Mahershala Ali won the best supporting actor Oscar on Sunday for his portrayal of a drug dealer in “Moonlight” and became the first Muslim film star to pick up a golden statue.
“I want to thank my teachers, my professors,” Ali said. “One thing that they consistently told me… ‘It’s not about you. It’s about these characters. You are a servant. You’re in service to these stories and these characters’.”
He thanked his fellow cast members and his wife. Barry Jenkins’s “Moonlight” is a story of a young African-American struggling to find his place as he grows up in a rough neighborhood of Miami.
In a brief but highly praised performance, Ali’s drug dealer Juan passes on life lessons to the hero Chiron that helps him survive in prison and in the outside world.
Ali, a Muslim convert since 1999 with a Christian minister for a mother, joined the minority Ahmadiyya Community in 2001.
Muslims have won Oscars in various categories over the years — including Pakistani documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy and feature director Asghar Farhadi, but no one has taken the Oscar home for acting.
