Patricia Arquette has won an Oscar for an outstanding performance over 14 years in Boyhood.
She’s also won the hearts and minds of women everywhere, with a smash-through speech about equal rights.
Patricia dedicated her award to “every woman who has ever given birth.”
She also cried out for “equal rights for women in the United States of America” including equal wage rights.
The fact that women still earn less than men is a depressing fact of life in both Australia and the US.
The US is also the only Western democracy that doesn’t routinely offer maternity leave to pregnant workers.
President Obama cried out for employers to close the wage gap during his State of the Union speech two weeks ago, saying: “It’s 2015. It’s time.”
Meryl Streep could be seen leaping from her seat during Patricia’s speech today, saying: “Yes, yes!”
Meryl Streep and her husband Don Gummer on the red carpet before the show.
Patricia has previously said that she paid her babysitter more than she earned, making Boyhood.
Her speech was welcome relief, because the the Oscars are being hosted by somebody who isn’t funny, just plain rude.
Neil Patrick Harris is best known in Australia for his performance in How I Met Your Mother.
Oscar’s host Neil Patrick Harris with husband David Burtka.
He can sing and dance, and apparently he’s previously done a good job hosting the Tony Awards.
For some reason, he keeps hitting the wrong note at the Oscars.
It started okay: Harris opened with a line about Hollywood celebrating the ‘best and whitest’ … a play on the fact that the Academy nominated not one black actor or actress for a single acting award.
But from there?
Harris made what sounded like a fat joke, at Oprah’s expense. Turns out it wasn’t a jibe about how large she is, but how rich she is. Fat of wallet, not body.
Nobody laughed, least of all Oprah, who has backed a billion causes, including the production, this year, of the civil rights movie, Selma.
He said: “The script read funny.”
Maybe, but the joke fell flat.
Oprah Winfrey looked stunning on the red carpet in this blush number.
What came next was worse: the Oscar for short documentary went to Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 – a heartbreaking look inside a crisis centre for veterans. It gets 1000 calls a day from men wounded by war, who want to take their own lives.
The producer Dana Perry lost her own son, Evan Perry, to suicide.
She dedicated the award to him, saying: “We should talk about suicide, out loud.”
She walked off stage to applause. Perry then took over, saying: “It takes a lot of balls to wear a dress like that.” (Dana was wearing a black dress with a decoration, like pom-poms on spiderwebs, which she probably loved.)
Class act? Not really. No.
In other news, Australia has missed out on the Oscar for sound mixing. David Lee was nominated for his work on Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken, filmed largely in Australia. He didn’t make the trip to LA, being busy on his next Pirates of the Caribbean project.
Another great speech was given by the best supporting actor winner, J. K. Simmons, 60, who won for Whiplash.
Simmons called on kids everywhere to call their parents.
“Everybody, call your Mum,” he said. “Don’t text. Don’t email. If you have parents, call them on the phone and tell them you love them. Listen to them for as long as they want to talk to you.”
