The Most Memorable Acceptance Speeches in Oscar History
Sally Field accepts the Oscar for Best Actress for her role in the film Places in the Heart at the 57th Academy Awards on March 25, 1985.
The most memorable Academy Awards speeches are those that stay with you long after the ceremony is over. Those that feel raw, emotional, and sometimes even a little unhinged because they are being given by someone who is genuinely shocked to hear their name called on Hollywood’s biggest night. Think Olivia Colman’s charming 2019 speech in which she ended by shouting out Lady Gaga who she spotted in the front row because, well, Lady Gaga!
Sometimes a speech sticks in your head because the winner makes Oscar history; it’s hard not to be moved by the heartfelt words Hattie McDaniel spoke when she became the first Black American to ever win an Oscar, for Gone With the Wind, in 1940. Other times the speech makes an unforgettable political statement, as when Indigenous actor and activist Sacheen Littlefeather accepted Marlon Brando’s Oscar for The Godfather on his behalf, in an act of protest
From Jennifer Lawrence tripping up the stairs to Tom Hanks’ passionate tribute to the LGBTQ+ community, these are the 29 most memorable speeches in Oscar history.
Sally Field Didn’t Say What You Thought She Said
When Sally Field won the Best Actress Oscar in 1985 for Places in the Heart, she said three words that would live in pop culture infamy: “You like me.” The Academy really did; she won the same award just five years earlier for her performance as the titular union organizer in Norma Rae. But the line from her speech that has been endlessly spoofed by everyone, including Field herself, has been remembered all wrong. She didn’t actually say, “You like me. You really like me.” She said, “I can’t deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me!”
Whether you like her speech or not, Field has chosen to stop caring what anyone thinks about it. “First of all, I was winning my second Oscar,” she told New York Magazine in 2017. “So I’m allowed to say anything I f-cking want.” It’s hard to argue with a two-time Oscar winner.
Patricia Arquette Inspires a Beautiful Meryl Streep GIF
When Patricia Arquette won Best Supporting Actress for Boyhood in 2015, she used her speech to stump for gender equality. “To every woman who gave birth. To every taxpayer and citizen of this nation,” she said. “We have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.” While Arquette’s speech had its critics, she found fans in fellow nominee Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez, whose supportive responses turned them into the perfect GIF for those times when you need to hype yourself up.
Hattie McDaniel Makes Bittersweet History
Hattie McDaniel accepts the Oscar, presented to her by Fay Bainter, for her supporting role in Gone With the Wind at the Twelfth Annual Banquet of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Feb. 29, 1940.
Hattie McDaniel accepts the Oscar, presented to her by Fay Bainter, for her supporting role in Gone With the Wind at the Twelfth Annual Banquet of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Feb. 29, 1940.Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
In 1940, Gone With the Wind’s Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to ever win an Academy Award, but she was almost not allowed to attend the ceremony. Her film’s producer David O. Selznick had to ask the then segregated Ambassador Hotel for permission to invite McDaniel, which they granted, but she was relegated to a separate table away from her white co-stars.
Yet despite this, McDaniel, the daughter of formerly enslaved Americans, graciously thanked the Academy for their “kindness” in her Best Supporting Actress speech, which was not the one Selzni
