After winning her Best Supporting Actress Academy Award, Patricia Arquette spoke with reporters backstage, and added to the comments she made during her acceptance speech about equal pay for women.
"Equal means equal," she said. "The truth of it is the older an actress gets, the less money she makes. It's inexcusable that we talk about equal rights for women in other countries and yet...we don't have equal rights for women in America. It's time for all the women in America and all the men who love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we've fought for, to fight for us now."
Arquette's acceptance speech was met with enthusiastic cheers by fellow nominee Meryl Streep, and although she said she couldn't see Streep's reaction from the stage, she did give her a hug afterwards. "She's the queen of all actresses," Arquette said. "The patron saint of all actresses."