Kate Winslet's Best Actress speech

Press Association

Monday, 23 February 2009

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Gary Hershorn / Reuters

Kate Winslet blows a kiss after winning the Best Actress Oscar for her work in "The Reader"

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Kate Winslet won her first Oscar today at the sixth time of asking. The 33-year-old managed to rein in the emotions that got the better of her in her Golden Globes acceptance speech earlier this year.

Here is the full text of her best actress Oscar acceptance speech.

"OK, that fainting thing, Penelope.

"I'd be lying if I hadn't made a version of this speech before, I think I was probably eight years old and staring into the bathroom mirror. And this (holding up her statuette) would've been a shampoo bottle.

"Well, it's not a shampoo bottle now!

"I feel very fortunate to have made it all the way from there to here.

"And I'd like to thank some of the people along the way who had faith in me, my friends and my family, especially my mum and dad, who are in this room somewhere.

"Dad, whistle or something, 'cause then I'll know where you are. (He whistles.) Yeah! (Waving to him.) I love you.

"I'd also like to thank Hylda Queally, Dallas Smith and the late, much loved, much missed Robert Garlock.

"And from Peter Jackson and Emma Thompson to my very own Sam and Stephen Daldry.

"I'm very lucky to have been given Hanna Schmitz by Bernhard Schlink and David Hare and Stephen and working with you is an experience I will never forget.

"There was no division between the cast and the crew on this film, and that's what made it so special.

"So, to have been surrounded by a remarkable group of people who provided an unbroken chain of support from David Kross to Ralph Fiennes, Bruno Ganz, Lena Olin, from hair and makeup to cinematography, from the art department to the ADs, and from New York to Berlin.

"And I am so lucky to have a wonderful husband and two beautiful children who let me do what I love and who love me just the way that I am.

"Anthony and Sidney, this is for you. This is for both of you.

"And I want to acknowledge my fellow nominees, these goddesses. I think we all can't believe we're in a category with Meryl Streep at all.

"I'm sorry, Meryl, but you have to just suck that up! And, just to the Academy, thank you so much, my God! Thank you!"

Comments

( Leave a comment )

very prettyly put

vhawk1951 wrote:

Monday, 23 February 2009 at 01:34 pm (UTC)

well done that gal,

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Listen again

elestermann wrote:

Monday, 23 February 2009 at 04:38 pm (UTC)

Listen to the recording again. You missed the line:
"And, just to the Academy, thank you so much..."
She didn't say "thank"!

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Winset's performance and speech

aaplinc wrote:

Monday, 23 February 2009 at 05:45 pm (UTC)

I loved her speech, especially telling Meryl Streep "to just suck that up!" I think perhaps that Ms Winset might be the next Meryl Streep. Mainly because she has no vanity, like Ms. Streep, enabling her to take on roles like this one. Her performance in The Reader, which I think should have won the Best Picture Award, was one of those lifetime performances, akin to Denzel Washington in Hurricane, and Daniel Day Lewis in Sins of the Father. And the movie itself, which I plan to see again, is just profoundly deep and multi-layered, making some of the best use of the "economy of film" I have ever seen. I know that comparing it to the very splended Slumdog Millionaire is comparing apples to oranges, but I think its accomplishment is more spectacular, in its understatement and reliance on character and inter-personal relationships within the context of that period in history and the inter-generational dynamic in coming to terms with cultural and personal wrong doing, even Evil. It is an amazing film. And I want to read the novel on which it is based. From the States, Kay

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good speech

nunov103 wrote:

Wednesday, 25 February 2009 at 06:18 pm (UTC)

Overall I think that it was way better than the speach that she delivered at the Golden Globes even though I must say that people were perhaps a bit too mean , just because she apparently forgot Angelina Jolie�s name - most of us don�t even know how does it feel like to be given such an important award , so I guess that forgetting other people�s names has got something to do with all that excitement . Even though I was torn between her and Angelina Jolie�s performance in The Changeling ( and for a moment I thought that the latter was actually going to win ) , I was happy when they called out her name , because she had been nominated 5 times before and never won - and her performance in The Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind was truly an Oscar worthy one .

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