The 2024 Critics Choice Awards has announced its Best Movie Actor of the Year: Paul Giamatti!
The Retention star beat out co-star Bradley Cooper for MaestroLeonardo DiCaprio for Killers of the Flower MoonColman Domingo for RustinCillian Murphy for Oppenheimer and Jeffrey Wright for American fiction.
Giamatti, 56, began his acceptance speech with a hilarious nod to his post-Golden Globes In-N-Out moment, joking to laughter from the audience, “Wow, people. I didn’t think my week could get any better than going viral for eating a cheeseburger.”
“Seriously guys, I need that approval, so everyone just pray for me,” he joked.
In addition to the cast, crew, his team and the studio, Giamatti thanked his son Samuel, girlfriend Clara Wong and his late father Bart Giamatti, “who never saw me act professionally” before his death.
“He was a literary critic and you couldn’t get away with anything but good work,” the actor continued. “This would make him very happy, and that makes me really happy. Well, thank you.”
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Paul Giamatti entered The Holdovers (2023).
Seacia Pavao/ FOCUS PROPERTIES
The Holdovers‘ Paul Giamatti ended his ironic speech at the Golden Globes for Best Actor with touching praise for teachers
The attention Giamatti gets because of the awards The Holdovers is special given that the film marks his reunion with Alexander Payne, who also directed in 2004. Sideways.
Giamatti recently took home a Golden Globe for his role as a cross-eyed boarding school teacher in 1970. (His co-star Da’Vine Joy Randolph, winner of the Critics Choice Award, had it, too.)
This is the veteran’s sixth overall honor, including wins for Sideways and in 2006 The Cinderella Man.
Watch PEOPLE’s full coverage of the 29th Annual Critics’ Choice Awards as they air live from The Barker Hangar in Los Angeles on The CW.
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education