2024 Oscars: Jimmy Kimmel’s Best Opening Monologue Jokes and Zingers!

You talkin' to me? At least we assume that was Robert De Niro's reaction when 2024 Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel took a playful swipe at the 80-year-old's relationship with girlfriend Tiffany Chen, some four decades his junior. 

"In 1976, Jodie Foster was young enough to play Robert De Niro's daughter," Kimmel said in his Academy Awards monologue, referencing a tween Foster's role as an underage prostitute in Taxi Driver. "Now she's 20 years too old to be his girlfriend." (And he wasn't the only one to get roasted during the monologue, with Kimmel also taking aim at Bradley Cooper's dating history and Robert Downey Jr.'s "very rectangular penis.")

And though Foster was nearly two decades younger than the two-time Oscar winner in the legendary film, "I understand [that they were scared of me]," Foster told Kimmel on Jimmy Kimmel Live! this past January, when asked about past comments she's made. "I was 12. And they had to say things like, you know, 'Can you pull his fly down?' And it was a little awkward."

Though she wasn't really afraid to throw her weight around a bit. 

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A child actress who booked her first commercial at age 3, Foster had more credits to her name than both De Niro—who starred as lonely Vietnam vet Travis Bickle—and director Martin Scorsese when they filmed in 1975. 

"So I was like, 'Whatever. Just, move over,'" she said. "Yeah, they were a little scared, Scorsese especially, who kept giggling every time he talked to me. He'd start giggling and De Niro had to take over." 

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And though neither De Niro nor Foster won Oscars for their work in the '70s classic (she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress; he for Best Actor), they both had a shot at taking home trophies at the 2024 Academy Awards. 

Foster, recognized for her role in NYAD, was once again bested in the Best Supporting Actress race, The Holdovers' Da'Vine Joy Randolph beating out Foster, Oppenheimer's Emily Blunt, The Color Purple's Danielle Brooks and Barbie's America Ferrera.

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Killers of the Flower Moon star De Niro, meanwhile, faced off against American Fiction's Sterling K. Brown, Barbie's Ryan Gosling, Poor Things' Mark Ruffalo and Oppenheimer's Robert Downey Jr., who walked away with the prize. (Check out all of the winners here.) 

Either way, De Niro had quite the cheering section. His already prolific family grew in 2023 with the birth of his seventh child, he and Chen's now-11-month-old daughter Gia. 

To see all the can't-miss moments from the Oscars, read on.

photosView More Photos From Oscars 2024: Red Carpet Fashion