Congratulations are in order for Adrien Brody. Not for winning the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in The Brutalist, but for reportedly delivering as the longest Oscar speech in recorded history. And, boy, was it...disappointing.
Adrien Brody's 2025 Oscar speech lasted a total of 5 minutes and 40 seconds and was truly a masterclass in the audacity of man. Having previously won the same award in 2003, you would think that Adrien would know how to conduct himself. Though, given the fact that he started his 2003 speech by kissing presenter Halle Berry without consent, I guess we should just be happy he didn't start making out with Cillian Murphy. Still, I expected better than this meandering, hollow speech.
This entire awards season Adrien has been talking about his long career, and how he felt excluded from Hollywood following his Oscar win, only to finally be invited back onto the A-List this year. It's a compelling narrative (if you don't focus too much on his consistently respected collaborations with Wes Anderson and his 2014 Emmy nomination), and one that he embraced once again at the Oscars. “No matter where you are in your career, no matter what you've accomplished, it can all go away,” he said in part. “And I think what makes this night most special is the awareness of that and the gratitude that I have to still do the work that I love.”
A little humility goes a long way in Hollywood (see: the mixed reactions to Timothée Chalamet's “I wanna be one of the greats” SAG speech), and for a minute or two it looked like Adrien's speech was going to end there. Then he continued—slowly—thanking his fellow nominees, his Brutalist cast and crew, and his family. By the time the orchestra attempted to play him off, he was already 4 minutes into his speech—four times the allotted amount and already twice as long as Mikey Madison's Best Actress acceptance speech. Still, he refused to let go of the mic.
“I'm wrapping up. I will wrap up, turn the music off,” he said to the orchestra, “I've done this before, thank you, it's not my first rodeo.” The crowd in the room seemed to take this aside as a fun little jab. After all, they can relate. Nobody likes to be played off the stage (and many people that night already had, cutting their speech times to less than 45 seconds, in some cases). But the moment was an immediate ick to the audience at home, a reminder that for all his gratitude, he's already had a version of this moment—the moment many actors sitting in the audience are still dreaming of.
Not only was this rude to his fellow nominees—none of whom have won an Oscar, despite what some Academy voters might think—it was also contrary to his previous point. Is Adrien an underdog who's been out of the game or a two-time Oscar winner with enough industry capital to be granted extended time on stage?
In that moment, Brody's position in the room was one of power. And he used that power to get more speaking time than any other winner of the night. It was a show of entitlement, the kind of casual white male privilege we all know and experience in our daily lives. But it wasn't just that entitlement that rubbed me the wrong way.
The most unforgivable sin of Adrien's interminable Oscars speech was that didn't really say much of anything. After he successfully delayed the orchestra, the actor vaguely referenced the “lingering traumas” and “systemic oppression and anti-semitism and racism” depicted in The Brutalist, in which he plays a Holocaust survivor. “I pray for a healthier and happier and more inclusive world. And I believe if the past can teach us anything, it's a reminder to not let hate go unchecked,” he said before concluding, “Let's fight for what's right, keep smiling, keep loving one another. Let's rebuild together. Thank you.”
It's a nice sentiment, to be sure, but it felt shallow given the political moment we're currently in. Donald Trump is president, threatening to cut every government program under the sun, and the filmmakers of No Other Land had just given moving speeches calling for an end to the war in Israel and Gaza and freedom for Palestinian people. Now is not the time to be apolitical. What “hate” specifically is going unchecked right now? What are we meant to “rebuild together”?
To be fair, Adrien wasn't the only Oscar winner to make vague political references—many avoided the topic altogether—but he is the only one who did so after taking up 4 minutes of airtime in a show already speeding past its scheduled end time. If you're going to make us listen to you for 5 minutes and 40 seconds, you should at least make it count. And if you're not going to do that, then at least have the decency to take it to the press room.
