Logo text
If there’s one thing movie stars can’t resist, it’s a scientist who can measure the oscillating effect of subatomic muons.
How else to explain the huge turnout for the Breakthrough Prize, the unabashedly geeky awards ceremony held every spring at Parker Hangar in Santa Monica? Why, if not for the love of science, would the likes of James Corden (who hosted the 12th annual event on April 18), Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie, Ben Affleck, Robert Downey Jr., Sean Penn, Gigi Hadid, and Jessica Chastain, among others, show up in black tie to present awards for special advances in fundamental physics and hand out $100,000 grants to early-career mathematicians?
“It’s better than the Oscars,” said one regular attendee, enthusing about the event’s shock power. “Everyone always wonders how they got such big names.”
One theory doing the rounds? It’s about free trips on a luxury yacht owned by a Russian-born billionaire. That’s what Rambling Reporter heard from several sources involved in the ceremony who claim that stars who host, perform, or even just attend are receiving vacations aboard the Multiverse, a 380-foot luxury ship owned by Yuri Milner, the 64-year-old physicist turned Silicon Valley venture capitalist who launched the Breakthrough Prize in 2012 and has been funding it ever since.
A Breakthrough Prize spokesman denies that the cruises have anything to do with the show’s outstanding attendance. “[The stars’] “Participation is driven by a genuine interest in supporting science, and any suggestion otherwise is incorrect,” the actor insists, while acknowledging that many of the stars who attended the awards also ended up on Milner’s yacht. “They have developed relationships with many of the guests and performers,” says spokesman Milner and his wife, Julia. Some of these friends have joined them on private family boat trips, completely independent of the Breakthrough Prize.
***
Also in the Rampling Reporter:
Louise Linton talks about her next film and why Nicole Kidman, Chloe Zhao and other stars became the wheel of death.
This story appeared in the May 6 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
