News APP

NewsApp (Free)

Read news as it happens
Download NewsApp

Available on  gplay

This article was first published 7 years ago
Rediff.com  » Movies » 'I won this at the 'last ever' Golden Globes'

'I won this at the 'last ever' Golden Globes'

Last updated on: January 09, 2017 14:59 IST
Get Rediff News in your Inbox:

'Once, when I was standing around on the set one day, whining about something -- you know we were gonna work through supper or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me, 'Isn't it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor?''

'Yeah, it is, and we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy. We should all be very proud of the work Hollywood honours here tonight.'

The 2017 Golden Globes are as memorable for their big wins as they are for some of the beautiful speeches on stage.

Some of them are touching while others are inspirational. Some of them are even coloured by the political environment of the country.

Here's a look at what some of the winners had to say:

 

Meryl Streep

Photograph: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

Please sit down. Thank you. I love you all. You'll have to forgive me. I've lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this weekend. And I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year, so I have to read.

Thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said: You and all of us in this room really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it: Hollywood, foreigners and the press.

But who are we, and what is Hollywood anyway? It's just a bunch of people from other places. I was born and raised and educated in the public schools of New Jersey.

Viola was born in a sharecropper's cabin in South Carolina, came up in Central Falls, Rhode Island; Sarah Paulson was born in Florida, raised by a single mom in Brooklyn.

Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio.

Amy Adams was born in Vicenza, Italy. And Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates?

And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, raised in London -- no, in Ireland I do believe, and she's here nominated for playing a girl in small-town Virginia.

Ryan Gosling, like all of the nicest people, is Canadian, and Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, and is here for playing an Indian raised in Tasmania.

So Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. And if we kick them all out, you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.

They gave me three seconds to say this, so: An actor's only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us, and let you feel what that feels like. And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that. Breathtaking, compassionate work.

But there was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good; there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter.

Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can't get it out of my head, because it wasn't in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing.

Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose. Okay, go on with that thing.

Okay, this brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call him on the carpet for every outrage. That's why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in the Constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists, because we're gonna need them going forward, and they'll need us to safeguard the truth.

One more thing: once, when I was standing around on the set one day, whining about something -- you know we were gonna work through supper or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me, 'Isn't it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor?'

Yeah, it is, and we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy. We should all be very proud of the work Hollywood honours here tonight.

As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once, 'Take your broken heart, make it into art'.

Thank you.

Did you like the speech?

 

Ryan Gosling

Photograph: Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

This isn't the first time I've been mistake for Ryan Reynolds but, it's getting out of hand. Ryan, obviously there has been some kind of mistake but I'm up here, so if you don't mind...okay.

Demien and Emma, this belongs to the three of us. I'll chop it into three pieces if you want, I don't really want to do that because who'd get what piece and no one wants the bottom, we'd fight over the top, it could tear us apart.

But the point is, you understand, it's ours. Thank you.

You don't get to be up here without standing on the shoulders of a mountain of people and there's no time to thank everyone.

I'd like to try and thank one person properly, and to say that while I was singing and dancing and playing piano and having one of the best experiences I've ever had on a film, my lady was raising our daughter, pregnant with our second, and trying to help her brother fight his battle with cancer.

If she hadn't taken all that on so that I could have this experience, it would surely be someone else up here other than me today.

So, sweetheart, thank you.

To my daughters, Amada and Esmeralda, I love you.

And if I may, I'd like to dedicate this to the memory of her brother, Juan Carlos Mendes.

Thank you very much to the HFPA. Good night. 

Did you like the speech?

 

Emma Stone

Photograph: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

Thank you to the Hollywood Foreign Press.

I have to start by thanking my amazing mom. Thank you, mom, for everything.

I moved to here, 13 yeas ago this week and without my mom and dad and my brother, who has put up with me his whole life, thank you, Spence, you're the best. And my incredible friends, I love you so much.

To Lionsgate and our producers for taking a chance. Damien Chazelle, saying he wanted to make a modern, original musical, that was sort of a crazy notion, thank you for that and thank you Damien for this opportunity and your vision and dedication and your passion; and Ryan for being the best partner a girl could ask for; and Mandy Moore, our choreographer, for your brilliance and for your patience and everyone on our crew.

This is a film for dreamers. I think that hope and creativity are two of the most important things in the world and that's what this movie is about.

To any creative person who has has a door slammed in their face, either metaphorically or physically; or actors who have had their auditions cut off or waited for a call back that didn't come or anybody, everywhere that feels like giving up sometimes, or finds it in themselves to get up and keep moving forward, I share this with you.

Thank you so much for this.

Did you like the speech?

 

Viola Davis

Photograph: John Sciulli/Getty Images for InStyle

Thank you to the Hollywood Foreign Press. This is my fifth nomination. I took all the pictures, went to the luncheon, but it's right on time.

To Paramount, Scott Ruden, Todd Black, Molly Allen, to all the people who believed in this piece of work.

It's not everyday that Hollywood thinks of translating a play to screen. It doesn't scream money maker, you know? But it does scream art. It does scream heart.

Thank you to all the wonderful actors in Fences- Michael T, Steven, Russell, Jovan, Saniyya, Denzel. You know, I'm a friend and a fan. Thank you for being an extraordinary leader. Great actor, great director.

Thank you for saying trust me and remember the love.

And my beautiful husband, my daughter Genesis, loves of my life.

And to the original Troy, my father, Dan Davis. Born in 1936, groomed horses, had a fifth grade education, didn't know how to read until he was 15. But you know what? He had a story. And it deserved to be told. And August Wilson told it.

Thank you very much.

Did you like the speech?

 

Hugh Laurie

Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Thank you, this is obviously a terrible mix-up. Thank you first of all to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for this amazing honour. Of course it's more amazing because I'll be able to say I won this at the 'last ever' Golden Globes.

I don't meant to be gloomy, it's just that it has the words Hollywood, Foreign, and Press in the title; I just don't know what...I also think to some Republicans even the word association is slightly sketchy, but thank you to them.

Thank you also to the many, many people who gave me this wonderful, extra-ordinary, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I accept this award on behalf of psychopathic billionaires everywhere.

I would like to thank first of all the AMC and the BBC who were just ideal parents for this whole project; they were loving and supportive and I can't think of any otehr parental jokes, so they did that. I'd also like to thank the impeccable Stephen Garrett, the Cornwell clan, Simon and Stephen and the Lion himself, John le Carre, who is the most charming man you'll ever meet.

Wrap up, wrap up, common, wrap up. Incredible cast and crew and who else am I going to thank.. Oh, lastly, and the most importantly, the amazing, Susanne Bier, who I'd follow, yay, until the doors of hell.

Did you like the speech?

 

Donald Glover

Photograph: Alberto E Rodriguez/Getty Images

Wow. I really want to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press and FX.

Yeah, you guys, thank you for just giving me this. I really want to thank my Nigerian brothers and my cast for being just beautiful, my best friends and my hero and my brother and all the writers.

I grew up in a house where magic wasn't allowed. So everybody in here is like magical to me.

Every time I saw a movie or Disney movie or heard your voices or saw you, I was like, 'Oh, magic is from people'.

We're the ones who kind of, in a weird way, tell a story or a lie to children so they do stuff that we never thought was possible. My dad used to tell me every day, 'You can do anything you want'. And I remember thinking as a kid in first grade, 'You're lying to me.

And now I do stuff and he's like, 'I didn't think that was possible'. I really want to say thank you to my son and the mother of my son for making me believe in people again and things being possible. So, thank you.

Did you like the speech?

Get Rediff News in your Inbox: