David Seidler becomes oldest winner of the Academy Award for the Best Original Screenplay.

David Seidler claimed the award for best original screenplay at this year’s Academy Awards, becoming, at 73 years old, the oldest person to ever win the award in its entire history. He mentioned this fact in his speech and even poked fun at it, saying that his Father always told him..”That he would be a late bloomer”. He also said that he hopes the record will be broken “soon and often”. It would be great if he repeated.

His award-winning screenplay, “The King’s Speech”, centered around King George VI, the British monarch famous for his stutter. Seidler himself had a stutter when he was a child, and he became fascinated with the real life story of King George VI and how he was forced to overcome said stutter in order to give an important radio broadcast during World War II.

Seidler joked about the subject matter during the speech, at one point thanking the Queen of England for “…not locking him in the Tower of London…” because of his subject material. Seidler has written other screenplays before, but this one is clearly close to his heart. He decided to write about the king decades ago, and even spent a large amount of time during the 70s and 80s researching him and Dr. Valentine Logue, the Australian doctor who helped the king overcome his stutter. He was forced to abandon the project for decades based on a request by the Queen Mother not to tell the story in her lifetime. It didn’t finally get made until 2009.

Seidler is the perfect example of someone who didn’t give up on his dream, no matter how long it took. He continued to work on the story he wanted to tell, and didn’t let his age stop him from reaching his goal. He kept at it, and he was able to produce a film that not only had an award-winning story, but also had stunning visuals, brilliant acting, wonderful music, and is just generally superb on every level.

“The King’s Speech” went on to win four of the evening’s top prizes including Best Director for Tom hooper and Best Actor for Colin Firth.

LANGUAGE IS POWERFUL. even if you stutter. We are a work in progress until the day we die.