Women need to find personal fulfilment: Glenn Close in her acceptance speech at Golden Globes
Glenn Close won the Golden Globe earlier today for Best Actress in a Motion Picture (Drama) for The Wife based on the novel of the same name by Meg Wolitzer. The movie is about a wife, who questions her choices as she travels with her husband, heading to Stockholm to collect his Nobel Prize.
Glenn Close had everyone in tears today with her emotional speech. Borrowing from her own character in the movie she spoke about her mother.
“To play a character who is so internal, I’m thinking of my mom who really sublimated herself to my father her whole life. And in her 80s, she said to me, 'I feel like I haven’t accomplished anything'. And it was so not right. And I feel like what I've learned from this whole experience is, women, we’re nurturers, that’s what’s expected of us. We have our children, we have our husbands if we're lucky enough, and our partners.”
But what got everyone emotional and even in tears is when she said,
"But we have to find personal fulfilment. We have to follow our dreams. We have to say, 'I can do that, and I should be allowed to do that'."
Her speech received resounding applause and a standing ovation. Glenn Close also called upon her “category sisters”, including Lady Gaga, Rosamund Pike, Melissa McCarthy and Nicole Kidman.
She also thanked her daughter and said, “My daughter Annie, who laid the foundation of this character, I love you my darling. Thank you so much.”
Reflecting upon her own journey with movies, Glenn Close said she felt like “Muhammad Ali, who was destined to be a boxer. I felt destined to be an actress. I saw the early Disney films and Hayley Mills and I said, Oh, I can do that! And I’m here today. It will have been 45 years in September that I am a working actress, and I cannot imagine a more wonderful life.”
Today, we will hold on to this message - something that we often forget - “to find personal fulfilment". And that’s something we need to seek for ourselves every day.