The star of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant took home his first-ever Academy Award on Sunday night, winning best actor for his role as real-life 19th-century fur trapper Hugh Glass, who’s mauled by a bear and left for dead. br br DiCaprio received a standing ovation from the crowd. He thanked his “brother” Tom Hardy, as well as Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and even director Martin Scorsese. He also used his victory to call out the growing issue of climate change. br br “Climate change is real. It is happening right now. It’s the most urgent threat facing our entire species. We need to work together and stop procrastinating,” DiCaprio said, before adding that the global population shouldn’t take the world for granted. br br Over the last two decades, DiCaprio was nominated for his roles in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Aviator, Blood Diamond, and The Wolf of Wall Street, but he had never won before Sunday’s ceremony. br br The Revenant made for a notoriously difficult shoot, from Iñárritu’s insistence on filming with natural light and in often freezing conditions to DiCaprio eating raw bison liver and sleeping inside an animal carcass for the role. br br “I was fascinated by [Hugh’s] journey,” DiCaprio told EW last year. “A man stranded in the wilderness after losing everything. Relaying that emotional journey and getting into his angst without a lot of words or interaction intrigued me. I’ve played a lot of vocal characters in the past, so this was something I really wanted to investigate: how to convey Glass’s complex emotions with very little dialogue.” br br DiCaprio beat out fellow nominees Matt Damon for The Martian, Bryan Cranston for Trumbo, Eddie Redmayne for The Danish Girl, and Michael Fassbender for Steve Jobs.