Daryl Hannah honors ‘Kill Bill,’ Ukraine on stage at 2025 Oscars

The 2025 Oscars just gave us a brief Kill Bill tribute peppered with a pro-Ukrainian message from Daryl Hannah amid ongoing tensions between Russia and Ukraine on the world stage.

During Sunday’s Academy Awards telecast, Hannah took the stage to present the award for Best Film Editing, 22 years after she starred in director Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 martial arts classic Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and its 2004 sequel, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, — and voiced a traditional Ukrainian battle cry before she spoke.

“Slava Ukraini!” the 64-year-old said while raising her hand in the air as she walked out on stage, drawing applause from the audience. According to the Associated Press, the phrase is a “watchword” of the Ukrainian people that means, “Glory to Ukraine,” and is often used for those who support the country amid the Russia/Ukraine war, which intensified when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Hannah’s use of the phrase comes days after President Donald Trump made headlines over a bizarre, heated clash with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House.

Host Conan O’Brien previously introduced Hannah in celebration of the 21st anniversary of Vol. 2, and called Hannah both “the world’s sexiest Daryl” and “the reason I once bought my wife an eye patch.”

Hannah later praised film editors as “the real total badasses in movies” by helping to construct a given film’s “very heartbeat,” and called them artists “who shape the stories we tell.”

Oscar nominee Uma Thurman and Hannah fronted both Kill Bill movies as a pair of rival assassins, Beatrix Kiddo (known only as “The Bride” in the first film), and Elle Driver, who formerly worked together under the direction of of the film’s titular gang leader (David Carradine) — before the latter mounted a surprise ambush in an effort to kill his bride. She unexpectedly survived, however, and slowly regained her strength and navigated a bloody warpath across both movies, seeking revenge against the former friends (Vivica A. Fox, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen) who wronged her.

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Neither Kill Bill film was nominated for any Oscars. Still, both movies earned a total of approximately $333 million at the global box office, and have become some of the most beloved movies in Tarantino’s filmography.

Thurman previously spoke about tension with Tarantino over the years, as she revealed to The New York Times that her neck and knees were permanently injured in a car crash that occurred while filming a scene for Vol. 2.

The star told Entertainment Weekly in 2018 that she’s “always had a good relationship” with the filmmaker, even in the aftermath of the incident.

“We’ve had our fights over the years. When you know someone for as long as I’ve known him, 25 years of creative collaboration…yes, did we have some tragedies take place? Sure. But you can’t reduce that type of history and legacy,” she said at the time. “It would have been reduced to my car accident if I died.”

Rumors of a sequel, Kill Bill: Vol. 3, have long followed the films’ success, with Tarantino addressing the speculation at various points across the last few years.

“I think it’s just revisiting the characters 20 years later and just imagining the Bride and her daughter, Bebe, having 20 years of peace, and then that peace is shattered,” Tarantino said in a 2021 interview on on The Joe Rogan Experience, where he also toyed with the idea of casting Thurman’s daughter, Maya Hawke, in the potential film. “And now the Bride and Bebe are on the run and just the idea of being able to cast Uma and cast her daughter Maya in the thing would be f—ing exciting.” 

See the full list of 2025 Oscar winners