If there’s one factor film stars can’t resist, it’s a scientist who can measure the wobble impact of a subatomic muon particle.
How else to clarify the massive A-list turnout for the Breakthrough Prize, the unabashedly geeky awards present held each spring at Santa Monica’s Barker Hangar? Why however for the love of science would the likes of James Corden (who hosted the twelfth annual occasion April 18), Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie, Ben Affleck, Robert Downey Jr., Sean Penn, Gigi Hadid and Jessica Chastain, amongst others, present up in black tie to current trophies for particular advances in elementary physics and hand out $100,000 grants to early profession mathematicians?
“It’s better than the Oscars,” one common attendee gushes over the occasion’s stunning star energy. “Everybody always wonders how they get such big names.”
One concept making the rounds? It has one thing to do with free rides on a Russian-born billionaire’s superyacht. That’s what Rambling Reporter is listening to from a number of sources concerned within the ceremony who declare that stars who current, carry out and even simply attend are handled to getaways aboard the Multiverse, a 380-foot luxurious vessel owned by Yuri Milner, the 64-year-old physicist turned Silicon Valley enterprise capitalist who launched the Breakthrough Prize in 2012 and has been bankrolling it ever since.
A spokesperson for the Breakthrough Prize denies that ocean voyages have something to do with the present’s stellar attendance. “[The stars’] participation is driven by a genuine interest in supporting science, and any suggestion to the contrary is incorrect,” the consultant insists, whereas acknowledging that a number of stars who’ve attended the awards have additionally ended up on Milner’s yacht. Milner and his spouse, Julia, the spokesperson says, “have developed relationships with many guests and performers. Some of those friends have joined them on private family boat trips, entirely independent of the Breakthrough Prize.”
From left: Oscar Isaac, Jessica Chastain, Lionel Richie, Christina Aguilera and Robert Downey Jr. all attended this yr’s Breakthrough Awards.
Jesse Grant/Getty Photos (3); Emma McIntyre/Getty Photos (2)
***
Additionally in Rambling Reporter:
Louise Linton on her next movie and why Nicole Kidman, Chloé Zhao and different stars are becoming death doulas.
This story appeared within the Could 6 challenge of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click here to subscribe.

