One year after Mark Rylance’s surprise supporting-actor win for Bridge of Spies, the Oscars have chosen a more anticipated victor in the best-supporting-actor category: Mahershala Ali, whose powerful performance in Moonlight has already earned him a SAG Award, a Critics’ Choice Award, and an N.A.A.C.P. Image Award.

“I want to thank my teachers, my professors,” Ali—the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar—said in an emotional speech after taking the stage at the Dolby Theatre. “I had so many wonderful teachers, and one thing that they consistently told me. . . [is] it wasn’t about you. It’s not about you. It’s about these characters.” He also thanked his cast mates, the film’s crew, and his wife __Amatus Sami-Karim__who gave birth to the couple’s first child, a daughter named Bari Najma Ali just four days before the Oscars ceremony.

In the film by Barry Jenkins, which received eight total Oscar nominations, Ali plays Juan, a drug dealer who becomes a father figure for our main character Chiron; he appears only in the first of the film’s three parts, but leaves a remarkable impression all the same. Ali has been viewed as the frontrunner in this category for much of awards season, though he wasn’t as sure of a sure thing as Viola Davis has appeared to be in the supporting-actress category; prognosticators were shocked when Ali was beaten out at the (admittedly always unpredictable) Golden Globes by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who won for his work in Nocturnal Animals. Ali also lost a supporting actor BAFTA to Brit Dev Patel, whose hometown film awards honored his performance in Lion.

Patel was also nominated in the supporting-actor category at the Oscars, alongside Jeff Bridges (Hell or High Water), Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea), and Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals).