Brad Pitt’s first acting Oscar has finally arrived. At Sunday night’s Academy Awards, the movie star picked up the statuette for best supporting actor thanks to his breezy turn in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. In his acceptance speech, Pitt paid tribute to Tarantino, Hollywood’s stunt community, and, most importantly, his children.
“This is for my kids, who color everything I do,” he said. “I adore you.”
Pitt opened his speech with a political remark, noting that he only had 45 seconds to deliver his speech, which is “45 seconds more than the Senate gave John Bolton this week.”
“I’m thinkin’ maybe Quentin does a movie about it,” Pitt said, commenting on Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. “In the end the adults do the right thing.”
This is Pitt’s second Oscar win, but his first statuette specifically for acting. He won an Oscar in 2014 for producing the drama 12 Years a Slave, the night’s best picture. At this year’s Oscars, Pitt was nominated in the best-supporting-actor category against Al Pacino (The Irishman), Joe Pesci (The Irishman), Anthony Hopkins (The Two Popes), and Tom Hanks (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), all of whom have won acting statuettes in the past. Pitt previously earned acting nominations for 12 Monkeys, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Moneyball. He also earned a nod in 2016 as a producer of best-picture nominee The Big Short.
Pitt made sure to name-check Tarantino (“You are one of a kind”) and costar Leonardo DiCaprio (“I’ll ride on your coattails any day, man”). He also made a passionate plea for the Academy to “give a little love to our stunt coordinators and our stunt crews,” who are still not recognized with a stunt category at the Oscars.
The actor has spent the last few months making the rounds on the awards circuit, collecting a small mountain of hardware (and slinging a handful of jokey punch lines along the way) thanks to his effortless performance as stoner stuntman Cliff Booth in Tarantino’s California-cool period piece. The role seemed tailor-made for Pitt, making him an Oscar front-runner early on in the season.
At the outset it also looked like Pitt could be juggling two potential nominations, thanks to his vastly different but far more internal lead performance in the James Gray-directed astronaut drama, Ad Astra. Though Pitt earned strong reviews from critics, that film didn’t quite catch on with awards voters. Once Upon a Time, on the other hand, clicked instantly.
“Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood,” Pitt mused. “Ain’t that the truth.”
Once backstage, Pitt, who was handed his award by Regina King, stopped by the thank-you cam to thank an additional slew of folks whom he didn’t mention onstage. When asked by an Oscar aide what he wanted to do next, he kept things simple: “I was hoping to catch my breath,” Pitt responded.
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