So how did the stars do with their acceptance speeches last night? Overall, it was a solid night, with no disasters turned in by the major winners. Here are the highlights:

Sean Penn—He deserves a solid A rating. “You commie, homo-loving, sons of guns” was funny, self-mocking, clever, clean, quotable and well-prepared. Penn was off to a great start within the first two seconds of his speech. Penn was gracious, rehearsed and yet seemed spontaneous. He poked gentle fun at himself and singled out his fellow nominee Mickey Rourke for praise. Penn’s political message about gay marriage came across as sincere, non-preachy and authentic. The only place where I take off points for Penn is when he had to pull out his script and his glasses. Thanking people looking up and at them would come across as more sincere than staring down at paper. And if you are going to use paper, why not fill up the sheet with very large type so as not to waste time fumbling with glasses? Still, Penn began and ended strongly and further burnished his positive image with the speech.

Kate Winslet—She deserves an A minus. Winslet definitely improved over her earlier disastrous acceptance speeches this year. She was clearly prepared and rehearsed. Her story of being a little girl imagining winning an Oscar while hold a bottle of shampoo was memorable and touching. Winslet reaching out to her dad and their exchange appeared spontaneous and gushing with positive emotion. Winslet also gets credit for quickly and with great precision thinking a large cast of characters—this only happens after much practice. Her personal thanks to her husband and family also seemed sincere and moving. However, Winslet looked in pain throughout her whole time on stage. Her breathing was so heavy you’d have thought she had just been told she had less than a month to live. For such a great and now Academy-award winning actress, she could have acted a little less surprised at the outcome.

Penelope Cruz—She gets a C plus. Cruz didn’t have any cringe-worthy moments, but she was just average in her speech. She starts off by complaining about only having 45 seconds to talk. Of course, now she has only half that amount of time because she just wasted a bunch of time talking about time—never a good idea. Then she wonders if people faint. Penelope, we know it is an emotional moment, but the way you talked about it just wasn’t very original, interesting or even personal. Finally, Cruz gets down to the perfunctory task of thanking her team. She doesn’t make any blunders, but she doesn’t say anything in a particularly interesting or memorable way. Her speech won’t ever be talked about as a disaster—it just won’t be talked about one way or the other.

Tags: acadamy awards, kate winslet, oscars, penelope cruz, sean penn, TJ Walker

This entry was posted on Monday, February 23rd, 2009 at 10:57 am and is filed under Blogroll, Body Language, Fear of Speaking, Great Lectures, Humor, Media Training, Public Speaking Skills, Social Speaking, Speaking, Speaking to Media, Story Telling, Uncategorized, Voice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.