21st March 1994, saw the night of the 66th Academy Awards...
20 years ago today, the ceremony of the 66th Academy Awards were held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. The night was hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, her first appearance as host at the Oscars. Whoopi was also the first woman to host the Oscars single-handedly and she went on to host the ceremony three more times.
The focus of the ceremony was on Schindler’s List (1993) which was nominated for 12 awards. It was surrounded by other great movies including The Piano, The Fugitive, Philadelphia, In The Name of the Father, Jurassic Park and plenty of others. All the stars were out too, Tom Hanks, Tommy Lee Jones, Holly Hunter, Daniel Day-Lewis, Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, the list goes on. The show was quite understated giving more focus to the films rather than the spectacle. This was well received by many of the critics at the time and the general views on Goldberg’s performance was positive.
The Best Actor award was presented by Emma Thompson (who was nominated for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress at the same Oscars, as was Holly Hunter) and the nominations were Tom Hanks for Philadelphia, Daniel Day-Lewis for In The Name of the Father, Laurence Fishburne for What’s Love Gotta Do With It, Anthony Hopkins for Remains of the Day, and Liam Neeson for Schindler’s List. A great line-up and some of the best actors of the past 30 years. Thompson read out the winner and it went to Tom Hanks, for me this stands out as Hanks’ greatest moment in cinema. Hanks delivered a moving speech when he received his award and fought back tears the whole way through. A film and performance of such importance wasn’t let down by his speech, again the speech was used to continue the message that Philadelphia endeavoured to deliver.
Holly Hunter received the Best Actress award, beating Emma Thompson and Stockard Channing to the trophy, but the stand out win of the night was to 11 year old Anna Paquin for winning the Best Supporting Actress award, the second youngest winner of an award at the Oscars. Her performance in The Piano was recognised by the Academy and the shock on Paquin’s face said it all.
The Academy Awards are always the highlight of the Hollywood calendar but the 66th Oscars seemed to have an array of talent and movies that makes it stand out as one the toughest fought awards of the Academy’s history.
by Russell Farnham
After its 12 nominations, Schindler’s List was the stand out film of the year and there was little doubt that it would win Best Picture. It was up against In The Name of the Father, Remains of the Day, The Piano and The Fugitive and although the latter was by far and away the box office winner of the 5 films, I imagine it was hard to look past Spielberg’s excellent film as being the winner of the award. And so it did. The award was given by Harrison Ford and upon Steven Spielberg receiving the award Spielberg’s speech was focussed on one thing: the education of the young on the Holocaust. Spielberg stated that there were 350,000 survivors alive at the time of the show and how they should be used to educate the children so the Holocaust wouldn’t ‘remain a footnote in history’. It was a clear and powerful statement that continued the film’s ability to resonate with the world. Spielberg also won the Best Director award for Schindler’s List, the film went on to win seven awards in total.
