Frances McDormand took home one of the biggest awards of the night at Sunday’s Oscars, snagging Best Actress for her work in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
At the Governor’s Ball post-ceremony, McDormand should have kept a better eye on her new hardware. A man, now identified by Los Angeles police as Terry Bryant, tried to make off with her statuette after grabbing it from her table.
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An understandably emotional McDormand was spotted crying outside the ball after she gave up the search for the statuette on the premises. She was about to depart the ball with her husband when the thief was discovered.
According to a tweet from the festivities, chef Wolfgang Puck’s photographer eventually spotted and stopped Bryant, and retrieved the Oscar. The man then blended back into the party.
(Oscar winners get their statuette engraved with their name at the Governor’s Ball, so there was no contest about who the Oscar belonged to.)
Despite McDormand’s request to let him go, police identified the suspect and arrested him on suspicion of felony grand theft. The 47-year-old is being held on US$20,000 bail.
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Bryant did himself no favours by posting a video from the party to his Facebook account. (You can watch the video, top.)
In the video, Bryant films himself drinking alcohol and kissing an Oscar, exclaiming, “This is mine! We got it tonight, baby! Governor’s Ball, baby!”
He then walks through the crowd and oblivious partygoers ask to touch it. Bryant doesn’t appear to make any effort to return the Oscar on his own, nor is it explicitly clear that it’s McDormand’s trophy. Rosario Herrera, a police spokeswoman, said that Bryant had a ticket for the event.
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McDormand’s representative, Simon Halls, confirmed the trophy was eventually returned to her.
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“Fran and Oscar are happily reunited and are enjoying an In-N-Out burger together,” Halls said in a statement to USA Today.
This is McDormand’s second Best Actress Oscar. She won her first in 1997 for her performance in the movie Fargo.
— With files from The Associated Press
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