On Wednesday night celebrities including Eva Longoria, Renee Zellweger and Arnold Schwarzenegger came together for the annual Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Grants Banquet - which saw $3.8 million given to 74 charitable efforts.
The star-studded night, which also saw plenty of digs at President Donald Trump and a grim Me Too joke from Rob Lowe, was held at the Beverly Wilshire in Los Angeles.
Hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the night sees profits from licensing fees of the Golden Globe Awards (which are judged by the HFPA) donated to charity. Over the banquet's 27-year history, the HFPA has reportedly donated $33 million to over 80 nonprofit charities, scholarship programmes and various organisation dedicated to "film preservation, journalistic freedom of speech and relief for natural disasters and international crises".
Eva Longoria attended dressed in a stunning white dress, which featured two thigh high slits and a pair of unusual white and transparent heels.
Kerry Washington, who presented the very first award of the night to journalism-focused charity Pen in the Community, was also one of the best dressed on the night.
Wearing a sparkling black jumpsuit, she accessorised with not one but two belts.
Renee Zellweger also attended in a salmon off-the-shoulder dress with puffy sleeves.
The Bridget Jones’ Diary star announced a number of grants to educational institutes, including UCLA and CalArts.
Notably, Zellweger (who will be playing Judy Garland in an upcoming biopic) was preceded by a live musical performance by Dear Evan Hansen star Ben Platt and Booksmart’s Beanie Feldstein, a cover of ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ famously sung by Garland and Barbra Streisand.
Actress Camila Morrone, who is dating Leonardo DiCaprio, also presented grants to a number of film festivals and wore a white gown with a striking asymmetrical sleeve detail.
Rocketman stars Taron Egerton and Jamie Bell reunited at the event, announcing one of the biggest grants of the night: a $500,000 donation to British nonprofit Help Refugees.
There were a number of political jokes on the night as well, spearheaded by HFPA president Lorenzo Soria and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. They both referenced President Donald Trump’s "racist" tweets in which Trump called for four Democratic congresswomen, all of whom are people of colour, to "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came”.
Soria declared at the start of the night, “In addition to being journalists, most of us [at the HFPA] are immigrants and not going back!"
Schwarzengger chimed in shortly afterwards, joking with Soria (who is Italian) and making an additional dig at a previous race row Trump had been involved with prior to his presidency. In 2012, Trump was an active proponent of ‘birther’ conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama who claimed live on television that he was a “little” sceptical and called for him to release his birth certificate to prove he was born in the United States. Obama later did and the certificate revealed he was born in Hawaii.
Schwarzenegger said, “I am really pissed off at Lorenzo because I thought that foreign-born citizens cannot become president!”
Schwarzenegger, who is a Republican, also recently criticised Trump in a statement to POLITICO for his comments about the congresswomen and called it an “un-American attack” which was “hateful”, “crude” and “divisive”. The Austrian actor/politician doubled down on that again on the night, saying, “We have all been told by President Trump to go back home. But we didn't! We stay here. We live here. We make a difference here. And we make sure America stays great.”
Borat’s Sacha Baron Cohen also couldn’t resist a Trump dig. Cohen, who unveiled an HFPA intitiative called Entertaining America to highlight the importance of film in museums across the US, joked about future exhibits which would include “footage of Melania Trump smiling”.
He also referenced the recent college admissions scandal and Lori Loughlin’s involvement in it, saying another exhibit piece would be the “rowing boat sat [in] by Lori Loughlin’s daughter”.
The gender divide in Hollywood was also a topic of conversation that night, as Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waiti revealed a grant that would go towards directing workshops focused on women.
More controversially, actor Rob Lowe responded to his co-presenter Regina Hall who said that when she was younger she “would lie in bed and pray that Rob Lowe would be on top of me”.
He said, “I’ve been Me Too’d... and I like it.”
According to the Hollywood Reporter, “The joke didn’t necessarily land.”
Other notable names to attend included comedian Ali Wong, James Corden, Sylvester Stallone’s daughter Sistine and Lion King director Jon Favreau.
To find out more about Help Refugees, you can read about their mission and donate to their cause on their website. More about PEN in the Community can also be found here, alongside their donation page.
