Latest news with #standingovation
The Independent
13-07-2025
- Sport
- The Independent
Princess Kate told ‘don't be nervous' before Wimbledon standing ovation
The Princess of Wales receives some very valuable advice before she received a standing ovation at Wimbledon. Princess Kate met eight-year-old Lydia Lowe ahead of her appearance at the women's singles final on Saturday. Lydia, who overcame a brain injury last January and had to learn to walk again, told Kate 'don't be nervous' and 'take deep breaths'. The Princess responded: 'Take deep breaths, okay, I'll remember that. Thank you.' Lydia was at Wimbledon representing the Dan Maskell Trust and was responsible for the coin toss for the wheelchair final.
Yahoo
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Princess of Wales told ‘don't be nervous' before Wimbledon standing ovation
Credit: YouTube/Wimbledon The Princess of Wales was told 'don't be nervous' before receiving a standing ovation at Wimbledon. The Princess, 43, was also urged to 'take deep breaths' by eight-year-old Lydia Lowe ahead of her appearance at the women's singles final. She was later met with a standing ovation as she entered the Royal Box, the second year in a row she received such a greeting. Her arrival at SW19 last year marked her second public appearance since announcing her cancer diagnosis. Lydia was at Wimbledon representing the Dan Maskell Trust and was responsible for the coin toss for the wheelchair final. During a touching exchange, the Princess asked the child, who overcame a brain injury last January and had to learn how to walk again, what it meant to her to perform the coin toss. She asked if the girl had a favourite tennis player and whether she was feeling nervous. When the Princess asked if she had any advice for her ahead of her own appearance, the child replied: 'Don't be nervous [and] take deep breaths.' The Princess responded: 'Take deep breaths, okay, I'll remember that. Thank you.' Catherine wore a £440 Self Portrait cream bouclé bow detail midi dress, which featured a high-collared belted top and flowing pleated skirt, and carried a £950 Anya Hindmarch tote bag. She also wore a green and purple bow – the colours traditionally associated with Wimbledon – to mark her role as patron of The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC). She sat next to former No.1 player Billie Jean King in the Royal Box, with the pair seen in conversation throughout the match between Amanda Anisimova and Iga Swiatek, which the latter won in straight 6-0, 6-0 sets. Following Anisimova's defeat, the Princess told the American player she should be 'so proud', according to broadcaster Clare Balding. Balding also suggested Anisimova may be experiencing a feeling of 'border-line embarrassment'. Giving commentary following the match as the Princess spoke to winner Swiatek, the broadcaster said: 'And her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales getting a chance to chat face-to-face with Iga once again. 'It was very sweet actually, you could see the Princess of Wales saying to Amanda Anisimova you should be so proud, knowing that there was that real fragility there, that obviously – when you've been at the wrong end of a love and love hiding, there's that feeling of almost, border-line embarrassment.' Ahead of the match, the Princess met Wang Ziying, the women's wheelchair tennis champion, who won her final in straight sets, and Ralp Yin, her coach. She also met Shaniah Williams and Jefferson Iweh, who are Work at Wimbledon representatives. The Princess spoke with Wimbledon's longest-serving steward, Bob Flint, who has worked the Championships each year since 1980. She later waved to cheering crowds as she crossed a bridge over the grounds. Her appearance at the final comes as she continues to find the right balance as she fully returns to public-facing engagements after her treatment last year. The Princess was diagnosed with cancer following a major abdominal surgery in January last year. She retreated from public life as she underwent a course of 'preventative chemotherapy', making only occasional public appearances over the following months. Last September, Catherine revealed she had completed her treatment. In January, she confirmed she was in remission. More recently, she has gradually been increasing her workload but has made clear that her focus will remain firmly on her long-term recovery. In recent weeks, she has made public appearances at Garter Day in Windsor and Trooping the Colour, as well as a handful of other solo engagements. But she pulled out of a planned trip to Royal Ascot last month at the last minute after she had been expected to make a return to the racing spectacle following her absence the previous year. She was said to be disappointed not to attend alongside her husband, the Prince of Wales, but continues to take each occasion as it comes. Other guests at Wimbledon's royal box on Saturday included Kemi Badenoch, the Tory party leader, and Gordon Ramsay, the celebrity chef. Last year, the Princess attended Carlos Alcaraz's winning match against seven-time champion Novak Djokovic. She brought Princess Charlotte with her and was left emotional after receiving a standing ovation. The Princess later awarded Alcaraz the trophy before a photograph posted on Wimbledon's X account showed Charlotte shaking the hand of the champion as he held the prize. The Waleses are keen tennis players and previously revealed that they are unable to finish a match because of their competitiveness.
Telegraph
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Why I hate giving standing ovations
You could have fried an egg on my face. I felt awkward, embarrassed and rude; but even as everyone around me steadily rose to their feet, I stayed put and applauded from my seat. It was the curtain call for The Great Gatsby (the musical currently playing at the London Coliseum) and most of the audience were standing to give a standing ovation. But even as every bone in my British body told me to get up with everyone else, I was determined not to stand up for a show that I just didn't think was very good. In the last couple of years, almost every show I've seen onstage – musicals and plays alike – has seen audiences routinely rising to their feet at the end. In fact, these days, the only thing rarer than getting a standing ovation at the theatre is…well, not getting a standing ovation. 'They happen so often now that you're very aware when they don't happen,' says musical theatre star Jenna Russell (Hello, Dolly!, Flowers For Mrs Harris), who agrees the standing ovation – once a rare honour – has 'become the norm' in all genres of theatre. I love to give a standing ovation – but I want to do it when I really, truly mean it. I want to reserve my standing ovations for when I feel like my life has been changed in some way by what I've just seen, or when I've had tears pouring down my face from the beauty or impact of the performances. Last year, I jumped to my feet at the end of Hello, Dolly! at the London Palladium, when I had emotions I couldn't even name coursing through me. I also couldn't stand up quickly enough at the curtain call for the West End's Cabaret in January – I can't imagine a day when it won't be one of the best pieces of theatre I've ever seen. Most shows don't have this impact on me. And yet so often, I've ended up standing to applaud with the rest of the audience because I worry I'm sticking out like the bitterest of sore thumbs if I don't. That's not to say I haven't enjoyed most productions I've seen; but enjoying a show doesn't mean I want to give it a standing ovation. Getting to my feet for something that hasn't really moved me feels like I'm diminishing the standing ovations I've given to shows that have moved me beyond belief. So I've made a vow to stop following the crowd, and to have more confidence in how I feel – which, more often than not, will likely mean staying seated while everyone else stands up. Are we being manipulated? In a way. Musical theatre star Charlie Stemp (Kiss Me Kate, Half a Sixpence), tells me that curtain calls – especially in modern musicals – are often the most choreographed part of the show. 'Most shows design their bows around getting a standing ovation,' he tells me. 'The music will build as the curtain call goes on; it's literally designed to try and make you stand up.' If you've been lucky enough to score tickets to this summer's hottest show – Evita at the London Palladium – you'll likely have seen this in action. Actor Richard E. Grant was there on press night, and he later wrote on Instagram: 'In [five] decades of theatre going, I've never seen a performance with multiple standing ovations, topped off by the longest curtain call ever experienced'. Even Evita's magic hasn't worked on everyone; friends of mine saw the show a few weeks ago. 'I really didn't enjoy Evita,' one told me. 'I did stand up during the bows, partly to show appreciation [for] the work put in by the performers but mostly because I would have felt embarrassed and judged to stay sitting down. It does feel like standing ovations are now an obligation.' I have no issue with other people standing at the end if they've enjoyed a show – goodness knows, we need more collective joy at the moment, not to mention more support for the arts – it's the obligatory element I take issue with. The idea that, if you don't stand for a show at the end, that must mean: 1) you hated the show; and 2) you're enormously rude for not standing up anyway. It was this social pressure that made me feel so embarrassed at the end of The Great Gatsby; but I'm determined to stop giving in to it. Of course, there's a hefty chunk of privilege with all this. I'm very fortunate to live in London and to see multiple shows a year; that's not the case for many. Theatre is prohibitively expensive; and if you've travelled hundreds of miles and spent hundreds of pounds, then of course you should give a standing ovation if you want to. 'I did a panto,' says musical theatre star Marisha Wallace (Cabaret, Guys & Dolls), 'and that's a very good example of people saving money the whole year to come to one show – and baby, they're gonna stand! They've saved all their money; they're just so excited to be there.' Russell points out that performers always know one type of standing ovation from another. 'You can feel when it's spontaneous,' she says. 'We're totally aware. And that has a different effect to seeing people go, 'Oh God, here we go, [let's] stand up'.' Stemp, too, knows the difference – he cites Chichester Festival Theatre as his favourite place to perform, because the audience tends to be within an older age range, and so the standing ovations are far more special. 'I think older generations reserve that large display of affection; so when you get [a standing ovation] in a place that has those old-school values, it means so much more,' he says. 'I'll never forget watching an old man turn to the person next to him [to ask for his help in getting up] so he could applaud a show that I was in. It's the most beautiful thing in the world to see.' It's reassuring to know that performers know the difference between a spontaneous standing ovation and an obligatory one; but that doesn't mean I'm ready to let go of my own personal definition of standing ovations being a rare show of appreciation for a show that, quite simply, isn't like the others. If all reviewers gave five stars to every single production, the reviewing system would be rendered completely meaningless. By that same token, I feel that if I give a standing ovation to every show I ever see, I'm never really giving a standing ovation to any show at all. And, given the immense quality of some productions out there, that feels like a real shame. So I'm (ironically) taking a stand against automatic, obligatory standing ovations. Unless a show's moved me beyond words (and merely clapping), I'll be applauding from my seat. And Marisha Wallace, for one, is fine with that. 'We have so many rules and pre-conceived notions of etiquette,' she says. 'For us to judge the audience…I don't think we can do that. I don't think we have that right. If you don't want to stand, don't stand. And if you like to stand, stand up. I just hate that people judge [others] either way. Let people feel the art the way they want to feel it.'
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
So THAT's Why Standing Ovations At Cannes Are So Damn Long
According to The Guardian, the applause following Pillion's screening at this year's Cannes Film Festival 'lasted several minutes, with the inevitable awkwardness of seeming dutiful'. The Alexander Skarsgård film is the norm, not the exception. In 2024, Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis reportedly got seven callous-inducing minutes of standing ovation. Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth managed to elicit a record-breaking 22 mins in 2006. And Joachim Trier's 2025 follow-up to The Worst Person In The World rivalled that, with the ovation for his latest film clocking in at almost 20 minutes. GQ has said in the past that, when it comes to applause at Cannes, 'anything five minutes or less is a tepid – or worse – appraisal'. But how did this palm prison get built, and what is its purpose? According to The Atlantic (who, like The Guardian, call the custom 'awkward'), clapping at Cannes is part of the spectacle. At the French festival in particular, the length and enthusiasm of the clapping is seen as a sign of who thinks which film will be the next 'hit'. But the 'pageantry' of standing ovations is fallible at best and unfairly, performatively biased at worst – for what it's worth, Megalopolis was both critically panned and a box office flop. Speaking to The Atlantic, professor Scott Page, who's studied clapping as a form of social behaviour, said: 'There is a real asymmetry to who has influence'. You might be more inclined to partake in a quarter-hour of palm-smashing if someone you really respect and admire is doing so beside you, he suggested. He added that 'if you're not sure' about a film, and 'you think the other people [around you] are smarter than you, then you are going to stand… I imagine Cannes to be a place [where if I ask myself,] 'How confident am I, sitting near movie stars and directors?'' The answer, he says, is likely to be 'not very'. Also, I can't imagine the panic of being the first person to stop applauding, say, a Del Toro film in front of the man himself – peer pressure and etiquette pile up. Speaking to Screen Daily, Barry Hertz, film editor and critic for Canadian national newspaper The Globe and Mail, says that the length of applause a film got at Cannes can sometimes be seen as an interim star rating system until its release. 'Instead of a film getting four stars, it got a '10-minute standing ovation,'' he says. But though an anonymous film PR told the publication that 'nobody is taking it seriously,' Kent Sanderson, president of indie film distributor Bleecker Street, doesn't think Cannes' applause sessions are going anywhere fast. 'It's a self-perpetuating machine between the festival, the trades and the audiences,' they commented. The more the Cannes audience claps, the more it's noted that they clap, the more expected long clapping sessions become; so, it becomes both a sign of disdain and proof of not being 'in on' the festival's culture not to do so. I'd call it a vicious cycle, but it's literally already a shoulder-aching, barbed, endless round... Harry Potter Star Harry Melling And Alexander Skarsgård's 'Kinky' Biker Romance Causes A Huge Stir In Cannes Halle Berry Forced To Change Her Outfit Because Of This Last-Minute Change To Cannes Dress Code Robert De Niro Kicks Off Cannes Film Festival With Blistering Speech About 'Philistine' Trump
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Cannes Film Festival's longest standing ovations in history
If you're ever planning a visit to the Cannes Film Festival, prepare to leave with sore palms. Over the last few decades, Cannes has become famous for lengthy standing ovations. The best films to premiere on the Croisette can have audiences on their feet for well over 15 minutes, which is a frankly absurd use of anybody's time. This practice has only become more popular in recent years, mostly thanks to breathless reporting in the industry trade press. The phrase "10-minute standing ovation at Cannes" has become even more valuable than a string of five-star reviews when trying to promote a festival favourite on its mainstream cinema run. As Cannes 2025 gets underway, we've looked back in time — with the aid of a trusty stopwatch — to look at which movies have had festival audiences on their feet for the longest period of time. Guillermo del Toro's fantastical masterpiece Pan's Labyrinth still stands as the movie with the longest standing ovation in Croisette history. The record has now stood for almost 20 years, recognising the Mexican director's twisted and terrifying journey into the heart of Francoism — which proves to be far more horrifying than any of the mythical beasts visited along the way. Read more: Tom Cruise receives nearly 8-minute standing ovation at Cannes premiere of final Mission: Impossible film (The Independent, 2 min read) The movie went on to win three Oscars in the wake of its Cannes premiere, as well as standing as arguably the greatest film made by one of cinema's true modern maestros. Michael Moore spent most of the early noughties delivering incendiary, political documentaries that broke free of the usual doc crowd to achieve mainstream success. In 2004, he took a big swing at the George W Bush regime with Fahrenheit 9/11 — a searing takedown of the president's policies and the Iraq War. After achieving a rapturous reception at Cannes, the doc won the festival's most prestigious prize when it was awarded the Palme d'Or. When it landed for ordinary audiences, it became the highest-grossing documentary film of all time — later usurped by Michael Jackson's This Is It. Matthew McConaughey had a big Cannes in 2012, starring in two movies that received enormous standing ovations — right at the heart of the period of career success known popularly as the "McConaissance". The other one will appear later on this list, but the one with the most excitement behind it was Jeff Nichols' coming-of-age movie Mud. Read more: Matthew McConaughey grew tired of being 'the rom-com dude' (BANG Showbiz, 2 min read) For 18 minutes, audiences stood to applaud at the end of the film, in which McConaughey plays a fugitive who befriends a pair of teenagers. The trio then try to evade capture. Ultimately, the buzz catapulted this low-budget drama to a box office return three times its production budget. Hot off the success of Ryan Gosling thriller Drive, director Nicolas Winding Refn delivered a pair of very divisive movies. The first was Only God Forgives — another collaboration with Gosling — and the second was The Neon Demon, in which Elle Fanning played an aspiring model who discovers real darkness at the heart of the fashion industry. Read more: Elle Fanning's contacts 'burned into her eye' during The Neon Demon shoot (Cover Media, 1 min read) When the movie came out on general release, the reviews were split squarely down the middle and the box office was very disappointing. However, at Cannes, Refn's vision earned 17 minutes of continuous applause from the assembled crowd. For a very long time, the record for Cannes' longest ever standing ovation was held by Sergio Leone's gargantuan crime epic Once Upon a Time in America. As with so many of the films on this list, Leone's movie proved to be controversial when it emerged into the wider world — particularly because of sexual violence that some critics and audiences believed to be gratuitous. The film follows best friends played by Robert De Niro and James Woods as they rise through the world of organised crime in New York City. Nowadays, it regularly appears on lists of the best gangster movies ever made. The second part of Matthew McConaughey's incredibly busy Cannes docket was the 2012 movie The Paperboy, directed by Lee Daniels. It quickly became notorious, largely for a scene in which Nicole Kidman urinates on Zac Efron's character after he is stung by jellyfish. In Cannes, though, any controversy was dwarfed by an enormous standing ovation. Read more: Zac Efron And Nicole Kidman's New Film Once Had A Much More Explicit Title (HuffPost, 2 min read) There has to be an asterisk next to this ovation, though. Robbie Collin of the Daily Telegraph explained that he was at the screening and referred to the ovation as "a cacophonous quarter-hour of jeering, squawking and mooing". So not quite an unqualified success, it's fair to say. The Dardennes are long-time stalwarts of the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Palme d'Or twice. They got the ovation to match their festival fame in 2014 with Two Days, One Night. Marion Cotillard would go on to earn an Oscar nomination for her performance as a factory worker who has to convince her colleagues to vote to forego a cash bonus so that she can keep her job. It was Cotillard who found herself at the centre of the lavish praise for the film, which still stands as one of the actor's best pieces of work. Capernaum is a fascinating film, using extended flashbacks to tell the story of a 12-year-old boy incarcerated for a violent crime who seeks to sue his parents for giving birth to him. It's a bleak tale led by a tremendous performance from its non-professional lead actor Zain Al Rafeea and it certainly made an impact at Cannes, where the audience rose to its feet for 15 minutes of applause. The film won the Jury Prize at Cannes and then went on to do very well at the box office, still standing as the highest-grossing Arabic movie of all time. It's a tough watch, but one that's worth your time. Alice Rohrwacher makes strange, magical movies. She might never have made one as unusual and beguiling as Happy As Lazzaro, which subtly pulls the audience around in time and tone through the genius of Adriano Tardiolo's quiet, sensitive performance in the title role. Read more: 'La Chimera' Filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher Named 2025 Cannes Camera d'Or Jury President (IndieWire, 2 min read) This is the sort of film that will often thrive in a festival environment, and so it proved at Cannes with a 15-minute ovation. Rohrwacher's relationship with Cannes has since continued with the premiere of her next film La Chimera, and she is serving as the president of the jury for the Caméra d'Or prize for the festival's best first feature. Belle is a strange and over-stuffed movie that is carrying rather too much plot for its own good, but that didn't stop Cannes audiences from falling head over heels in love with it. The film reimagines the story of Beauty and the Beast — it really is a tale as old as time — in a virtual world, where the titular youngster becomes a successful singer within an online landscape. However, there's an undeniable, crowd-pleasing joy to the film that no doubt got the Cannes audience to leap to its feet. At Cannes in 2024, the big winner in terms of audience reaction was not Kevin Costner's epic western movie Horizon — though that did manage around 12 minutes of applause. The most remarkable ovation went to Iranian thriller The Seed of the Sacred Fig, in which a judge becomes increasingly paranoid about his own family when his secret gun goes missing against the backdrop of anti-regime protests. Read more: 'The Seed of the Sacred Fig' director Mohammad Rasoulof on transforming difficulties into beauty (EuroNews, 10 min read) Seed of the Sacred Fig is a strange and unconventional film that is as remarkable for its behind-the-scenes story as the one in front of the camera. Director Mohammad Rasoulof has repeatedly violated Iran's censorship laws to tell his stories, while his actors were unable to leave Iran to come to the Cannes premiere. The footage, shot in secret, had to be smuggled out of Iran. That's an achievement worthy of any standing ovation.
