Joaquin Phoenix’ stellar award season run ended last night with him finally taking home the Oscar for Best Actor. During his acceptance speech, he called himself “cruel” and “selfish”, and thanked his fellow colleagues and the industry for giving him a second chance.
He also went on to talk about injustice and plundering the natural world before ending his speech with these beautiful lyrics written by his late brother River, “Run to the rescue with love, and peace will follow.”
This was not the first time he talked about bringing social change and changing ourselves this award season, as he even began his year by pleading his fellow colleagues during Golden Globes “to take responsibility on ourselves and make changes and sacrifices in our own lives and hope that we can do that.”
During BAFTAs, he took the stage to talk about gender and racial discrimination during award season and said, “I think we send a very clear message to people of colour that you’re not welcome here. I think that’s the message we’re sending to people that have contributed so much to our medium and our industry and in ways that we benefit from.”
Although he didn’t talk about any social cause during his SAG Awards acceptance speech, he delivered a heartwarming toast to his fellow nominees and Heath Ledger and called him out for paving the way.
Joaquin Phoenix’ award season campaign was a stellar plea for social changes where he imparted some meaningful wisdom to Hollywood and the rest of the world and called us out to change ourselves for the better, which will hopefully be remembered for the years to come and at least be taken into consideration by everyone.
Great content! Super high-quality! Keep it up! 🙂