SPEECH BY: Leonardo DiCaprio FILM: The Revenant 88TH OSCARS ONSTAGE SPEECH: ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE Congratulations to @LeoDiCaprio from Whom You Know!
LEONARDO DiCAPRIO:
Thank you, thank you all so very much. Thank you to the Academy, thank you to all of you in this room. I have to congratulate the other incredible nominees this year for their unbelievable performances. “The Revenant” was a product of the tireless efforts of an unbelievable cast and crew I got to work alongside. First off to my brother in this endeavor, Mr. Tom Hardy. Tom, your fierce talent on-screen can only be surpassed by your friendship off-screen. To Mr. Alejandro Iñárritu, as the history of cinema unfolds, you have forged your way into history these past two years. What an unbelievable talent you are. Thank you to you and Chivo for creating a transcendent cinematic experience for all of us. Thank you to everybody at Fox and New Regency, in particular Arnon Milchan. You were the champion of this endeavor. My entire team. I have to thank everyone from the very onset of my career. Mr. Caton-Jones for casting me in my first film. Mr. Scorsese for teaching me so much about the cinematic art form. To Mr. Rick Yorn, thank you for helping me navigate my way through this industry. And to my parents, none of this would be possible without you. And to my friends, I love you dearly, you know who you are.
And lastly, I just want to say this: Making “The Revenant” was about man’s relationship to the natural world, a world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real. It is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species, and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters or the big corporations, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people who will be most affected by this, for our children’s children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed. I thank you all for this amazing award tonight. Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted. Thank you so very much.
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