Patricia Arquette Used Her Oscars Acceptance Speech To Deliver A Wage Inequality Smackdown

In the 87th Annual Academy Awards, which are being broadcast on Channel Nine, one of the biggest audience applauses so far has gone to Patricia Arquette, who won Best Supporting Actress against Laura Dern (Wild), Emma Stone (Birdman), Keira Knightley (The Imitation Game) and Meryl Streep (Into The Woods).

It wasn’t a huge surprise. Arquette had already won a Bafta and a Golden Globe for the Boyhood role, and was a pretty clear favourite for the Oscar: over the 12 years of Richard Linklater’s filming, her portrayal of Mason’s mother Olivia was tender, real, moving and deft — a performance our own reviewer credited with anchoring the whole film.

After thanking her family, the Boyhood cast and crew, the Academy, and GiveLove.org, Arquette turned her attention to a bigger issue. “To every woman who gave birth to every taxpayer and citizen of this nation, we have fought for everybody else’s equal rights. It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.”

Meryl Streep, who notably didn’t win, did this instead:

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