Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett honored at Palm Springs Film Festival

Awards seasons frontrunners like Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, and Brie Larson were honored this weekend at the 27th Palm Springs International Film Festival gala, and many of them took the opportunity to campaign not for themselves but for their costars and collaborators.

Damon, who received the chairman’s award, dedicated most of his acceptance speech to thanking The Martian director Ridley Scott, saying that he already thought Scott had won an Academy Award and was shocked when he realized otherwise.

“The bottom line is, he’s given more than enough to cinema. So I hope this is his year,” Damon said. “I don’t know if you’re supposed to say that out loud, but s–t, when I did The Departed, we said it out loud a lot about Marty [Scorsese], and it panned out.”

Brie Larson, who won the breakthrough performance award for her role in Room, similarly thanked her costar Jacob Tremblay and director Lenny Abrahamson, who both presented her with the honor. Steve Jobs star Michael Fassbender lavished praise on Kate Winslet, who presented him with the international star award for an actor, and Universal for distributing the film. “It’s unfortunate about the box office figures, but thank God for Jurassic World,” he added.

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But one star didn’t get much love from his cast members: Christian Bale and Steve Carell were on hand to accept the ensemble award, honoring the cast of The Big Short, and they happily threw one of their absent costars under the bus.

“I think as an ensemble we can all agree that we all really hated Ryan Gosling,” Steve Carell said. “I think we’re in agreement that we’re happy he’s not here this evening to accept this award.”

Blanchett and Rooney Mara were both honored for their roles in Carol, and The Danish Girl star Alicia Vikander earned the rising star award. Johnny Depp took home an achievement award for his role in Black Mass, Saiorse Ronan was honored with the international star award for Brooklyn, and Spotlight director Tom McCarthy won the visionary award.