Oscars acceptance speeches keep audiences tuned in

It’s easy to forget where the people who walk to red carpet come from when the flash of the paparazzi’s camera or an elaborate stage construction lends the distraction. All movie stars have a story of how they got to where they are now and who helped along the way. For Best Actor and Actress at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards, Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock, it was the people who raised them.

Bridges, who won the award for his role as self-destructive country singer Bad Blake in “Crazy Heart”, said his dad would sit him on his bed at night and teach him the basics of acting. His parents’ love for show biz is what brought the remarkable actor his first Academy Award. He said the award honored them as much as it did him
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Sandra Bullock, who earned her first Academy Award nomination and Best Actress win for her role as Leigh Anne Tuohy in “The Blind Side”, recognized all of the mothers who provide unconditional love for their children, no matter where they come from.

In the film, Bullock plays a mother who doesn’t care that the child she takes as her own comes from the dirty streets of Memphis with nothing but a brown bag with spare clothes in his hands. She helps him transform his life and succeed in football, which is his ticket to a meaningful future.

In the past decade, before the premier of “The Blind Side” in 2009, Bullock was stuck acting in romantic comedies that didn’t do her acting any justice. Her role as Jean Cabot in 2004’s “Crash” was the last time since her Oscar win that Bullock showed she has real talent as a dramatic actress, talent that she hid from Hollywood in movies like “All About Steve”, “Two Weeks Notice” and “Miss Congeniality.”

In “Crash”, Bullock plays a woman who becomes isolated from everyone around her because of her intolerable racial prejudices. And even though Leigh Anne Tuohy couldn’t be far from Jean Cabot, Bullock put the same amount of passion into “The Blind Side.” And finally she’s being recognized for it.

So it’s no surprise that she would take the time in her acceptance speech to thank the Tuohy family for giving her the opportunity to do something different. Maybe now she’ll learn to stay away from those roles that have kept her out of the running for an Oscar her entire career.

Movie stars didn’t make it to where they are alone; there’s always somebody to thank, even if their gratitude doesn’t extend to family or relatives. And that’s why acceptance speeches are some of the most important moments of the Academy Awards.

Winner for Best Supporting Actor, Christoph Waltz, who played the wicked Jew hunter in “Inglourious Basterds”, thanked director Quentin Tarantino for reeling him into his film when he was looking elsewhere.

And even Kathryn Bigelow, who made Oscar history as the first female to win Best Director for “The Hurt Locker”, owed it all to Screenwriter Mark Boal, “who risked his life for the words on the page.”

At an event that felt more like an awkward comedy routine with some dance sequences mixed in instead of an awards show, the thank you’s of the night were the most worthwhile part.