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Leonardo Dicaprio’s Winning Speech at 2016 Oscar

Leonardo DiCaprio finally won the Best Actor for his role in The Revenant after having been nominated for five times before.

His excellent acceptance speech gave us a few speech lessons to learn.

1. Speaking is never about you.

Speaking is not to showcase how smart a speaker is, how much a speaker knows about a subject, or how successful the speaker is.

Leonardo DiCaprio attributed the success of the movie to the cast and crew, while not even mentioning anything about himself.

The Revenant was the product of an unbelievable cast and crew. First off to my brother in this endeavor, Mr. Tom Hardy. Tom, your fierce talent onscreen can only be surpassed by your friendship offscreen. To Mr. Alejandro Inarritu, as the history of cinema unfolds, you have forged your way into history these past two years. What an unbelievable talent you are …” He then went on thanking a list of other people, including his parents.

What is a speech about then if it’s not about the speaker? Normally, I would say, “It is about the audience.”

The speech by Leonardo DiCaprio is an award-acceptance speech. It’s about appreciation, appreciating the work the cast and the crew had put in; not how much effort he had put in.

What made his acceptance speech excellent is that he didn’t stop at appreciation.

2. Appeal to a bigger purpose.

Most of the times, Oscar award acceptance speech would be anything about the movie. Differently,  Leonardo DiCaprio made a climate-change plea.

“Making The Revenant was about man’s relationship to the natural world, a world that we collectively felt in 2015 as the hottest year in recorded history. Our production needed to move to the southern tip of this planet just to be able to find snow. Climate change is real. 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. We need to support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters or the big corporations, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people who will be most affected by this, for our children’s children, and for those people out there whose voices have been drowned out by the politics of greed.”

Great speeches are for the bigger purposes and fight for a cause. Think about all the great speeches in history. Which was not fighting for a bigger purpose?

3. End with a call to action.

There’s only one purpose for any speech and that is to have your listeners take certain action. A speech without a call to action is a speech that has just failed its purpose.

Leonardo DiCaprio ended his speech with a call to action:

“Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take tonight for granted.”

Leonardo DiCaprio demonstrated to us what a great acceptance speech should be. If there’s one thing he could have made it even better, it would have been his voice.I’ve observed him in a few interviews and found the same issue, that is, his voice does not exude enough emotion. Surprising, huh? I was as surprised as you are. Aren’t actors supposed to be good at expressing the emotions? The truth is, they may be able to do that in the movies, but not necessary when they are off screen. Emotion is the defining factor if you want to inspire people into action.

Now, let’s watch this excellent speech.

 

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