Roberto Benigni – Best Foreign Film AND Best Actor at the 1999 Awards for “Life is Beautiful“
Highlights: The exuberance of his speech for the Foreign Film win is hard to overstate, but it was actually a (literal) climbdown after he’d joyously clambered onto the backs of people’s seats on his way to the stage. Later, accepting a controversial Best Actor, any bitterness must have dissipated in this blizzard of charm, with him first excusing himself, saying that on his first trip to the stage “I used up all my English,” and then going on to exclaim “I would like to be Jupiter and lie down in the firmament making love with everybody.”
Bonus Trivia: Benigni’s Best Actor win marked the first time anyone had won in a leading actor category for a foreign language film since compatriot Sophia Loren (who announced the Foreign Film Award) had won for “Two Women” in 1962.
Sally Field – Best Actress for “Places in the Heart“
Highlights: We gotta feel a little sorry for cautionary Oscar-speech-tale Sally Field. The oft-misquoted “You like me, you really like me” was in fact “I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me” which was itself a riff on a line from Field’s first Oscar-winning role in ”Norma Rae.” However, the overall luvviness of the speech, as well as that tragic miscalculation as to how many of us were going to remember her “Norma Rae” dialogue so well that we’d recognize it, still makes it a cringey watch. Ironically, Field said in the speech that she “wanted more than anything to have your respect,” just as she was losing a good deal of it.
Bonus Trivia: Field, of course, initially had a TV career, first as the titular “Gidget,” and then as “The Flying Nun,” which was actually about a nun who flies—so that she can endure that, get two Oscars, survive the fallout from this speech and come back to play Mrs Lincoln for Steven Spielberg, well, the lady’s got something.
There are plenty of other notable speeches we could mention, but the “stick man” is waving at us, so we’ll settle for a quick shout out to a few choice ones: Christoph Waltz referring to his win and getting a kiss from Penelope Cruz as an “über bingo” and then charmingly bringing an extended ship metaphor home; Sidney Lumet‘s amazingly humble, brief acceptance of his Honorary Oscar; Stanley Donen‘s all-singing, all-dancing acceptance of his honorary Oscar; Meryl Streep worrying about and then dismissing the idea that half of America heard about her win for “The Iron Lady” and thought “Oh no, not her. Again”; Joe Pesci‘s brilliantly brief acceptance for “Goodfellas“; the legendary Akira Kurosawa claiming, through a translator “I don’t feel I understand cinema yet”; Dustin Hoffman dedicating his “Kramer vs Kramer” Oscar, who has “no genitalia and is carrying a sword,” in a very funny speech to actors who drive taxicabs; Sidney Poitier, gracious and eternally elegant, referring obliquely to “the very long journey to get here” as the first black actor to win Best Actor; Louise Fletcher, signing the end of her speech to her deaf parents; and Frances McDormand thanking Joel Coen for “making a woman out of me.”
And that’s not even mentioning a few more WTF moments, like Adrien Brody planting that infamous smooch on Halle Berry, Angelina Jolie passionately declaring her love for her brother onstage, Marlon Brando sending Satcheen Littlefeather to turn down his “The Godfather” Oscar, and of course, Tom Hanks‘ “Philadelphia” acceptance speech, in which he paid tribute to his high school drama teacher and inadvertently outed him—perhaps the only Oscar speech ever to inspire its own movie (“In & Out“—really quite good fun).
But we’ll leave you—thank you, thank you—in tears and being hustled off stage left, with this clip of host David Niven responding with absolute unruffled sangfroid to the appearance of a streaker onstage during the 1974 ceremony. Fingers crossed this Sunday’s celebrations contain anything half as memorable as this, the moments above, or any of your favorites that we’ve missed. Shout ’em out below.