Jeff Bridges: ' All of us are trim tabs', Cecil B. DeMille award, Golden Globes - 2019

6 January 2018, Los Angeles, California, USA

Thank you, Chris [Pine], for those kind words! And Sam [Elliott, who narrated an introductory video], where is Sam? Oh, man. The stranger. Oh, man. Thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press, this is really a wonderful honor. I’m so challenged up here, because there are so many people to thank, you know? It’s a collaborative art form here. I’m gonna, I’m gonna thank some folks. I’m gonna thank my sweetheart, Sue. My God! Forty-five years of support and love. I wouldn’t be up here without you, my dear. And my brother Beau. Sister, Cindy. Your love and support. And how lucky are we to have our folks, man? Lloyd and Dorothy! Aghhhhh. Thank you! I’m wearing your cuffs, Dad. I’m wearing your cuff links. They’re your dad’s, too.

Oh, man. I’ve gotta thank my representatives. I don’t know where — wave your hands, guys, I want to see if I can — they’re keeping the whole boat afloat. I can’t see ya. There they are: David Schiff, Rick Kurtzman, Jean Sievers, Bob Wallerstein, Liz Dalling, my trusty assistant Becky Pedretti. Who am I forgetting? Oh, Frank Page. You know who I gotta mention is Loyd Catlett. He’s my stand-in. We’ve done close to 70 films together. Can you believe that? He’s the thread through the whole deal, starting from “Last Picture Show.”

And speaking of “Last Picture Show,” I’ve gotta thank my dear friend Peter Bogdanovich, who kicked the whole party off for me, man. I’m so blessed to have him start my whole career. Let’s see, well, the brothers. The Coen brothers, c’mon. I mean, true masters. If I’m lucky, I’ll be associated with the Dude for the rest of my life. I feel so honored to be a part of that film. Great movie.

And look at my brother, Steve Kloves, right? “Fabulous Baker Boys.” First time out and he comes up with that great movie. I gotta thank him. I gotta thank Scott Cooper. I don’t know if Scotty is here tonight, but “Crazy Heart.” Yeah, man, huh? Scott, man. Sets a great vibe to make wonderful things happen.

Oh, another first-time guy I was so lucky to work with: the late, great Michael Cimino, who directed “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.” That was his first movie. I can remember going into his office the day before we started shooting, and I said to Mike, “Man, I’m so sorry, but I think you made a terrible mistake. I’m not feeling this guy at all. I feel so inadequate. I’m giving you late notice, I know, but please fire me.” He looked at me and said, “Jeff, you know the game tag?” I say, “Yeah.” He says, “You’re it.” I say, “What do you mean I’m it?” He says, “You are the guy. You couldn’t make a mistake if you wanted to. You know, the life of this character is coming through you. It’s a done deal.” I say, “Oh, all right. That’s a wonderful vote of confidence and a great perspective to look at this thing.”

And I used it, of course, in that film — and in all the other movies that I’ve done, as well as my life. You know, I’ve been tagged. I guess we all have been tagged, right? We’re all alive. Right here, right now! This is happening. We’re alive!

Being in the life of the movies, you know, I kind of look through my life through the filter of movies. I find directors and fellow actors all over the place in my life. One guy, he had nothing to do with the movies, but I’ve taken a lot of direction from him. That’s Bucky Fuller. Bucky, he’s most famous for the geodesic dome, but he made a great observation about these oceangoing tankers. And he noticed that the engineers were particularly challenged by how to turn this thing, you know? They got this big rudder, it took too much energy to turn the rudder to turn the ship. So they came up with a brilliant idea. Let’s put a little rudder on the big rudder. The little rudder will turn the big rudder, the big rudder will turn the ship. The little rudder is called a trim tab.

Bucky made the analogy that a trim tab is an example of how the individual is connected to society and how we affect society. And I like to think of myself as a trim tab. All of us are trim tabs. We might seem like we’re not up to the task, but we are, man. We’re alive! We can make a difference! We can turn this ship in the way we wanna go, man! Towards love, creating a healthy planet for all of us.

So I wanna thank the Hollywood Foreign Press for tagging me, and I wanna tag you all. You’re all trim tabs. Tag, you’re it! Thank you!

Oprah Winfrey: “For too long women have not been heard or believed”, Cecil B Demille Award, Golden Globes - 2018

7 January 2018, Los Angeles, California, USA

Thank you all.

[Standing ovation.]

Okay okay! Thank you Reese.

In 1964, I was a little girl, sitting on the linoleum floor of my mother’s house in Milwaukee watching Anne Bancroftpresent the Oscar for best actor at the 36th Academy Awards.

She opened the envelope and said five words that literally made history.

“The winner is Sidney Poitier.”

Up to stage came the most elegant man I’d ever seen. His tie was white and of course his skin was black, and I’d never seen a black man celebrated like that.

What a moment like that means to a little girl, a kid watching from the cheap seats, as my mom came through the door, bone tired from cleaning other people’s houses.

All I can do is quote and say that the explanation of Sidney’s performance in Lilies of the Field: “Amen, amen. Amen, amen.”

In 1982 he received the Cecil B. DeMille award, and it is not lost on me that at this moment there are some little girls watching, as I become the first black woman to be given this award

It is an honour, and it is a privilege to share the evenings with all of them, and also the incredible men and women who inspire me and sustain me. Dennis Swanson who took a chance on me forA.M. Chicago. Quincy Jones, who saw me on the show and said to Steven Spielberg, she’s Sophia in The Color Purple. Gayle, who’s been a friend and Stedman, who’s been my rock.

I’d also like to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press. We all know the press is under siege, the it’s the insatiable dedication to uncovering the absolute truth that keeps us from turning a blind eye to corruption and injustice, to tyrants, and victims and secrets and lies. I want to say that I value the press more than ever before as we tried to navigate these complicated times.

And I’m especially proud and inspired by all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories.

What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have, and I’m especially proud and inspired by all the women who have felt strong enough and empowered enough to speak up and share their personal stories.

Each of us in this room are celebrated because of the stories that they tell, and this year we become the story.

But it’s not just a story affecting the entertainment industry. It’s one that transcends any culture, geography, race, religious, politics or workplace. I want to express gratitude to all the women who have endured years of abuse and assault, because they, like my mother, had children to feed and bills to pay and dreams to pursue.

They’re the women whose names we’ll never know. They are domestic workers, and farm workers. They are working in factories and they work in restaurants and they’re in academia, engineering, medicine, and science. They’re part of the world in tech and  politics and business. They’re our athletes in the Olympics, and they’re our soldiers in the military.

And there’s someone else: Recy Taylor. A name I know and I think you should know too. In 1944 Recy Taylor was a young wife and mother, walking home from a church service she’d attended in Abbeville, Alabama, when she was abducted by six white men, raped and left blindfolded by the side of the road coming home from church.

They threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone, but her story was reported to the NAACP where a young worker by the name of Rosa Parks became the lead investigator on her case and together they sought justice. But justice wasn’t an option in the era of Jim Crow. The men who tried to destroy her were never persecuted.

She died ten days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday. She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power to those men. But their time is up. Their time is up!

[Standing ovation.]

Their time is up. And I just hope that Recy Taylor died knowing that her truth, like the truth of so may other women who were tormented in those years, and even now tormented, goes marching on.

It was somewhere in Rosa Park’s heart almost eleven years later, when she made the decision to stay seated on that bus in Montgomery, and it’s here with every woman who chooses to say, “Me, too,” and with every man who chooses to listen.

In my career what I’ve always tried my best to do is to say something about how men and women really behave, to say how we experience shame, how we love and how we rage, how we fail, how we retreat, persevere, and we overcome.

I’ve interviewed and portrayed people who withstood some of the ugliest things life can throw at you, but the one quality all of them seem to share is an ability to maintain hope for a brighter morning, even during our darkest nights.

So I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon! And when that new day finally dawns, it will be because of a lot of magnificent women, many of whom are right here in this room tonight, and some pretty phenomenal men, fighting hard to ensure that they become the leaders that take us to a time when nobody has to say “Me, too,” again.

Meryl Streep, 'When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose', Golden Globes - 2017

8 January 2017, Los Angeles, California, USA

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please sit down. 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, you know, what is Hollywood anyway? It's just a bunch of people from other places.

I was born and raised and created in the public schools of New Jersey. Viola [Davis] was born in a sharecropper's cabin in South Carolina, and grew up in Central falls, Long Island. Sarah Paulson was raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio. Amy Adams was born in Italy. Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Ethiopia, raised in -- no, in Ireland, I do believe. And she's here nominated for playing a small town girl from Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian. And Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, is here for playing an Indian raised in Tasmania.

Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick 'em 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. 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, passionate work.

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. 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 kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.

This brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage.That's why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our 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 going to 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, we were going to 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 honors here tonight.

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