Luckily I didn’t get an Oscar this year. It wasn’t really my time to be honest and I don’t begrudge those that did win. Plus I would have had a lot of trouble with my acceptance speech.
Apparently it was mandatory this year for actors to thank their wonderful mothers in a very overt and slightly nauseating way. God was shut out for the most part, receiving only brief thanks from winners in the ‘who gives a toss’ categories like Best Adaptation of a Paintbrush, etc. Maybe other nominees would have thanked God if they had won the Oscar, but as they didn’t then maybe this proves that God has lost his touch among the acting community and so the actual Oscar winners were right not to mention him.
Mum’s are therefore the new Gods, which is probably only fair given how much more of the day to day rubbish they have to take care of. Especially from their needy actor offspring.
I was not raised as an actor. Not through lack of wanting. If I had gone to the Sylvia Young stage school I’d probably be in my 20th year on the great british soap Eastenders. With additional acting credits from London’s Burning and El Dorado. But I didn’t, I went to Maidstone Grammar school where my acting dreams were crushed along with football. Dreams of being a footballer that is, not a football crushing my acting dreams, though that would probably have been possible given that football is a rougher game and most actors are rather sensitive and I was always picked last for sports.
My current success has all been self-created and as I don’t really like to give credit where it isn’t due, my acceptance speech would have been tricky. This was my original point.
I could have left out all mention of my family but given the motherly theme of the night, my snub would have been grasped upon by the media in the same way as when Angelina Jolie snogged her brother a few years back. I could have thanked my mother in a very sarcastic style but I might have misjudged the tone and come across as sincere and then I’d have to correct everyone in my subsequent press interviews and explain that she was really no help to me whatsoever.
Or I could just be ambiguous and thank my mum without actually explaining why. There was a lot of specific family detail in the other speeches this year but I could have truncated mine to a simple ‘I’d like to thank my mum and dad…’ And if I’d wanted to, added in an oblique line like ‘..you know why’.
I’d like to see a shift away from the family next year. Why not focus on pets? Nobody ever thanks their dog in their speeches. It’d be like thanking god, just in a backwards kind of way. And I bet God can hear backwards as well as forwards when he wants to.
I’ll certainly be thanking my dog next year. Life hasn’t been easy but she inspires me every day and has always believed in me 110 percent. I’ll raise Oscar in the air and shout ‘this one’s for you Stormy’