Michelle Williams delivers empowering Golden Globes speech, celebrates a woman's right to choose
Michelle Williams celebrated more than just a Golden Globe win at Sunday night’s ceremony.
During the 77th Annual Golden Globes Award, Williams won Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television for her role of Gwen Verdon in FX’s Fosse/Verdon and used her acceptance speech to call attention to a woman’s right to choose. “When you put this in someone’s hands, you’re acknowledging the choices they make as an actor,” she began, indicating the trophy. “But you’re also acknowledging the choices they make as a person…I’m grateful for the acknowledgment of the choices I’ve made and I’m also grateful to have lived in a moment in our society when choice exists because as women and as girls, things can happen to our bodies that are not our choice.”
She continued, “I’ve tried my very best to live a life of my own making and not just a series of events that happened to me, but one that I could stand back and look at and recognize my handwriting all over; sometimes messy and scrawling, sometimes careful and precise, but one that I had carved with my own hand. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without employing a woman’s right to choose. To choose when to have my children and with whom, when I felt supported and able to balance our lives, knowing as all mothers know that the scales must and will tip towards our children.”
After much applause from the audience, she added: “I know my choices might look different from yours, but thank God or whomever you pray to that we live in a country founded on the principle that I am free to live by my faith and you are free to live by yours. Women, 18 to 118, when it is time to vote, please do so in your own self-interest. It’s what men have been doing for years, which is why the world looks so much like them. Don’t forget: We are the largest voting body in this country. Let’s make it look more like us.”
Williams beat out Helen Mirren (Catherine the Great), Merritt Wever and Kaitlyn Dever (both for Unbelievable) and Joey King (The Act) for the award.
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