Maggie Gyllenhaal just won this year's Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Mini-Series or TV Movie for her role in The Honorable Woman. She disappointed us a little with the first part of her speech — yes, the part where she said her brother Jake would have to bring her speech to the stage if she forgot it. She never made good on that promise, but it didn't matter because of the depth and importance in the rest of Gyllenhaal's words after that opening joke.
"I’ve noticed a lot of people talking about the wealth of roles for powerful women in television lately, and when I look around the room at the women who are in here, and I think about the performances that I’ve watch this year, what I see, actually, are women who are sometimes powerful and sometimes not. Sometimes sexy, sometimes not; sometimes honorable, sometimes not," Gyllenhaal said, as the camera panned to amazing actresses who inhabit roles exactly like the ones she described.
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"And, what I think is new is the wealth of roles for actual women in television and in film. That’s what I think is revolutionary and evolutionary, and it’s what’s turning me on," Gyllenhaal said as the audience applauded.
She continued: "I want to thank a couple of wonderfully complicated women in my life…And, to my husband, who is a lover of complicated women, obviously, I could never have done this without you, thank you so much."
It was equally impressive that Gyllenhaal managed to deliver that entire speech from memory during the total deer-in-the-headlights moment that usually accompanies an award win. Thank you, Maggie Gyllenhaal, for so eloquently putting into words the need for the vast representation of women we're thankfully seeing on television in the past few years.
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