portrays Rita, a lawyer who is tasked with helping the movie’s title character obtain a gender-affirming surgery to escape life as a cartel boss.

Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña and Karla Sofia Gascon in Emilia Perez trailer

Saldaña said during her acceptance speech for her BAFTA Award on Feb. 16 that she was dedicating the accolades she has received for her role to her nephew Eli.

“He is the reason, they are the reason, I signed up to do this film in the first place,” she said. “So as a proud aunt of a trans life, I will always stand with my community of trans people.”

Barbaro, 34, played folk-music legend Joan Baez in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown alongside Timothée Chalamet as Dylan, 83, and Edward Norton, who portrayed Pete Seeger.

The other two actors are also nominated for their performances at the Oscars. In total, A Complete Unknown received eight nods, including for Best Picture.

“The probability of even getting to [act] for a living is just really low, and so I constantly just try to remind myself of that,” Barbaro told PEOPLE recently of her awards-season nominations. “I haven’t wrapped my head around it.”

Ariana Granda is Glinda in WICKED

Grande and Wicked storm into the Oscars with 10 nominations total, tied with The Brutalist for second-most (Emilia Pérez‘s 13 top the list this year). Grande also received nods for her role as Glinda at the BAFTAs, Critics Choice Awards, Golden Globes and SAG Awards this winter.

While Grande, 31, is better known for her pop-music career than acting for the screen in recent years, she said in a December 2024 interview with Variety that she does not predict she will release new music or tour again “anytime soon.”

“The next few years, hopefully we’ll be exploring different forms of art, and I think acting is feeling like home right now,” she added.

Jones, 41, returns to the Oscars as a nominee for The Brutalist, in which she portrays Erzsébet Tóth, a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor who joins her husband László (Adrien Brody) in the United States in the 1950s.

She was previously nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category at the 2015 Oscars for The Theory of Everything, but Julianne Moore won that year for her role in Still Alice.

“It’s just been a fantastic celebration of the film. I mean, we never quite expected the reception that we have had,” Jones recently told PEOPLE of The Brutalist‘s success. “You don’t get this many opportunities. So I am trying to enjoy every minute of it.”

Rossellini, 72, has been acting since the 1970s, but her nomination for the Edward Berger-directed movie Conclave marks her first Academy Award nomination.

The actress portrays Sister Agnes, a Roman Catholic nun who works for church officials in Rome’s Vatican City, in Conclave, which follows a group of cardinals as they elect a new pope, campaign for themselves to lead the church and jockey for political leverage over rivals within the papal conclave. Rossellini’s costar Ralph Fiennes was also nominated for his lead role as Cardinal Thomas Lawrence.

Rossellini was additionally recognized this season with nods in the best supporting actress categories at the Critics Choice Awards and BAFTA Awards.