Academy Awards Acceptance Speech Database

JEAN-CLAUDE CARRIÈRE:
Thank you so much, everybody. And thank you, Phil, for what you said and what you gave me. He has already said what I wanted to say first, that today it's my daughter's, Iris, birthday. Which is a strange coincidence. So allow me to say, Iris, bon anniversaire. And then, of course I'm very grateful to the members of the Academy for accepting me as a new member and this totally unexpected Oscar.

I think at the moment here tonight about some of the great directors I've been working with and who have already passed away. Like Luis Buñuel, of course, Jacques Tati, Louis Malle, Patrice Chéreau, Nagisa Ôshima, Marco Ferreri, Jacques Deray. They all taught me something, each of them. And they're always present, even today, even now in this moment, when I'm working and when I hear, I believe I hear their voices in my ears. In a way, they are all here tonight with us. And of course I think also about the directors who are still alive, like that one [pointing to Philip Kaufman onstage], and like Volker Schlöndorff that you saw in the film. Like Milos Forman, of course. Like Peter Brook, who is going to turn ninety pretty soon and still very much alive and working. So that's all I want to say. We – a screenwriter is nothing without a director. And with such directors as the ones I've been happy to work with, it's a gift. It's just a series of gifts.

Now I'd like also to say something about the fact that this Oscar goes to a screenwriter. And I'm very happy of this because very often the screenwriters are forgotten, are ignored. They are like shadows passing through [the] history of cinema. Their names do not appear in the reviews, very seldom, but still they are filmmakers. That's why tonight I like to share this priceless statue with all my colleagues – the ones I know, the ones I don't know – from all over the world to share with them. So we all thank you.