Movies for Grownups Awards 2026: Meet the Winners!

AARP honors 2025’s finest film and TV achievements by talents 50+

Tyler Coates,

AARP

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En español

Published January 10, 2026

Matlock; Sentimental Value; Is This Thing On?; Jay Kelly; Hamnet; One Battle After Another; The Pitt

Sonja Flemming/CBS; Neon/Courtesy Everett Collection; Searchlight Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection; Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection; Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection; Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection; HBO Max/Courtesy Everett Collection

Last year was a great year for entertainment by and for people age 50 and older, the people we affectionately call “grownups.”

Nearly half of the actors who won Emmys in September were over 50, and nine of the Oscar-nominated performers were grownups — including The Brutalist’s Adrien Brody, who won the Movies for Grownups award for best actor just weeks before winning the Academy Award in the same category.

This year’s Oscar nominees won’t be revealed until Jan. 22 (and the winners on March 15), but you can get a preview of all the films in the awards conversation right here.

Be sure to watch the Movies for Grownups with AARP ceremony hosted by Alan Cumming, 61, on PBS’ Great Performances on Feb. 22.

And the winners are …

Best Picture

Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection

Hamnet

Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao brings one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known tragedies — the death of his son, Hamnet — to the screen, focusing on the relationship between the Bard (Paul Mescal) and his wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley). This moving and haunting drama touches on love and grief, connecting the playwright’s loss to one of his most famous plays: Hamlet.

Best Director

Manuel Velasquez/Getty Images

Guillermo del Toro, 61, Frankenstein

There’s no one else who could tackle a new adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Gothic novel quite like del Toro, for whom the project was a lifelong dream. With visuals both sumptuous and terrifying, del Toro’s take on the classic monster tale gives more insight into the lonely creature (played by Jacob Elordi) brought to life by a possibly mad scientist, Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac).

Best Actor

Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection

George Clooney, 64, Jay Kelly

Clooney shines in this dramatic comedy as the title character, an A-list movie star who is seemingly on top of the world. But the actor is hardly typecast; he brings a richness and depth to his character’s poignant reflections on his personal life and public persona as he takes stock of his successes and failures.

Best Actress

Searchlight Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

Laura Dern, 59, Is This Thing On?

As her soon-to-be ex-husband, Alex (cowriter Will Arnett, 55), embarks on a new hobby in stand-up comedy following their amicable split, Dern’s Tess must navigate the awkward aftermath of their breakup (including being a subject in Alex’s material) in this contemporary, grownup spin on the rom-com from cowriter and director Bradley Cooper, 51.

Best Supporting Actor

Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

Delroy Lindo, 73, Sinners

Lindo plays a bluesman living in the Mississippi Delta in the Jim Crow era, but his performance is timeless. Amid the bloody chaos of Ryan Coogler’s epic vampire musical, the veteran actor grounds the film — and brings plenty of comic relief — reminding audiences of the humanity at the core of this supernatural thriller.

Best Supporting Actress

Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

Regina Hall, 55, One Battle After Another

Known best by many as a comic actress, Hall gives a quiet and unassuming performance as a loyal political revolutionary up against an impossible foe, proving her innate talent as a dramatic performer. Among a stacked ensemble, Hall does more with a silent look than most might achieve with a page-long monologue.

Best Screenwriter

Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

Paul Thomas Anderson, 55

Best Ensemble

Warner Bros./Getty Images

One Battle After Another

The latest from writer-director Anderson, 55, was inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland. Shifting the setting to present-day America and featuring an all-star cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, Teyana Taylor and newcomer Chase Infiniti (plus supporting actress winner Regina Hall), Anderson’s script is a tender father-daughter story amid a larger epic of political revolution.

Best Intergenerational Movie and Best Foreign Film

Neon/Courtesy Everett Collection

Sentimental Value

The Norwegian family drama directed by Joachim Trier, who cowrote it with longtime collaborator Eskil Vogt, follows an acclaimed film director (Stellan Skarsgård) who attempts to make things right with his estranged daughters (Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) in all the wrong ways. Costarring Elle Fanning as an American actress who takes a role in the director’s latest film, the film spans both generations and languages.

Best Documentary

lamy Stock Photo/HBO

My Mom Jayne

Actress Mariska Hargitay, 62, turns the lens on her late mother, the blonde bombshell Jayne Mansfield, who died in 1967 in a car accident (Hargitay, then 3 years old, was also in the car). The resulting doc uncovers family secrets and dismantles Hollywood legends while crafting a lovely portrait of the talented star who was largely misunderstood — even, as Hargitay admits, by her own daughter.

Best Period Film

20th Century Studios/Courtesy Everett Collection

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

Writer-director Scott Cooper examines a dark period in the eponymous singer-songwriter’s biography when he battled depression and childhood trauma as he rose to the height of his fame. Jeremy Allen White provides his own vocals in this musical biopic that offers an intimate look at Springsteen’s songwriting process and the making of his celebrated 1982 album, Nebraska.

Best TV Series

HBO Max/Courtesy Everett Collection

The Pitt

This HBO Max hit series reinvigorated the medical drama, ditching soapy storylines for an intense, realistic look at first responders in emergency medicine. With its post-pandemic setting and real-time storytelling (each episode follows a single hour of a shift), The Pitt proves that a classic television format can still tell gripping and provocative stories.

Best TV Actor

HBO Max/Courtesy Everett Collection

Noah Wyle, 54, The Pitt

The actor who rose to fame in his 20s as a cast member on ER now leads a new ensemble as Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, the senior attending physician in a Pittsburgh emergency room. Over the course of the first season, Robby remains the calm center of the madness, despite struggling with PTSD from the COVID-19 pandemic. Like his character, Wyle serves in a leadership role for the show, as an executive producer.

Best TV Actress

Sonja Flemming/CBS

Kathy Bates, 77, Matlock

This CBS legal drama might seem like a gender-flipped reboot of the classic series, but there’s so much more to Madeline “Matty” Matlock than meets the eye. Playing a retired attorney who returns to the workforce, Bates and her character (whose real name is Madeline Kingston, having assumed her other persona inspired by the original Matlock series) bring a gravitas and expertise that impress their colleagues.

Movies for Grownups Career Achievement Winner

Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images for AFI

Adam Sandler, 59

The Gen X comedy icon has been cracking people up since his debut on Saturday Night Live in 1990. Whether starring in broad comedies like The Waterboy, Happy Gilmore and Grown Ups or in more serious fare like Uncut Gems — for which he earned a Movies for Grownups award for best actor in 2020 — and this season’s Jay Kelly, Sandler makes entertaining audiences his number-one priority.