“We did two films together and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Maybe there’s time for one more?” said Martin Scorsese, turning to Daniel Day-Lewis after the actor lovingly introduced him at the National Board of Review awards gala.
The crowd at Cipriani 42nd Street was entranced by the idea, clapping and cheering as Scorsese accepted the NBR Best Director award for Killers Of The Flower Moon.
Winners were announced in early December.
“I was a teenager when I discovered Martin’s work,” said Day-Lewis, who announced his retirement from acting in 2017 and makes few public appearances. He worked with Scorsese on The Age of Innocence and Gangs Of New York and said the director “illuminated the vast, beautiful landscape of what is possible in film. And he clarified for me what it is that one must ask of oneself to work in faith.”
“One of the greatest joys and unexpected privileges of my life was to find myself one day working with him…As a man and a filmmaker, I love and revere him.”
Scorsese said receiving “this honor, presented by Daniel, is an honor in itself.”
Killers Of The Flower Moon was the top honoree with wins for Best Picture; Lily Gladstone for Best Actress; and Rodrigo Prieto for Cinematography.
“I have to mention a few names tonight. I wanted to make sure, because this may be it for us in terms of our presentations,” Scorsese said, seeming to refer to a competitive awards season. It was overall a bit of an emotional room Thursday night for presenters, winners and the audience assembled in the soaring former bank space.
“It’s pretty badass to be honored by you,” a visibly moved Mark Ruffalo said of the NBR, accepting Best Supporting Actor for Poor Things. “I’ve attended many of these, but never come close to being up here talking.”
”I was terrified to take this part,” he said of his foppishly bizarre character Duncan Wedderburn, “But man, was it fun to break free.”
Paul Giamatti, Best Actor for The Holdovers, noted his last NBR win two decades ago for Sideways, also by Alexander Payne. “Talk about full circle. Twenty years ago, I received a Breakthrough Award from this august body. And now 20 years later, at the age of 38 [audience laughter], I received this Best Actor award. I can look at these bookends of two decades and say, ‘Okay, I did something. It’s an amazing gift.”
“A lot of sh*t went down in 20 years for me, and in a way my life is sustained and buoyed by these two highlights.”
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Best Supporting Actress for The Holdovers, was elated that Bradley Cooper – there to accept the NBR’s Icon Award for Maestro — “knows who I am now.”
“Bradley, my agents have strict instructions now to contact your team,” she said. “So, if you see it in Deadline in a few weeks, that we have a show together, it happened here.”
Michael J. Fox got a rousing standing ovation as he stepped onto stage, along with Davis Guggenheim, director of Best Documentary Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.
“Davis called me, like two or three years ago, and said he’d read one of my books and he wanted what I had,” Fox joked. “I said, ’You don’t want this.’” He called Parkinson’s Disease “a gift – a gift that keeps on taking.”
Fox recalled dropping out of high school in Alberta, Canada and moving to a one-room apartment in LA, where he found success. “And somehow [it] happened,” he said. Then “Parkinson’s happened. And, in a way, Parkinson’s is much more important. It opened my eyes in ways that I didn’t expect.”
“You responded to what life threw at you. You’ve changed my life,” said Guggenheim.
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