Christopher Plummer won the Oscar for
best supporting actor on Sunday for his role in Beginners, making
him the oldest person ever to win an acting Oscar.
The 82-year-old
Plummer noted that he shared much in common with the 84th
Academy Awards: “You're only two years older than me, darling,
where have you been all my life?”
Of his fellow
nominees, Plummer said he was proud to be in their company. (The
video is embedded in the right panel of this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
In the film now out
of DVD, Oliver (played my Ewan McGregor) tells the story of his
father, Hal (Plummer), who comes out gay at the age of 75. It is
Plummer's first portrayal of a gay man.
The role has also
earned Plummer a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Award, a Golden Globe and
a Critics Choice Award.
“Gay characters are human beings,”
he told the press after the Golden Globes. “We're all the exactly
the same. That's the reason I played it the way I did, not as a
caricature. They're a part off our society since the Egyptians, the
Greeks – it's part of the human condition.”
“I know there is
a lot of anti-gay sentiment in our society at the moment and I abhor
it.”