The Long Afterlife of Awards-Show Speeches

When Kate Winslet won an Academy Award in 2009, she started her acceptance speech by recounting breathlessly how she had practiced that moment in the bathroom mirror as a child, with a shampoo bottle as a prop statuette. “Well, it’s not a shampoo bottle now!” she said, as if trying to convince herself. The actor then sought out her father in the crowd by asking him to whistle, whipped toward the sound, and blew kisses in her parents’ direction with pure excitement.

Winslet was being honored for her role in , a movie I have never seen and perhaps never will. Still, more than a decade later, the video occasionally comes up in my YouTube suggestions, and I watch it every time. The way Winslet grips the award as if it will be taken away from her; her reverent tribute to two of the film’s producers, who had died; her disbelief at being in the same category as Meryl Streep—it never fails to put a huge grin on my face. I’ve probably surpassed a dozen viewings at this point.