Cate the great! Blue Jasmine lead Cate Blanchett gave a heartfelt speech while accepting the Best Actress Oscar on Sunday, Mar. 2, graciously supporting women in film and thanking director Woody Allen.
"Sit down. You're too old to be standing," she told the crowd as she accepted her award. "Thank you so much to the Academy."
Blanchett, 44, who plays a dysfunctional, martini-swigging divorced Manhattan socialite in the movie, has dominated the 2014 awards season. Following her Best Actress wins at the Screen Actors Guild Awards back in January and the BAFTAs in February, the stylish star claimed the golden Oscar statue onstage at the Kodak Theatre Sunday while showering her fellow contenders Amy Adams, Sandra Bullock, Meryl Streep, and Judi Dench with praise.
"Amy Adams, everything you do, but your performance in American Hustle blew my mind," Blanchett said. "And Meryl, what can I say? Sandra, I could watch that performance to the end of time, and I sort of felt like I had." (She also gave a hilarious shout-out to Best Supporting Actress loser Julia Roberts: "Hashtag suck it," Blanchett joked.)
"As random and subjective as this award is, it means a great deal in a year of, yet again, extraordinary performances by women," she continued of her peers.
The Australian actress then championed women in film and slammed filmmakers "who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films with women at the center are niche experiences."
"They are not," Blanchett noted. "Audiences want to see them, and in fact, they earn money."
The actress also thanked Blue Jasmine director Woody Allen for his work on the film. "And me, I'm here excepting an award in an extraordinary screenplay by Woody Allen," she shared. "Thank you so much, Woody, for casting me. I truly appreciate it. I'm so very proud that Blue Jasmine stayed in the cinemas for as long as it did."
Her shout-out follows a controversial awards show season for the director after his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow published a New York Times op-ed alleging he sexually abused her at the age of 7.
"What if it had been your child, Cate Blanchett? Louis CK? Alec Baldwin?" Farrow wrote in her letter, which went into detail about the alleged 1993 incident. Blanchett addressed the piece in early February to the Guardian UK and commented, "It's obviously been a long and painful situation for the family. I hope they find some resolution and peace."
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