Clutching her Oscar statuette backstage, best supporting actress winner Octavia Spencer admitted, “I’m scared to death right now.”
The actress dodged a question about the racial composition of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is overwhelmingly white.
“I can’t tell the Academy what to do,” she said. “They just gave me an Oscar.”
Instead, she said she felt “fan-effing tastic. But we’ll just leave the ‘effing’ out. Fantastic. It is humbling.”
And she got serious.
“The Help” actress said she is the beneficiary of the women who came before her, of people like the character she played.
And she said she wants to keep acting — but also produce and do anything else she can.
“I don’t have one role that I want to play,” she said. “I want to be a producer. I want to be an activist. I want to be proactive in bringing about work for men, women, boys, girls, everybody who is good at what they do and deserve a shot.”