Octavia Spencer went through this year’s award season as the front runner to win the Best Supporting Actress award at the 84th Academy Awards and she didn’t disappoint. Spencer took home the statue for her role in “The Help”. She is just the fifth black actress to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Previous winners were; Hattie McDaniel (1940), Whoopi Goldberg (1991), Jennifer Hudson (2006) and Mo’nique (2009).
When her name was announced Spencer got a standing ovation from the whole audience. When she grabbed the statue she said,
“Thank you Academy for giving me the hottest guy in the room. I share this with everybody.”
She then proceeded to break down in tears and cry all the way off stage.
In “The Help,” Spencer played Minny Jackson, a brash and outspoken maid in Jackson, Mississippi, who, when pushed by her friend Abileen (fellow Oscar nominee Viola Davis), helps a young white journalist (Emma Stone) write a feature on the living conditions of Black domestic help in the rural south. In Spencer’s most memorable scene, she does a “terrible awful” to the racist Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) by giving her a contaminated pie.
Spencer, who also won a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award, defeated fellow “Help” star Jessica Chastain, as well as Melissa McCarthy (“Bridesmaids”), Berenice Bejo (“The Artist”) and Janet McTeer (“Albert Nobbs”). This is her first award.
Did you see Octavia Spencer in “The Help” and do you think that he deserved to win the Oscar?
