Adrien Brody gave the longest acceptance speech in Oscars history


It seems Adrien Brody can’t win an Oscar without also breaking a record. In 2003, Adrien became the youngest-ever man to nab Best Actor with his upset win for The Pianist when he was a wee bairn of 29. Had Timothée Chalamet won last night, he would have tied Adrien. So for now, Adrien still holds the title for youngest winner. But not one to rest on his laurels, Adrien broke an entirely new record with his second Best Actor victory: Guinness World Records confirms that Adrien’s acceptance speech for The Brutalist is the longest one in Oscars history. At a lengthy five minutes and 40 seconds, Adrien edged out the previous recorder-holder (Greer Garson in 1943) by 10 seconds. Thanks for making it official, Guinness, but I think anyone watching Sunday night could’ve verified that!

As per the Guinness World Records, Adrien Brody’s best actor acceptance speech at the 2025 Oscars is the longest in Oscars history.

Brody emerged triumphant ahead of Timothée Chalamet, Sebastian Stan, Colman Domingo and Ralph Fiennes at the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood’s biggest night of the year, claiming one of the top performance prizes for his portrayal as Hungarian-Jewish architect Lászlo Tóth in The Brutalist.

He came up onstage — not before spitting out his chewing gum and throwing it to partner Georgina Chapman — and ignored the standard 45-second timer to speak for a whopping five minutes and 40 seconds. It beats the record of five minutes and 30 seconds held by Greer Garson, according to GWR, when she won for Mrs. Miniver in 1943 (though there is no existing footage of the speech in its entirety).

When the music started to cut the star off, he said: “Turn the music off! I’ve done this before. Thank you. It’s not my first rodeo, but I will be brief.” The moment may have conjured up old memories for Brody — his first Oscar win aged 29 for The Pianist in 2003 was interrupted, too. At the time, he said: “One second, please. One second. Cut it out. I got one shot at this. I didn’t say more than five names, I don’t think.”

He got payback by covering myriad topics this time around, among them antisemitism and racism: “I’m here once again, to represent the lingering traumas, and the repercussions of war and systematic oppression, and of antisemitism, and racism, and of othering and I believe that I pray for a healthier and happier, and a more inclusive world, and I believe if the past can teach us anything it’s a reminder to not let hate go unchecked.”

The actor also described acting as “a very fragile profession.” He continued: “It looks very glamorous, and certain moments it is, but the one thing I’ve gained, having the privilege to come back here is to have some perspective and no matter where you are in your career, no matter what you’ve accomplished, it can all go away, and I think what makes this night most special is the awareness of that and the gratitude that I have to still to do the work that I love.

“OK, I’ll get out of here, I love you, I appreciate you all,” he said as he wrapped up. “Let’s fight for what’s right, keep smiling, keep loving one another, let’s rebuild together. Thank you.”

When speaking to GMA after his acceptance speech, Brody explained, “It’s a pretty long movie so I had to have a little bit extra time to say what’s relevant,” he said. “It’s been a very long time between speeches.”

[From The Hollywood Reporter]

I didn’t know your allotted speech time correlated to film length? [insert sarcasm here] Look, I like Adrien Brody. I think he has a real artist’s soul. And I didn’t hate his speech (like some people did). But to borrow an artistic metaphor, the speech needed some serious sculpting. There were peaks of heartfelt, beautifully-worded moments. And then valleys of agonizing pauses! He stopped the orchestra from playing him off, with the words, “It’s not my first rodeo, but I will be brief.” And then how many silent seconds was it before he started speaking again?! The pauses just ended up diminishing the impact of the better parts of his speech. So in short (short, get it!), I give full marks to Adrien for emotion and sincerity, but his timing needs work. At his caliber, he should be able to deliver a tighter performance of an actor in an acceptance speech. And this isn’t even getting into the whole unfairness of less-famous winners being cut off, all for unnecessary dance numbers (you know who you are).

Photos credit: Avalon.red

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

48 Responses to “Adrien Brody gave the longest acceptance speech in Oscars history”

  1. Bumblebee says:

    Selfish

  2. Aimee says:

    I must have taken a very long pee break cause I didn’t hear a word and I’m oh so glad I missed it.

  3. Lala11_7 says:

    Once again…he used his privilege as a White man to show his 🤬 at the Academy Awards.

    • waitwhat says:

      I despised him the second he forcefully kissed Halle Berry when she won best actress. There are so many layers of wrong about his behavior then, and he has proven over and over that it wasn’t a fluke. He sucks.

  4. Mireille says:

    Best speeches go to Paul Tazewell and the heartfelt and brave Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham. Brody was egotistical and uninspired. No other Oscar winner got the time he was allotted. They shouldn’t have just played him off stage after his time limit expired. They should have dragged him off kicking and screaming.

  5. Jenny says:

    Watching him give his speech would have been worth it, had they focused the camera on Cillian Murphy.

  6. Nanea says:

    There’s a line between being eloquent and chatty — and Adrien wilfully and self-importantly stepped over it.

    How very egotistical and entitled can one be?

    • sunny says:

      This part! Then telling the music to stop? Not once did he think about anyone else but himself.

      And on top of that, it wasn’t even a good speech! Just an example of a man thinking he is profound when he is not.

  7. SarahCS says:

    The older I get the more I notice how strong a value fairness is for me so at this point I don’t care how valid some of his statements were, he knew he had 45 seconds and chose to completely ignore that, and not by the time it takes to say a couple more names, by just shy of five minutes.

    Put your selfishness and privilege away please, we don’t need to see that.

    Also, he knew he had a good shot at winning so why on earth did he have gum in his mouth at that precise moment??

    • Becks1 says:

      Yeah, I think there’s a difference between going over by 30 seconds, heck even a minute, and then going over by almost FIVE minutes. That’s an eternity for an acceptance speech.

  8. Crystal says:

    I understand the objections to it but, for me personally- privileged and pompous though he may be, he’s still one of only 25 actors to have two Oscars for this category. So frankly, I’m not even mad at it. And the gum not withstanding, I appreciated several parts of his speech, which to me were still better than Zoe Saldana basically telling Mexicans to shut up about Emilia Perez. (shrug)

    • Tessa says:

      Streep and katharine Hepburn won many oscars and neither broke records for long speeches. In fact Hepburn was a no show at the awards show most of the time.

      • Crystal says:

        I’m aware. If they had been in the same situation and asked for more time I’d say the same thing about them, probably even more emphatically given the context.

    • Tessa says:

      I think most are more respectful of the rules. Garson was giving her speech when there were no time limits. He could have given a long interview later instead.

  9. Tessa says:

    Fair is fair he should have been held to a time limit. There were no time limits set so g a r s on had the long speech.

  10. Miranda says:

    He’s one of those stars whom I wish would just make a movie and then go away. Absolutely amazing actor but every time he has a spotlight on him, proves to be an egotistical ass.

    • Jessica Mederson says:

      Miranda, I feel the same. He is a great actor but I have yet to see anything redeeming in him outside of his talent. And we should be past the era when we allow talented men to be a-holes just because they’re talented.

      • Tessa says:

        He, like so many other actors, have been in some “clunkers.” He was not so good in the film Hollywoodland for example.

    • Traveller says:

      Totally agree with “egotistical ass”.

  11. Carrie says:

    Did he say anything meaningful to other people? I bet he didn’t. I swear, all the dudes, including Chalamet, are giving speeches about their ambition, while the women are making speeches that Include nods to immigrants, sex workers, the lgbtq community, etc. Men are selfish lol. And we just let them get away with it.

    • MaisiesMom says:

      Remember Matthew McConaughey’s weird, self indulgent speech when he won for “Dallas Buyers’ Club?” My sister in law who is a doctor was so annoyed that he didn’t find a way to thank all of the people in the medical community who worked so hard during the AIDS crisis and to develop the medications that help control it and save lives. He made it all about himself.

    • Hannah1 says:

      Male privilege on display

  12. Pam says:

    All this talking about white privilege….reminder that this is a Jewish man making a movie about the plight of Jewish people. If you haven’t noticed Jewish people could use a bit of light.

    • Libra says:

      Agree. I made an earlier, similar post which was taken down.

    • NikkiK says:

      He is a white Jewish man. You aren’t going to see him at any Jews of Color meetings or hear about him being mistreated or questioned about taking a birthright trip to Israel. So yeah, he benefits from being both male and white. Could you imagine a Black man or woman being allowed to do this? A brown skin Arab or Latino? No way.

  13. Amy Bee says:

    Didn’t they say that AI was used to perfect his Hungarian accent? That should have been disqualifying.

  14. Eurydice says:

    I’m looking forward to someone breaking the record for shortest speech. So far it’s “Thank you,” but surely it can be cut down to just “Thanks.”

  15. AmyB says:

    I thought it was obnoxious for Brody to waive off the orchestra, trying to signal to him that he was over his time limit with his statement, “It’s not my first rodeo, but I will be brief” (he wasn’t brief – longest Oscar speech in history lol). It was a turn-off for me – he came across as arrogant and self-indulgent. Also concerning to learn his Hungarian accent was perfected by AI. Ugh…

  16. Eleonor says:

    The best Oscar speech is the Olivia Coleman one!
    She was precious, and when she remembered when she used to work as a cleaner? AMAZING.

  17. wendy says:

    The utter disregard for timing – for the audience, the host, the camera crews, the set changers, the television audience and commercials etc.

    It was self indulgent and mostly incoherent due to the multiple ‘pause for effect’ moments — my husband asked why he was chewing the scenery at an awards show.
    Mr. Marchesa was a no for me dog.

    They should have cut his mike.

  18. Kaaaaaz says:

    This entitled, self- indulgent BS is the reason why I stopped watching award shows altogether. Boring .
    Numbers of viewers are a fraction of what it used to be so I’m guessing others share my view.
    I like to look at the fashion pics after the event but that’s it.

  19. blue says:

    Brody was a self-important egotistical jerk. “Not my first rodeo” was a slap to the others. His so-called speech was verbal mast**bation – ums, pauses, etc.
    Zoe was also OTT too. She spilled way too much of her personal emotional garbage instead of being gracious & thankful. She’s been a weepy wailer before. During her split from Bradley Cooper, she wailed & moped a lot in public.

    • Mel says:

      I can’t stand Zoe Saldana and she managed to wear two of the ugliest outfits ever on the biggest night of her professional life.

    • Robert Wright says:

      Have to mention that Saldana and the other winners from Emilia Perez never once mentioned transgender people in their acceptance speeches. What a shame, it was, after all the main issue of the movie.

  20. Mel says:

    Selfish , self-indulgent and entitled.

  21. MoxieMox says:

    Insufferable.

    • Normades says:

      Yup that the word. And he had to remind everyone that he’s raising Harvey’s kids. I have super mixed feelings about this as I do feel bad for the kids but don’t know how I feel about Georgia or Adrien (not good I guess). Wonder if that’s a way to get Weinstein back into the good graces of hwood or at least his legacy. I bet from prison he was pleased.

  22. Pinocchio Princess says:

    Now that we know what came out of Brody’s mouth, let’s take a minute to mention that in not seen pictures, Halle Berry was photographed French kissing him back like she had just come out of jail.

    Nostalgia? Just for those who thought she was offended back in 2002: the bold way she planted that kiss on Adrian. History is comming full circle, I guess.

  23. Traveller says:

    Honestly, I had to just mute him. He came off like a jerk to me.

  24. Mary says:

    I just realized him and Ariana have the same eyebrows these days.

Commenting Guidelines

Read the article before commenting.

We aim to be a friendly, welcoming site where people can discuss entertainment stories and current events in a lighthearted, safe environment without fear of harassment, excessive negativity, or bullying. Different opinions, backgrounds, ages, and nationalities are welcome here - hatred and bigotry are not. If you make racist or bigoted remarks, comment under multiple names, or wish death on anyone you will be banned. There are no second chances if you violate one of these basic rules.

By commenting you agree to our comment policy and our privacy policy

Do not engage with trolls, contrarians or rude people. Comment "troll" and we will see it.

Please e-mail the moderators at cbcomments at gmail.com to delete a comment if it's offensive or spam. If your comment disappears, it may have been eaten by the spam filter. Please email us to get it retrieved.

You can sign up to get an image next to your name at Gravatar.com Thank you!

Leave a comment after you have read the article

Save my name and email in this browser for the next time I comment