IN true Sandra Bullock style, the Best Actress Academy Award Award winner took the stage for what was not only an amusing but heartwarming thank you speech to fellow nominees, colleagues and mums and parents everywhere.

“Did I really earn this or did I just wear y’all down?” she began with a wry smile.

The Blind Side actress graciously shared her award with her fellow nominees: “Gaby [Sidibe], I love you so much. You are exquisite, you are beyond words to me. Carey [Mulligan], your grace an your elegance and your beauty and your talent makes me sick. Helen [Mirren], I feel like we are family, through family, and I don’t have the words to express just what I think of you, and Meryl [Streep], you know what I think of you and you are such a good kisser.”

She took the “once in a lifetime opportunity” to thank everyone she could think of, including “everyone who’s shown me kindness when it wasn’t fashionable. Everyone who was mean to me – George Clooney threw me in a pool years ago; I’m still holding a grudge. But there’s so many people to thank, not enough time, so I would like to thanks what this film was about to me, which are the mums that take care of the babies and the children no matter where they come from.”

“Those moms and parents never get thanked. I, in particular, failed to thank one,” she said, melting into tears.

“So if I can take this moment to thank Helga B. for not letting me ride in cars with boys until I was 18 ’cause she was right and I would have done what she said I was going to do. For making me practice every day when I got home — piano, ballet whatever it is I wanted to be. She said to be an artist you had to practice every day,” described Sandra, in a tribute to her late mother.

“And for reminding her daughters that there is no race, no religion, no class system, no color, nothing, no sexual orientation that makes us better than anyone else. We are all deserving of love, so to that trailblazer who allowed me to have that [points at husband, Jesse James] and this [refers to Oscar] and this. I thank you so much for this opportunity that I share with these extraordinary women and my lover Meryl Streep.”

Sandra burst onto our screens in 1994 as Annie Porter in Speed and has been a rom-com favourite, starring in films such as Practical Magic, Miss Congeniality, Two Weeks Notice and last year’s The Proposal.

This was the 45-year-old’s first Oscar nomination and win, although she had already won a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her role as Leigh Anne Tuohy in The Blind Side. She received her award from fellow Oscar winner Sean Penn.

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