10 Infamous Oscar Acceptance Speeches That Are Hard to Top

Here are 10 funny, shocking, and inspiring Oscar speeches.

ByABC News
January 10, 2013, 10:23 AM

Jan. 10, 2013— -- intro: Dear Oscar nominees, we know it's super awesome to just be, well, nominated. But have you all really considered what comes with this honor? There's the outfit, which can't be just any outfit. There's the primping, which will take hours. There's also the ceremony and the after parties, which can be good or bad depending on whether you're accompanied by a statue. And no pressure but, if you win, you kind of need a memorable, inspiring, quotable speech. As the following list of recent Oscar winners shows, it's not easy. What we're trying to say is: Now that you've been nominated, try and top these speeches.

quicklist: 1title: Sally Field - Best Actress, Places in the Hearttext: Taking a cue from a line uttered in her previous award-garnering movie role (Norma Rae), an overjoyed Field declared that, "You like me! Right now, you like me!"

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quicklist: 2title: Sacheen Littlefeather (on behalf of Marlon Brando) - Best Actor, The Godfather text: Dressed in traditional Apache clothing, Littlefeather announced Brando's reason for rejecting the award to boos from the audience. "He… cannot accept this very generous award. And the reasons for this being… the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry."

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quicklist: 3title: Vanessa Redgrave - Best Supporting Actress, Juliatext: The Jewish Defense League objected to Redgrave's nomination for her role as a young woman who fought against Nazis prior to WWII. The group demonstrated outside the ceremony because the actress had narrated and helped fund a documentary, The Palestinian, which supported a Palestinian state. Redgrave acknowledged the demonstrators in her speech: "You should be very proud that in the last few weeks you stood firm and you refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic record against fascism and oppression."

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quicklist: 4title: Joe Pesci - Best Supporting Actor, Goodfellastext: His entire acceptance speech: "It's my privilege. Thank you."

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quicklist: 5title: Tom Hanks - Best Actor, Philadelphia text: Hanks gave a nod to two prominent gay men in his life, his high school drama teacher Rawley Farnsworth and former classmate John Gilkerson, and to those who have lost their lives to AIDS: "I know that my work in this case is magnified by the fact that the streets of heaven are too crowded with angels."

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quicklist: 6title: Cuba Gooding, Jr. - Best Supporting Actor, Jerry Maguiretext: As the music attempted to cut Gooding's speech, he persevered and shared the love. "I love you! I love you all!"

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quicklist: 7title: Jack Palance - Best Supporting Actor, City Slickerstext: Palance opened his truly memorable speech by making reference to his City Slickers co-star Bill Crystal's stature, then proved he was able to keep up with much younger actors by performing a series of one-handed pushups. We're sold: "Billy Crystal. God. I crap bigger than him."

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quicklist: 8title: Roberto Benigni - Best Foreign Language Film, Life Is Beautifultext: After walking over chairs and expressing his love for presenter and fellow Italian Sophia Loren, Benigni tried to express what he was feeling: "I would like to be Jupiter! And kidnap everybody and lie down in the firmament making love to everybody."

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quicklist: 9title: Hilary Swank - Best Actress, Million Dollar Baby text: An overwhelmed Swank picked up her second best actress award by saying "I'm just a girl from a trailer park who had a dream."

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quicklist: 10title: Michael Moore - Best Documentary Feature, Bowling for Columbine text: Moore gathered his fellow best documentary nominees onto the stage and shared the following: "We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results, that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons."

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