Michelle Williams' Powerful Golden Globes Speech Urges Women to Vote This Year
"I wouldn't have been able to do this without employing a woman's right to choose."
While accepting an award at the 2020 Golden Globes for Best Performance by an Actress in a Mini-series or Motion Picture Made for TV, Michelle Williams gave the most incredible speech pleading for women to vote in the 2020 election. The actress began by thanking the HFPA for acknowledging the choices she has made throughout her life—not only as an actress, but also the education she has chosen to receive and her right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.
Williams, 39, is pregnant with her second child, which makes the speech all the more powerful. Busy Phillips, who Williams walked the red carpet with, was filled with tears during her best friend's speech. Williams concluded with the line: "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."
"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.""We are the largest voting body in this country. Let’s make it look more like us.”–Michelle Williams#GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/9M9fN1rjrFJanuary 6, 2020
Read the full speech below:
"Thank you so much first of all to my Fosse/Verdon family and to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. When you put this in someone's hands, you're acknowledging the choices they make as an actor, moment by moment, scene by scene, day by day, but you're also acknowledging the choices they make as a person, the education they pursue, the training they sought, the hours they put in. I'm grateful for the acknowledgement of the choices I've made and I'm also grateful to have lived at a moment in our society where choice exists, because as women and as girls, things can happen to our bodies that are not our choice.
I 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 own handwriting all over sometimes messy and scrawling, sometimes careful and precise, but one that I had carved with my own hand, and 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 do that the scales do tip towards our children. Now I know my choices might look different than yours, but thank god or whomever you pray to that we live in a country founded on the principal that I am free to live my life and you are free to live by yours.
So women from 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. Tommy and Matilda, I can’t wait to come home to you."
You can learn more about your state's voter registration deadlines here.
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