Meet Jacob Tremblay, the local kid who stole the show at the Oscars

Leo may have (finally) taken home the statue for best actor at the 88th Academy Awards, but the evening’s real winner was a nine-year old boy from Vancouver

Maybe you tuned in to last night’s Academy Awards in order to find out just how Chris Rock would address the 10,000-pound cultural elephant in the room (pretty well, as it turned out). Or maybe you tuned in to see if the sixth time really was the charm for Leonardo DiCaprio (it was, unsurprisingly). You probably weren’t expecting to see a nine-year-old from Vancouver steal the show. But that’s exactly what Jacob Tremblay, who co-starred with last night’s Best Actress, Brie Larson, in Room, ended up doing.Tremblay was born in Vancouver and raised in Langley by his police detective father Jason and mother Christina Tremblay, and he made his debut back in 2013’s live-action animated The Smurfs 2. But it’s his turn as Jack Newsome in Room that caught everyone’s attention, and even earned him a nomination for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role. And despite stealing the show last night with his impossibly adorable turn as a presenter—one who needed some help from Chris Rock to reach the microphone—and key member of Larson’s cheering section, he’s poised to do even bigger things in the rest of 2016. He’ll be appearing on the big screen alongside Naomi Watts and Oliver Platt in Shut In, opposite Kate Bosworth in Before I Wake, with Vera Farmiga in Burn Your Maps, and in Colin Trevorrow’s The Book of Henry. He’ll even be showing up on Will Forte’s cult hit The Last Man on Earth as, you guessed it, a younger version of Will Forte.adorableHis performance last night, though, might be the one that really pushes the pint-sized actor into the realm of celebrity. Everyone from US Weekly to Glamour fawned over him, while The Huffington Post wrote that “Jacob Tremblay (And His Parents) Have Already Won Oscar Night.” Even The Independent, a British newspaper not exactly noted for its willingness to worship North American celebrities, declared him the “Best Person” of the evening. “The moment he jumped out of his seat to get a good look at Star Wars characters R2-D2, C-3OI and BB-8 on stage made our hearts weep with joy. Then when his Room co-star Brie Larson won Best Actress, well, night made by his adorable reaction.” USA Today even posted “a chronological breakdown of Jacob Tremblay adorably winning Oscar night.” And those Darth Vader socks he was rocking? Priceless. Vancouver, meet your new prince. Long may he reign.