LEONARDO DICAPRIO finally won his first Oscar for his performance in The Revenant on Sunday night, after four previous unsuccessful nominations.
The actor used his lengthy acceptance speech to deliver a lecture on climate change, and was able to speak for a longer period than other winners when the producers failed to play ‘wrap-it-up’ music as he went well past his allotted time of 45 seconds.
‘Making The Revenant was about man’s relationship to the natural world...climate change is real,’ said DiCaprio. ‘It is happening right now. It is the most urgent threat facing our entire species and we need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating.’‘Let us not take our planet for granted,’ he concluded. ‘I do not take tonight for granted.’
On Sunday night, DiCaprio had other things on his mind - most importantly his mother. ‘Where’s my mom?’ Leonardo was heard yelling when he and his entourage arrived at the Academy Awards Governors Ball held on the top deck of the Dolby Theatre.
Leo earned his first Oscar nomination in 1994 for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape when he was just 20 years old.
He was then nominated for Best Actor (The Aviator) in 2004. He later earned a Best Actor nod for Blood Diamond in 2006. And most recently for the Wolf Of Wall Street in 2013.
Alejandro Inarritu took best director for a second straight year, a feat matched by only two other filmmakers: John Ford and Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
His brutal frontier epic The Revenant, which came in with a leading 12 nods and the favorite for best picture, also won best cinematography for Emmanuel Lubezki. Renowned for his use of natural light in lengthy, balletic shots, Lubezki became the first cinematographer to win three times in a row (following wins for Gravity and Birdman), and only the seventh to three-peat in Oscar history.
Inarritu, the Mexican director of last year’s best-picture winner Birdman, was one of the few winners to remark passionately on diversity in his speech.
