Forget Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio deserves a prize for being humble as hell.
After Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony, he and fellow Oscar-winner Alejandro González Iñárritu chatted about their triumphs in a backstage interview, where Leo said, “It all feels incredibly surreal.”
He continued, “You know, it's surreal because you can't reach out and physically meet everybody. You hear it on the Internet, you hear it from other people, and, you know, the truth is, we always strive for the best in what we do.”
By “everybody,” he’s referring to the scores of fans who’ve voiced support for his storied career and overdue Oscar win. There was even a WhiteHouse.gov petition published in 2013 titled, “give Leonardo DiCaprio an Oscar: enough said.”
The year marked Leo’s fifth Academy Award nomination, and probably the third year he out-acted the pack. (Let’s be real, “The Wolf of Wall Street” was fine, but 2014 was the Year of McConaughey, and no one’s complaining about it.)
In his acceptance speech, Leo delved into his thoughts on global warming, an issue he described backstage as “the most existential crisis our civilization has ever known.”
He continued, “There's a sense of urgency that we all must do something proactive about this issue. And certainly with this upcoming election, the truth is this: If you do not believe in climate change, you do not believe in modern science or empirical truths and you will be on the wrong side of history.”
That he was using his one opportunity to gloat as a platform for an issue he cares deeply about -- as evidenced by his past work on a global warming documentary -- was not lost on everyone’s favorite earnest star.
“I feel so overwhelmed with, you know, gratitude for what happened tonight,” he said. “But I feel there is a ticking clock out there.”
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