03:42 AM EDT 03/06/2012
Palm Springs International Film Festival
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Mariah Explains Tipsy Speech
Originally posted 01/07/2010 10:40AM
Mariah Carey's spacey acceptance speech at the Palm Springs International Film Festival on Tuesday night has been buzzing around the Internet. And yes, Carey was indeed buzzed – on bubbly – when she gave it, she says.
The singer-turned-actress, who earned the breakthrough actress award for her social worker role in Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire, says she was having "splashes of champagne" with Lee Daniels, close friend and Precious director, prior to taking the stage.
"We'd been sitting there, celebrating this whole time and having little splashes, and I hadn't eaten," the diva says, adding they didn't want to be late and rushed in to the event.
Mariah Carey Spaces Out During Acceptance Speech
Originally posted 01/06/2010 02:15PM
While Mariah Carey never quite managed to finish her sentence that began, "Please forgive me because I am a little bit … ," others who witnessed her rambling, seven-minute acceptance speech Tuesday night at California's Palm Springs International Film Festival offered plenty of suggestions.
Jet-lagged? Inebriated?
Maybe just nervous. Festival organizers claimed that the Grammy winning diva, whose glammed-down performance as a social worker in Precious won her Palm Springs's breakthrough performance award, was slightly spaced-out because she was not used to speaking in front of such eminent peers as Sean Penn, Morgan Freeman, Jeff Bridges, Clint Eastwood and Dame Helen Mirren.
Yet Carey – who attended the gala event without husband Nick Cannon – was happy to be part of the film community. "I have always wanted to be doing independent films, but people were always like, 'You will take us out of the movie [by overshadowing her character],' " Carey, 40, told PEOPLE.
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