Jake Gyllenhaal’s lucky duck worked! At the 2025 Emmy Awards, Owen Cooper became the youngest male to win an acting Emmy. He won Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for playing the teen murderer at the heart of Netflix limited series Adolescence. Fittingly for that show, Cooper’s acceptance speech was about shutting down toxic masculine ideas about shame and just trying some stuff out. “I think tonight proves that, if you listen and you focus and you step out of your comfort zone, you can achieve anything in life,” he said. “I was nothing about three years ago. I’m here now. If you are listening, you are focusing, you step out of your comfort zone a little bit, who cares if you get embarrassed? Anything is possible.”
Cooper had already won yesterday, on an emotional level, by meeting his number one favorite actor, Jake Gyllenhaal. Gyllenhaal surprised Cooper in his hotel room while he was getting ready for a pre-Emmys party, and gifted him a toy duck. “I made this movie and I got nominated for an Academy Award,” he said. “A friend of mine sent me this before, something just like this.” And with that, he handed the Adolescence actor a little toy duck. The big difference between Gyllenhaal’s lucky duck and Cooper’s? Cooper won.
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Owen Cooper became the youngest man to win an acting Emmy.
