Leonardo DiCaprio took home his first Best Actor in a Leading Role Academy Award Sunday night for his turn in The Revenant, and used his platform to deliver an acceptance speech decrying climate change.
DiCaprio, previously nominated four times, had kind words for his director, Alejandro Iñárritu, and co-star Tom Hardy, but used the bulk of his speech to bring attention to climate change. DiCaprio noted that The Revenant is about "man's relationship with the natural world," and as 2015 was the hottest year in recorded history, production had to be moved to the "southern tip of this planet just to find snow." Climate change is "real and it is happening now and it is the most urgent threat facing our entire species," he said. "We need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating."
DiCaprio called on people to "support leaders around the world who do not speak for the big polluters or the big corporations, but who speak for all of humanity, for the indigenous people of the world, for the billions and billions of underprivileged people most affected by this, for our children's children, and the voices drowned out by the politics of greed."
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