'45 seconds!': Oscar nominees urged to tighten speeches as gala looms

LOS ANGELES - "How many seconds do we have?"

"Forty-five!" shouted back Hollywood's biggest stars, from Timothee Chalamet and Ariana Grande to Ralph Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini.

Just five days before the Oscars, this year's nominees gathered in Los Angeles on Tuesday for an intimate dinner - and a few words of warning about the length of their acceptance speeches.

Nobody really expects Oscar winners to stick to those exact limits, but it is the job of Academy President Janet Yang to at least try.

"I feel like a schoolmarm," joked Yang, as she politely requested this year's crop of movie stars to keep their moments in the spotlight "heartfelt, humorous if you'd like, poignant, inspirational, but brief."

As if to exemplify the challenge, A Complete Unknown director James Mangold arrived several minutes late for the annual nominees "class photo," which had finally been taken, forcing a hasty reshoot.

"It's the Mangold edition!" quipped one star, as Wicked actors Grande and Cynthia Erivo sat politely, side-by-side and front-and-centre of the group, while A Complete Unknown star Chalamet chatted to Anora director Sean Baker in the back rows.

In a typical year, the Academy holds a celebratory, champagne-soaked luncheon for nominees and invites press in early February.

This year, it was scrapped in the wake of the devastating Los Angeles wildfires.

Instead, a smaller, scaled-back dinner was held at the last minute, with Yang emphasizing "an atmosphere of support for so many amongst us who are recovering from the fires that devastated large swaths of Los Angeles."

Still, the event allowed nominees the chance to catch up and swap stories at the end of the lengthy campaign trail.

"Well, here we are!" said Mikey Madison, taking a brief break from chatting to Rossellini.

"I've never gone before" to the Oscars, she told AFP. "I'm excited. We'll see what happens".

Madison is a favourite to win best actress for her role as a sex worker in Anora, up against Demi Moore for gory body-horror The Substance.

Moore was concerned that she had not brought her dog Pilaf, a minuscule Chihuahua who accompanied her to the Cannes film festival last May.

"They were expecting her, I should have!" she told AFP.

Fiennes, twice an Oscar nominee in the 1990s without winning, praised a "great crop of movies this year."

His twisty Vatican-set thriller Conclave now appears to be locked in a two-horse race for best picture, Hollywood's ultimate accolade, with Anora.

Insisting the dinner was "good fun," British actor Fiennes admitted he had been flying back and forth across the Atlantic "quite a bit."

Indeed, other than excitement for Sunday's gala, a repeated sentiment among the Oscar nominees was relief that soon the campaigning marathon would be over.

"What am I working on next? I'm working on sleeping for a week," said Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl director Merlin Crossingham.