We asked Team Experience to share their favourite Oscar acceptance speeches as we countdown to Hollywood's High Holy Night. Here's Chris Feil...
Would that all Best Actress years be as stacked and competitive as 2001. All major precursors had gone to a different performance (with Renée Zellweger’s Bridget Jones as a wildcard fifth nominee): BAFTA to Judi Dench, Globes for Nicole Kidman and Sissy Spacek, and SAG going to Halle Berry. But it would be the latter that would yield our ultimate momentous winner for her work in Monster’s Ball. It already felt like a showdown before her name was called, and this win would be the real event.
Berry was the first woman of color to win for a leading performance, and infuriatingly remains the only one. But you can see the passion in the room to overturn that embarrassingly legacy, the audience leaping to their feet as a stunned Berry initially collapsed into her seat. Denzel Washington would also win on a night that also saw a lifetime achievement prize given to Sidney Poitier - it’s a ceremony whose impact the Academy should consider chasing rather than pat itself on the back for...
For almost a full minute Berry wept on the stage in shocked gratitude, the kind of emotion that gives us the moment we crave from an Oscar speech but with an all-too-rare gravity of importance. Sadly things haven’t actually changed much, so this moment still feels raw and overwhelming watching it twenty years later. Her silent tears are more memorable than most winners’ entire speeches.
Once she found the words, the speech itself was as beautiful. A common complaint against lengthy boring Oscar speeches is how many become a litany of names. Berry’s speech instead did so with moving impact, naming several Black actresses that had come before her and fought alongside her to further opportunities; some Oscar nominated, some not. All of them worthy of more chances for moments like Berry was having as she held her Oscar.
Berry also deserves kudos for managing to make the business side of her list of names (manager, agent, lawyer, etc.) feel more personal and charming than the norm. And delivers a closer of famous names both genuinely felt and surprising - her first director Spike Lee and mentor Warren Beatty. It’s an ace speech even without the weight of history defied.