Profile | Sean Baker, winner of 4 Oscars for Anora, took the long road to Hollywood’s grandest stage

The winner of best picture and best director for Anora in the 2025 Oscars, Sean Baker has spent his career chronicling marginalised communities. It has made him a leading light of the indie movie scene in the United States. His film, won five awards – four of them for him – is his latest neorealistic portrayal of society’s underbelly, in which a stripper thinks she has struck it rich with a Russian oligarch’s son. In winning best director, the first time the 54-year-old has been nominated, Baker fended off competition from Brady Corbet for The Brutalist, James Mangold for A Complete Unknown, Jacques Audiard for Emilia Perez and Coralie Fargeat for The Substance. Anora also won best actress, and Baker himself collected additional gold statuettes for best original screenplay and best editing. It has been a long road to Hollywood’s grandest stage for Baker, a slight and unfailingly affable character with an encyclopedic knowledge of film, who is known for casting non-actors and real sex workers in his movies. Despite a devoted art house following, Baker’s only previous encounter with the Oscars maelstrom came when Willem Dafoe – a rare big-name star in the director’s oeuvre – was nominated for a supporting role in The Florida Project. With Anora, which won the Palme d’Or on its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Baker has finally broken through to wider audiences. By far his most successful film, it has grossed around US$40 million. Anora won this year’s top prize from Hollywood’s directors guild last month, where the visibly shocked and characteristically modest Baker told peers his “impostor syndrome” was “skyrocketing”. Born on February 26, 1971, Baker was initiated in cinema by his mother, a teacher. He got the bug at the age of six when he saw Boris Karloff playing the monster in Frankenstein. His first feature, Four Letter Words, was released in 2000, shortly after his graduation from New York University, but his life spiralled out of control because of a heroin addiction. Emerging from that dark place, Baker was determined to stay in the industry, even if he was just clinging on by his fingernails. He was a long way from following in the footsteps of his heroes – John Cassavetes, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh – but his story was not over yet. He made Take Out (2004) about a Chinese immigrant in New York trying to pay off his debts to a smuggler. But it was Starlet (2012), about a porn actress, that got him interested in sex workers, putting him in touch with prostitutes, escorts and exotic dancers, many of whom became friends. Asked why so many of his films focus on sex work, Baker said last May that “we are all fascinated … because it is right under our noses, whether we notice it or not”. “No joke. From my kitchen, I can literally look into a happy endings massage parlour,” said Baker, who lives in Los Angeles. Baker’s next film, Tangerine, was shot on iPhones and followed two transgender prostitutes through the streets of Los Angeles on one crazy day. He followed it with The Florida Project, about a six-year-old girl living in a cheap motel with her mother, a stripper who loses her job and begins soliciting sex work online. Bria Vinaite, who plays the struggling mother, was discovered by Baker on Instagram, while one of the child actors was spotted in a supermarket. I can’t make just – and excuse my terminology here, because it’s an old term – a ‘hooker with a heart of gold’ story Sean Baker Baker was invited to compete for the Palme d’Or at Cannes for the first time in 2021. Red Rocket, the Lolita-inspired tale of a porn star returning to his small Texas hometown to groom a young girl, earned Baker typically sterling reviews. He returned to Cannes with Anora last year, where ecstatic standing ovations and glowing reviews kick-started an awards campaign that proved unstoppable. He said at the time he had expected a more “divisive” response because “we all have different opinions about sex work”. But for Baker, the lives of these real, often flawed human beings whose days and nights contain both the scandalous and the mundane, “can be explored forever”. “I can’t make just – and excuse my terminology here, because it’s an old term – a ‘hooker with a heart of gold’ story”, he added.

Profile | Sean Baker, winner of 4 Oscars for Anora, took the long road to Hollywood’s grandest stage

A leading indie filmmaker with a focus on sex workers, Anora director Baker had only once before had a film nominated for an Academy Award