Da’Vine Joy Randolph (‘The Holdovers’) to Receive Palm Springs International Film Award for Breakthrough Performance

The Palm Springs International Film Awards has announced that Da’Vine Joy Randolph is the recipient of the Breakthrough Performance Award, for The Holdovers. The Film Awards will take place on January 4, 2024, at the Palm Springs Convention Center, with the festival running through January 15, 2024. The event will be sponsored by Entertainment Tonight and IHG Hotels & Resorts. 

“In The Holdovers, Da’Vine Joy Randolph brings not only her significant comedic talents to the table, but also extremely moving emotional depth to her portrayal of Barton Academy head cook Mary Lamb, who is grieving the recent loss of her son,” said Festival Chairman Nachhattar Singh Chandi. “It is our honor to present the Breakthrough Performance Award, to this talented actress in celebration of her outstanding work and recognizing her emerging talent.” 

Randolph joins this year’s previously announced honorees Emma Stone (Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actress), Cillian Murphy (Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actor) and Killers of the Flower Moon (Vanguard Award). Past winners of the Breakthrough Performance Award include last year’s recipient Danielle Deadwyler (Till) along with Mary J. Blige (Mudbound), Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose), Andra Day (TheUnited States v Billie Holiday), Cynthia Erivo (Harriet), Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls), Felicity Huffman (Transamerica), Brie Larson (Room), Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave) and Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl). In the years they were honored, Cotillard, Hudson, Larson, and Nyong’o went on to receive Academy Awards, while Day, Blige, Erivo, Huffman and Pike received nominations. 

Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers follows a curmudgeonly instructor (Paul Giamatti) at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during the holiday break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with one of them — a damaged, brainy troublemaker (newcomer Dominic Sessa) — and with the school’s head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam (Randolph). The film is currently in theaters from Focus Features.

Da’Vine Joy Randolph is a Tony Award-nominated actress, known for her captivating performances which brim with dignity. In 2019, she seized the industry’s attention with her scene-stealing role as Lady Reed opposite Eddie Murphy in Netflix’s Dolemite Is My Name, which earned her an NAACP Image Award nomination in the category of Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture. Currently, Randolph can be seen in Paramount Players’ adaptation of Angie Thomas’ New York Times bestseller, On the Come Up, opposite Method Man and Mike Epps. Most recently, Randolph starred in HBO’s The Idol alongside The Weeknd. Recently, she reprised her role as Detective Williams in the third season of Only Murders in the Building on Hulu. Her other credits include The Lost City, The Last OG, The Guilty, Lee Daniel’s The United States v Billie Holiday, High Fidelity, Kajillionaire and The Last Shift. 

Photo: Ananta

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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