Joe Pesci's Oscars Speech For Goodfellas Is One Of The Shortest Ever

Martin Scorsese's 1990 crime masterpiece "Goodfellas" is one of the finest gangster movies ever made and has the award shelf to prove it. Still, despite its impressive six Academy Award nominations, the most esteemed awards of the industry largely avoided the mob epic — except for one particular golden statuette.

Joe Pesci held the fort at the 1991 Academy Awards ceremony with his Best Actor in a Supporting Role Oscar win for his amazing turn as the volatile Tommy DeVito, the wildest card in a movie full of wild cards. He became an Oscar-winning actor with his signature cool intact. However, unlike his character — who, as his iconic "I'm funny how?" scene shows, is extremely verbose at most times — the actor chose to keep his speech short and sweet, uttering only five words as he took the stage to receive the golden statuette. "It's my privilege. Thank you," Pesci said before exiting the stage.

As everyone who's ever watched an Academy Awards ceremony knows well, the winners often have a borderline comically long list of people to thank, and even the best Oscar acceptance speeches can run so long that the show has no choice but to hit the music and play them off the stage. However, several winners have chosen a more Spartan approach, saying their extremely short piece and getting off the stage before the orchestra can even dream of hitting the first note.

Interestingly enough, Joe Pesci's five-word acceptance speech is far from the shortest Oscar speech in history. In 1968, Alfred Hitchcock tied him while accepting the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. "Thank you ... very much indeed," was all the filmmaker had to say. In 1953, Gloria Grahame accepted her Best Supporting Actress award for "The Bad and the Beautiful" with even more brevity. "Thank you very much," she said during her extremely quick stop at the podium. William Holden's Best Actor speech for "Stalag 17" in 1954 was equally brief: "Thank you. Thank you."

Somehow, two winners have managed to condense their speech into only two words: "Thank you." This simple acceptance was first delivered by Patty Duke in 1963 as she collected her Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for "The Miracle Worker." In 2009, director Louie Psihoyos did the same in his Best Documentary Oscar speech for "The Cove" — although largely because the doc's producer Fisher Stevens ate up all the time allotted to their speech and Psihoyos got the mic just when the orchestra started playing. Still, regardless of the circumstances, Duke and Psihoyos will rule this particular roost until someone decides to accept their Oscar with a simple "Thanks."