‘This is genuinely quite stressful!’
Last night saw the 91st Academy Awards, with the Oscars 2019 returning to LA’s Dolby Theatre, bringing award season to a close.
But it wasn’t Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s show stopping duet of 'Shallow' from A Star Is Born or Rami Malek falling off the stage after his Best Oscar win that made the most noise. Instead, it was Olivia Colman’s acceptance speech after receiving the Best Actress nod.
Colman won the gong for her portrayal of Queen Anne in The Favourite, beating acclaimed actresses in her category from Melissa McCarthy and Yalitza Aparicio to Lady Gaga and Glenn Close.
The nod came as a surprise to Olivia Colman, who along with a lot of people had assumed that the honour was going to Glenn, telling the legendary actress, ‘Glenn Close - you’ve been my idol for so long. This is not how I wanted it to be. I think you’re amazing and I love you very much.’
She then went on to credit the other actresses in her category as ‘extraordinary women’, and enthusing about her co-stars, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz.
‘Emily and Rachel,’ she addressed the actresses personally in her speech, going on to call them ‘the two loveliest women in the world to fall in love with and to go to work with every day.’
‘You can imagine, it wasn’t a hardship,’ she joked, prompting laughter from the audience.
Then moving her way through every single emotion that exists in her two minute speech, Olivia started sobbing as she thanked her parents, her agent and her children who she joked should be in bed.
‘To my kids who are at home and watching - well if you’re not, well done, but I sort of hope you are - this is not going to happen again.’
Going for the empowering message, Olivia continued: ‘And any little girl who is practising their speech on the telly - you never know! I used to work as a cleaner - and I loved that job - but I did spend quite a lot of time practising this.’
‘Oh “Please wrap up”’, she read off the screen midway through her speech before blowing a raspberry at the camera in defiance, prompting cheers from the crowd.
‘And my husband Ed, my best friend. I love you so much - 25 years you’ve been my best supporter,’ she announced before joking ‘He’s going to cry! But I’m not!’
Leaving to a standing ovation, Olivia called out to Lady Gaga who was sitting on the front row, with the two women exchanging a sweet moment.
Like we needed another reason to love Olivia Colman. This speech surely just made Oscar history.
