Penelope Cruz 2009 Oscar Acceptance Speech

Penelope Cruz won the 2009 Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Woody Allen's Vicki Christina Barcelona. Here is her acceptance speech.

This is not going to be 45 seconds, I can say that right now. Has anybody ever fainted here? Because I might be the first one. Thank you so much to the Academy. I want to share this with my fellow nominees and with the amazing ensemble of actors that I had the privilege to work with in this movie. Thank you, Woody, for trusting me with this beautiful character. Thank for you having written over all these years some of the greatest characters for women. And I cannot talk about great female characters without thanking my friend Pedro Almodóvar for having made me part of so many of his adventures.

Thank you, Bigas Luna, Fernando Trueba, for giving me my first movies. Thank you, Harvey Weinstein. I wanted to dedicate this to my parents and to my brother and sister, to my friend Robert Garlock, who is not with us anymore, and to everyone who has helped me from the beginning and you know who you are and I thank you from my heart.I grew up in a place called Alcobendas, where this was not a very realistic dream. And I, always on the night of the Academy Awards, I stay up to watch the show and I always felt that this was, this ceremony was a moment of unity for the world because art, in any form, is and has been and will always be our universal language and we should do everything we can, everything we can, to protect its survival. So I thank you so much!

Photo Credit: Sarah DeBoer/Retna Ltd.