The Internet is going to need to create a new Leonardo DiCaprio meme. Because on Sunday, after 27 years in Hollywood, six nominations, one digested bison liver, countless interviews about said bison liver, and one graphic bear attack, the actor has finally won the best actor Oscar, for his performance in The Revenant.

“Thank you to all of you in this room,” DiCaprio said, to a standing ovation, when he reached the stage. The actor thanked his “brother” in the endeavor, The Revenant co-star Tom Hardy, as well as director Alejandro González Iñárritu and frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese, for teaching him the art of film. To his parents, who were in the audience watching, he added, “None of this would be possible without you.” A tireless environmental activist, DiCaprio also used his stage time to point out that 2015 was the hottest year in history and noted, “Climate change is real. We need to work collectively together and stop procrastinating. . .For our children's children. . . Let us not take this planet for granted. I do not take this night for granted.”

His work, as a 19th-century frontiersman who must overcome devastating obstacles to survival, earned him a clean sweep of the major acting awards in the lead-up to the Oscars—including a Golden Globe, a SAG Award, and a BAFTA. To make the film, DiCaprio and The Revenant director Alejandro G. Iñárritu had to overcome their own fair share of real-life obstacles, including temperatures so cold that cameras froze during the making of the film, which was shot entirely in natural light, and a worldwide search for snow.

DiCaprio has said of the arduous process, “I think we all knew what we were signing up for. I had seen this script floating around the industry for some while, but logistically it was so hard to execute. And it took a very particular filmmaker. I felt it was going to be like going down the heart of darkness together. And so much of our experience, so many of the things that happened to us while we were there immersing ourselves in the wilderness like this, I think translated into the narrative of the story.”

Earlier this month, contributor James S. Murphy theorized how DiCaprio was able to finally overcome the “slap the stud” Oscar curse, which has kept other handsome leading men like Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp from being celebrated by the Academy for their acting, with his role in The Revenant:

In little time, however, his character is subjected to a series of humiliations, from being mauled by a bear to eating a dead bison that had already been half-devoured by wolves. This is not Leo the playboy who dates models in real life, but DiCaprio in an ugly beard and bearskin playing a dad and a widow, haunted by dreams of his dead wife, which we get to watch. The film breaks down the barrier of cool that DiCaprio has assembled over the years, on-camera and off. Bedraggled and bereft, Glass becomes the object of our empathy and the guiding consciousness of The Revenant. He’s not cool, and based on the film’s surprising box-office success, audiences are glad for it.

Making the win even sweeter was the fact that DiCaprio’s dear friend and Titanic co-star Kate Winslet was on hand as a fellow nominee to help celebrate the moment (in just the latest red-carpet reunion between Jack and Rose). Winslet has said, “I feel very strongly that it may possibly be Leo’s year. [H]e is my closest friend in the world and I just couldn’t imagine not being there to support him.”

As for what DiCaprio will do now that he’s won the Oscar—besides hopefully attend the Vanity Fair Oscar party—is re-unite with Martin Scorsese to play America’s most prolific serial killer.