Who gave the longest Oscar acceptance speech in history?
These days, actors know they must be quick with their Oscar acceptance speeches. Why? Because the Academy will start playing that incredibly awkward exit music if they go on for longer than 45 seconds. Naturally, though, because winning an Academy Award is the crowning achievement of the career of most actors, some of them simply throw caution to the wind and keep talking through the music.
Why is there a 45-second limit on Oscar speeches, though? It seems churlish to rush actors who have dressed up in their finery to receive an award the Academy has voted to bestow them with, right? Why would the organisation simultaneously try to praise and hurry them up?
Well, the answer to this question goes all the way back to March 4th, 1943, when a winner’s speech went on for so long that the Academy knew it needed to change its rules. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, this lengthy diatribe lasted for five minutes and 30 seconds.
Now, under normal circumstances, this doesn’t seem like an excruciating amount of time to listen to someone talk about themselves and their work. Unfortunately for the acceptee, though, they didn’t take the stage at Los Angeles’ famous Ambassador Hotel until well after one in the morning. By then, the show had already stretched on much longer than anyone intended, and everyone in the building probably just wanted proceedings to wrap up for the evening.
So, which actor gave the longest Oscar acceptance speech?
As recently as 2014, two actors rambled their way through speeches, which clocked in at more than 500 words. These obviously went long over the 45-second limit, but Matthew McConaughey and Cate Blanchett didn’t care. It was their moment, and they intended to luxuriate on that stage.
Similarly, in the early 2000s, two stars spoke for more than three minutes while holding their trophies aloft. Boys Don’t Cry star Hilary Swank personally thanked each and every one of an extensive list of names she’d written on a piece of paper, while Adrien Brody actively registered his annoyance with the attempts to force him to cut his speech short. The Pianist star told the world that the words “Time’s Up!” flashed up on the teleprompter, and when the dulcet tones of the exit music began to sound, he grumbled, “One second, please. Cut it out”. This went over well in the room, as Brody received a standing ovation from his peers.
None of these speeches could hold a candle to the longest acceptance speech in history, though. The speaker of that record-breaker was the winner of the Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’. Indeed, when Greer Garson took to the stage on that fateful night to accept her award for her performance in Mrs Miniver, she nervously claimed she was “practically unprepared” for the honour. Despite it being the wee hours of the morning, though, Garson decided to wing it for five and a half minutes – much to the exhausted audience’s chagrin.
Garson, who was English, spoke of her life and work in America as a true immigrant story. She told her fellow actors, “I came to this country as a stranger five years ago. I’ve been very happy and very proud to be a member of this community and of this industry all that time.”
Heartwarmingly, she added, “Tonight, you have made me feel that you have really set the door of your friendship wide open, and that welcome is officially on the mat, and that is why I’m so happy.”
Garson was nominated for a further seven Oscars over the course of her career but would never again be the winner. Horribly, her statuette was lost in a house fire in the late ’80s, but the Academy did the right thing and gave her a replacement.
In the end, it’s unlikely that Garson’s record of the longest speech will ever be bettered – unless the Academy suddenly decides it’s happy for every Oscars ceremony to be six hours long.
