Selena Gomez wins Best Actress prize at Cannes Film Festival for ‘Emilia Pérez’

Selena Gomez won the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival last night (May 25) for her role in the Spanish film Emilia Pérez.

The popstar shares the award with three of her co-stars in the film, Karla Sofia Gascón, Adriana Paz and Zoe Saldaña.

Emilia Pérez is a musical crime comedy directed by Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Rust and Bone), and it tells the story of a woman who is tasked with assisting an escaped Mexican cartel leader to undergo sex reassignment surgery.

The film received one of the festival’s longest standing ovations after its premiere on May 18, and also won the Jury Prize. It has now been acquired by Netflix.

The prestigious win cements Gomez’s gradual move away from music and toward embracing acting full-time. In January, she admitted she was considering quitting music and said she would prefer to eventually focus on her acting career instead.

She’s now set to portray veteran musician Linda Ronstadt in an upcoming biopic, and earlier this year, it was also revealed that Gomez would be reprising her role in the Disney sitcom Wizards of Waverly Place when it returns for a sequel series.

In February, however, Gomez did release her flirty new single ‘Love On’, her first release of 2024 and a taste of a possible upcoming fourth album, which is yet to be announced.

Earlier this month, Gomez opened up about her mental health status, revealing that she took the conscious step to reel back on her online presence, despite being the most followed woman on Instagram.

“I disabled all my comments on my photos on Instagram for only my friends,” she said. “So I think I’ve created boundaries to help me. Obviously people fussed about it. They fuss about everything. I felt empowered by doing that, by saying, ‘This is just for me.’”

She had previously opened up about the time she “hit rock bottom” with her mental health.

During a SXSW panel in Austin, Texas, the singer reflected on her 2022 documentary My Mind & Me, which she admitted she went “back and forth” about releasing to the public.

Gomez has also outed herself this year as a Kurt Cobain superfan. “I kind of got obsessed and dyed my hair and cut my hair like him,” she told Jimmy Kimmel.

“I know a little too much,” she added, saying that she had posters of Cobain on her walls and that she “would rewatch his interviews, I would watch his performances, I had seen his documentary like 12 times.