Lady Gaga’s Relatable Oscar Acceptance Speech Offers a Powerful Lesson in Authenticity

Everyone is talking today about the very intimate performance by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper at the Academy Awards last night, but something else amazing happened shortly after — Gaga won an Oscar!

Lady Gaga won the Oscar for Best Original Song, for the song “Shallow” from A Star Is Born, and her speech left not a single dry eye in the house.

 “If you are at home and you’re sitting on your couch and you’re watching this right now, all I have to say is this is hard work,” she began, with tears beginning to fall . “I have worked hard for a long time and it’s not about winning. What it’s about is not giving up. If you have a dream, fight for it. There’s a discipline for passion: it’s not about how many times you get rejected or you fall down and get beaten up, but how many times you stand up, and are brave and you keep on going.”

As for her on-screen love Bradley Cooper? She had special words for him as well. “There is not a single person on the planet that could have sang this song with me but you,” she gushed. “Thank you for believing in us, thank you so much.”

During the red carpet, Gaga told Giuliana Rancic on the red carpet before the show that she would call up both of her grandmas if she won and “conference call with grandmas” about her victory. She shared family, and spreading love, is “all that you can hope for.”

Gaga has come a long way to get to this point. “I used to wrap myself in an Afghan or my grandmother’s knitted blanket and stand on a podium while I watched the Oscars,” Gaga told Variety in 2018. “I had big dreams as a child.”

We love you, Gaga. Thank you for keeping it real!