We just can’t get enough of the Oscars 2018. Apart from the alluring dresses and outfits on the Black Carpet, the awards and nominees, there is so much more to love about the Oscars 2018. Here are the top greatest speeches as ranked by USA Today, see if you agree.
1. Frances McDormand
Winning best actress for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, her second Oscar, McDormand delivered the quintessential acceptance speech: one that was emotional and seemingly off the cuff, while also delivering the night’s most powerful statement about celebrating and including women in Hollywood.
“If I may be so honored to have all the female nominees in every category stand with me in this room tonight. Meryl (Streep), if you do it, everybody else will, come on,” McDormand commanded, as women across the Dolby Theatre stood and cheered. “Look around, look around. … We all have stories to tell and projects we need financed. I have two words to leave with you tonight, ladies and gentleman: inclusion rider,”
2. Sam Rockwell
The Three Billboards star delivered an affable and funny speech while accepting the best-supporting-actor award, recalling how his dad picked him up from school when he was 8, feigning an emergency. “We got in the car and I said, ‘What’s wrong with Grandma?’ And he said, ‘Nothing, we’re going to the movies,’ ” Rockwell joked. “My mom and dad’s love of movies became my love of movies, so thank you for that, Mom and Dad.’ ” He concluded by thanking his Billboards co-stars and “everyone who’s ever looked at a billboard,” and dedicated the trophy to his late friend, Philip Seymour Hoffman.
3. Guillermo del Toro
The Mexican filmmaker inspired the crowd in both of his speeches, for best director and picture for The Shape of Water. “I am an immigrant, like Alfonso (Cuarón) and Alejandro (González Iñárritu), my compadres,” who won best-director trophies in recent years, del Toro said. “I think the greatest thing our industry does is erase the lines in the sand. We should keep doing that as the world tries to make them deeper.”
Later in the show, he delivered a heartwarming message to young filmmakers: “Growing up in Mexico, I thought this could never happen. It happens,” he said, urging people who dream of using the fantasy genre “to tell stories about things that are real in the world today. This is a door; kick it open.”
4. Lee Unkrich and Darla K. Anderson
Team Coco had one of the night’s more political moments in accepting the prize for best animated feature and thanking Mexico, the film’s setting. “Coco would not exist without your endlessly beautiful culture and traditions,” said Unkrich, the movie’s director. “With Coco, we tried to take a step forward toward a world where all children can grow up seeing characters in movies that look and talk and live like they do. Marginalized people deserve to feel like they belong. Representation matters.”
5. Jordan Peele
The former Comedy Central star made history, becoming the first black writer to win best original screenplay, for horror thriller Get Out. “You guys are going to mess up my Jet Ski, hold up,” Peele joked, referencing Jimmy Kimmel’s running gag about promising the winner with the shortest acceptance speech a free watercraft.
Then he got serious, thanking everyone who made the film a $176-million box-office hit. “I stopped writing this movie about 20 times because I thought it was impossible. I thought it wasn’t going to work. I thought no one would ever make this movie. But I kept coming back to it, because I knew if someone let me make this movie, that people would hear it and people would see it,” Peele said. “Everybody who bought a ticket, who told somebody to buy a ticket, thank you. I love you for shouting out at the theater, for shouting out at the screen.”
