Quotes About The Academy Awards

#1. As a kid I watched the Academy Awards on television and always wanted one - or several - like one of my favorite directions, John Ford. He won six. On the other hand, Orson Welles, who's on the top of my list, didn't win any. Alfred Hitchcock didn't win any. Howard Hawks didn't win any.

Martin Scorsese

#2. everything from Hairspray to the Academy Awards. They were also my co-conspirators on my 2006 Broadway show, Fame

Martin Short

#3. The Academy Awards was an amazing night. I know I kind of lost my mind a little bit. I apologize for that. That night went so fast; I can't remember what I said or what happened.

Cuba Gooding Jr.

#4. Working in film, if you work with great directors, you learn that after every take you must let go. Sitting with my wife at the Academy Awards, we both let the moment just go.

Ben Kingsley

#5. I want everybody who is watching to come to the Academy Awards with us. I'm going to pay for the bus.

Steven Cojocaru

#6. You might be a redneck if you have refused to watch the Academy Awards since Smokey and the Bandit was snubbed for best picture.

Jeff Foxworthy

#7. The whole awards thing is great. Why? Because the Golden Globes, the Academy Awards, they put a focus on the industry, and that focus translates into people buying tickets to see movies or download films, legitimately download them. And it keeps us all at work. So I'm a big fan of award shows.

Liam Neeson

#8. At the Academy Awards every year, there are best-dressed stars - and worst-dressed stars. But it's the worst-dressed that go down in history.

Brad Goreski

#9. If you are looking for smart judging based on merit, skip the Academy Awards next year and pay attention to the Independent Spirit Awards.

Annie Proulx

#10. The academy awards in England; it's a classy affair as well.

Brenda Blethyn

#11. I'm very enthusiastic about the Academy Awards because if there were no Oscars, we wouldn't have as many good movies as we do have.

Robert Osborne

#12. There's been a slow death in a way. On the positive side, there are films getting into the Academy Awards that wouldn't have, but on the negative side, financiers are now dominant and making all the decisions. I can't count the ways a director's vision is compromised.

Lili Taylor

#13. The Academy Awards are passed out on Sunday. It's voted by members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Or as I call them, 50 shades of white.

David Letterman

#14. Welcome to the Academy Awards, or, as it's known at my house, Passover.

Bob Hope

#15. I'm thrilled to be asked to host the Academy Awards for the second time because, as they say, the third time's a charm.

Jon Stewart

#16. If I'm lucky enough to be involved in the Academy Awards in the future, I'll just let people make up their decision without being involved in any politics. Because it shouldn't involve that.

Peter Jackson

#17. Payday at my house is like the Academy Awards. My wife says: May I have the envelope please.

Henny Youngman

#18. The Academy Awards ceremony is designed to be without irony, but Chris Rock supplied it anyway with filmed movie-theater interviews with black men and women who had never heard of the movies nominated for Best Picture.

Suzanne Fields

#19. Overall, we've lost risk-takers on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. All too often, stars play it safe.

Brad Goreski

#20. The Academy Awards were basically created by the industry to promote pictures. They weren't really to acknowledge the performances. Then it became sort of this a great popularity contest and now, it's an incredible show and it's seen all over the world.

James Cromwell

#21. Now there are reports that Osama bin Laden would like to commit suicide on television. This is the kind of lead-in I have been praying for every since I came to CBS. Bin Laden is planning a televised suicide or, as I call it, hosting the Academy Awards.

David Letterman

#22. Sunday is the Academy Awards. Every time an actor says, 'I didn't expect this,' Ruth Bader Ginsburg will do a shot.

David Letterman

#23. I was very aware when I went to the Academy Awards that it would probably be my first and last time. So I thought my input should really be about fertility, and I thought I'd bring some eggs.

Bjork

#24. I pay attention when the Academy Awards come around. I haven't watched them in a while, but I used to watch them religiously when I was a kid.

Alex Ebert

#25. You ain't ever gonna get an Academy Award for doing 'Crank,' and you certainly won't for doing all the other movies I've done.

Jason Statham

#26. If a movie is nominated for, say, an Academy award, that movie will instantly become popular in Japan. There's always been a bit of a complex the Japanese have about being taken seriously in the West.

Hirokazu Koreeda

#27. A couple of guys won Academy Awards for the things that I turned down. Today, after coming to terms with everything, after being in therapy for a long time-there are areas where I will compromise.

Mickey Rourke

#28. I didn't get into film to win Academy Awards. I wanted to have a conversation with the audience.

Kevin Smith

#29. There is a strange sort of reasoning in Hollywood that musicals are less worthy of Academy consideration than dramas. It's a form of snobbism, the same sort that perpetuates the idea that drama is more deserving of Awards than comedy.

Gene Kelly

#30. I've never taken time off from being an actor. This is the kind of career I'd be so happy to do until I die. I always joke to myself that I want to have a postmortem Academy Award Nomination.

Ansel Elgort

#31. I know a lot of actors picture themselves winning Academy Awards. I really just wanted to do a Christmas movie because it's the kind of movie that I really love to watch. I'm a sucker for the holidays.

Leigh-Allyn Baker

#32. It's much harder to act in a bad film than in a good one. A terrible script makes for very difficult acting. You can win an Academy Award for some of the easiest acting in your career, made possible by a brilliant script.

Michael Caine

#33. 'Entourage' is a very, very, very unique acting experience. I could go in to win 1000 Academy Awards, and it would never be as much fun as the show.

Kevin Connolly

#34. I was one of the horses of the Louis B. Mayer stable, and I thought the films I was given after my Academy Awards were not worthy.

Luise Rainer

#35. The people voting for the Oscars are so old. I haven't seen one Academy Award voter with a tampon in her purse.

Joan Rivers

#36. I'd like to thank the Academy for my lifetime achievement award that I will eventually get.

Donald O'Connor

#37. At the Academy Award Dinners all the actors and actresses in Hollywood gather around to see what someone else thinks about their acting besides their press agents.

Bob Hope

#38. What does the Academy Award mean? I don't think it means much of anything.

Sally Field

#39. I wanted to be an actor my whole young life. My dad was an actor, obviously - he won an Academy Award, but I had no idea what was involved. I had all the wrong ideas about acting.

Ed Begley Jr.

#40. Oh yeah, I'm about to host the Genies, which are the Canadian Academy Awards.

Andrea Martin

#41. I' ve won awards. And they didn't make me feel bad winning them. They made me feel pretty good. But it also did not make me feel bad NOT winning the Academy Award.

Al Pacino

#42. If I want to be up for an Academy Award, I'm either going to have to play a tour de force of some kind or have a tracheotomy just before the nominations.

Burt Reynolds

#43. Lonely people want to be dead, yet we're still not quite ready to go - we don't want to miss the action; we want to see who wins next year's Academy Awards.

Douglas Coupland

#44. 'Room' is a very subtly-made film, and directing awards tend to go to the flashier stuff, but it's the Director's section of the academy that make the decision, so I'm very proud they can see something in what I directed and wanted to reward it.

Lenny Abrahamson

#45. The (Academy Award) ceremonies are a two-hour meat parade, a public display with contrived suspense for economic reasons.

George C. Scott

#46. Men, you are about to embark on a great crusade to stamp out runaway decency in the west. Now you men will only be risking your lives, whilst I will be risking an almost certain Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Harvey Korman

#47. I think the hardest thing about writing is writing.
[Interview clip in the In Memoriam section of the 85th Academy Awards ceremony, Feb. 24, 2013]

Nora Ephron

#48. As you all know by now, this is the 51st annual Academy Awards. Two hours of sparkling entertainment spread out over a four-hour show.

Johnny Carson

#49. I'm officially retired as the refuser of Academy Awards.

Sacheen Littlefeather

#50. It was amazing to be nominated by the Academy who saw fit for me to be nominated for best supporting actor. The Critic's choice award was wonderful. I'm on cloud nine.

Giancarlo Esposito

#51. You can imagine what a trip this is for a Jewish girl from Great Neck-I get to win an Academy Award and meet Elizabeth Taylor at the same time.

Julia Phillips

#52. I hadn't even dreamed of getting another Academy Award, and there I was unhappy in my private life and miserable, i remember Clifford Odets drove me three times around the Biltmore, where the Oscars were given out, because I was so full of tears.

Anna Held

#53. Roxy Sorkin, your father just won the Academy Award. I'm going to have to insist on some respect from your guinea pig.

Aaron Sorkin

#54. The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing. Isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing, and soul-crushing inadequacy. And that's on a good day.

Robert De Niro

#55. People see so many movies that when they finally see one not so bad as the others, they think it's great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink quite as much as your cousin.

Charles Bukowski

#56. A lot of people are going around saying, 'You won the Academy Award for such and such.' 'No. I didn't.' 'You didn't?' 'Well, you should have.'.

Morgan Freeman

#57. On 'MADtv,' I discovered I could do Billy Crystal. 'Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 68th Annual Academy Awards!' Surprisingly, there's more call for that one than you'd think.

Phil LaMarr