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Reed Saxon/AP
Tom Hanks gives a powerful acceptance speech at the 66th Academy Awards on March 21, 1994. Hanks won for his role in the film “Philadelphia.”
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Thirty years ago, Tom Hanks gave a performance that resonated in Hollywood. And it wasn’t in a movie.
On March 21, 1994, at the 66th Academy Awards, Hanks accepted the Best Actor statuette for his role in “Philadelphia,” a drama about a gay lawyer who slowly dies of AIDS. His acceptance speech quickly went down in history as one of the most memorable and moving in Oscar history.
As we prepare for the 96th Academy Awards on Sunday, here’s a look at Hanks’ groundbreaking acceptance speech, 30 years later.
It begins like any other speech, with Hanks thanking his wife Rita Wilson, as well as the film’s cast and crew, including his co-stars Antonio Banderas and Denzel Washington. Then, the speech becomes personal. Hanks is referring to his high school drama teacher, Rawley Farnsworth, and a classmate, John Gilkerson, both gay men with whom Hanks said he “had the good fortune to be associated, to fall under their inspiration at an early age.” so early.”
“And therein lies my dilemma tonight,” Hanks said. keep going. “I know that my work in this case is magnified by the fact that the streets of heaven are too full of angels. We know their names. It adds up to a thousand for each of the red ribbons we wear here tonight. Finally they rest in the warm embrace of the gracious creator of us all.
“A healing embrace that cools your fevers, that clears your skin and allows your eyes to see the simple, obvious, common sense truth that is manifested by the benevolent creator of us all and that was written on paper by wise men. “Tolerant men in the city of Philadelphia 200 years ago,” he says, referring to the Declaration of Independence, which states that all men are created equal. “God bless you all. God have mercy on us all. And God bless America.”
Hanks was talking about the lives lost to AIDS. In 1994, He had become the leading cause of death among Americans ages 25 to 44. The fellow student he had mentioned, Gilkerson, was an actor and puppeteer and died of AIDS in 1989.
Although the disease had been raging for more than a decade when the film was released, it was still highly stigmatized at the time, and “Philadelphia” was one of the first major Hollywood films to directly address HIV/AIDS.
Steven Spielberg was in the audience that night and won Best Director and Best Picture for “Schindler’s List.”
“The speech was incredible,” he said decades later, in an interview with The New York Times, “and in some ways it communicated more about what ‘Philadelphia’ was saying (and reached more people) than the movie itself.”
Before Hanks won the award, he called his high school drama teacher, Farnsworth, and asked permission to mention it in the speech.
Farnsworth, then 69, received a call at his apartment three days before the Oscars, he said. People Magazine in 1994: “I don’t know if you remember me,” the caller had said, “but I’m a former student of yours. “I have a ticket to the Academy Awards, and if I win, I would like to use your name in connection with the content of ‘Philadelphia.’”
The caller was, of course, Hanks. And Farnsworth’s response? “He would be delighted,” he said.
Memorable Oscar speech aside, “Philadelphia” has been criticized for casting a straight actor as a gay man. Hanks has said that if the film were made today, that wouldn’t be the case, and “rightly so.”
“One of the reasons people weren’t afraid of that movie is because I played a gay man,” Hanks said. in a 2022 interview. “We’re past that now and I don’t think people will accept the inauthenticity of a straight man playing a gay man.”