The 2026 Oscars Were Full of Drama — Most of It Came From a Missing Person

Drama is what the Academy Awards promise and, in varying degrees, what they deliver. At the 98th ceremony, the drama took an unexpected form: the absence of the most historic winner of the night. Sean Penn won Best Supporting Actor for One Battle After Another, claiming his third career Oscar and tying the all-time male acting record — without being at the Dolby Theatre. Presenter Kieran Culkin collected the award and told the audience what it had already suspected: Penn preferred to be somewhere else.

Penn’s three wins now tie him with Jack Nicholson, Walter Brennan, and Daniel Day-Lewis for the most acting Oscars ever won by a man. His previous wins — for Mystic River and Milk — were attended and celebrated. This third, and perhaps most historically significant win, was observed from a different location entirely. Penn’s reasons were not made public.

One Battle After Another, the Paul Thomas Anderson film behind Penn’s latest honor, features Penn as a military officer whose rigid certainty becomes a self-destructive force. Anderson’s direction earned him both Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director — his first career Oscars — in a triumph that drew a long and heartfelt ovation from the industry. The film dominated the evening in a way few productions manage.

Host Conan O’Brien brought intelligence and humor to the proceedings. He opened with a monologue that tackled artificial intelligence, international filmmaking, and the purpose of gathering in times of uncertainty. He noted that nominees came from 31 countries and six continents, making the ceremony a genuinely global celebration of cinema. His hosting was praised as one of the most well-pitched in recent Oscar memory.

Michael B. Jordan’s Best Actor win for Sinners over Leonardo DiCaprio added another high-profile result to an already packed evening. Penn’s absent, record-tying triumph was the thread that connected all of it.