Best Actor Joaquin Phoenix Delivered A Vulnerable Speech At The Oscars

Joaquin Phoenix has won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his efficiency because the infamous Batman villain Joker in the film of the same name. This should come as a surprise to no one, considering going into the 2020 Oscars, he’d already won a BAFTA, Golden Globe, SAG Award, Critics’ Choice award, plus several other honors ever since the film premiered to a eight-minute standing ovation at the Venice International Film Festival last August.


This was Phoenix's fourth Oscar nomination and first win, and he used his time on stage much like he's been using his time in the spotlight for all of awards season: to highlight causes dear to him. (And not only did he talk the talk, although he walked the walk by wearing the same suit to almost every event.) And this time around, Phoenix got more personalized than ever, looking inward at his own faults and paying homage to his late brother, River.


Phoenix opened his speech with an earnest moment of thanks. "I’m full of so much gratitude now, and I don't feel elevated above any of my fellow nominees, or anyone in this room, because we share the same love, the passion of film," he mentioned. "And this form of expression has given me the most extraordinary life. I don’t know what I’d be without it."


But, he continued, the ideal thing his profession has given him is the ability to be a "voice for the voiceless."


Tonight, nevertheless, Phoenix didn't wish to spotlight just one sect of the voiceless; he wanted to show that all the causes we individually champion are connected. "I think whether we’re talking about gender inequality, or racism, or queer rights, or indigenous rights, or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice," he mentioned. "We’re talking about the fight against the belief that one country, one people, one race, one gender, or one species has the correct to dominate, control, and use, and exploit another with impunity."


"I think that we’ve become very disconnected from the organic world," he continued. "And several of us, what we're guilty of is an egocentric worldview — the belief that we’re the center of the universe."


Phoenix called out the way we all so carelessly exploit the world around us, and the way we are so reluctant to change our ways to live more harmoniously together and with nature. Yet, he added, we don't have to be that way. We can "use love and compassion as our guiding principles" to prepare the world better.


That's as soon as Phoenix stepped off his soapbox and looked in the reflect, delivering the most susceptible and self-reflective piece of his speech. Right now, I have been a scoundrel in my life. I have been selfish, I’ve been cruel at times, hard to work with, and I am grateful that so several of you in this room have given me a second chance," he mentioned. "And I think that’s whenever we’re at our best, any time we support each other. Not any time we cancel each other out for past mistakes, nevertheless as soon as we help each other to grow, any time we educate each other, once we guide each other toward redemption. That is the perfect of humanity."


Then Phoenix paused, catching his voice in his throat to deliver his final heartfelt thought, recalling River, who died at the age of 23. Whenever he was 17, my brother wrote this lyric: He mentioned, ‘Run to the rescue with love and peace will follow.’"