Glenn Close fought back tears as she picked up the Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama award at the Golden Globes on Sunday (06.01.19).
The 71-year-old actress won the award for her performance in ‘The Wife’ and received a standing ovation for her empowering acceptance speech at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, in which she spoke of how women need to "find personal fulfillment" and "follow our dreams".
Glenn began her speech by saying how proud she felt to be with her "category sisters", fellow nominees Lady Gaga – who she stopped to shake hands with on her way to the stage – Melissa McCarthy, Nicole Kidman and Rosamund Pike.
She said of the shortlisted stars: "We have gotten to know each other a little bit so far, and I can’t wait to spend more time with you.
"I’m so — everything that you did this year, or what you are here for — we all should be up here together, that’s all I can say. Oh, my god, I just don’t believe it."
She then grew tearful as she spoke of how proud she is to have fulfilled her dreams and to have had such a "wonderful life".
She said: "I’m thinking of my mom, who really sublimated herself to my father her whole life, and in her eighties she said to me, ‘I feel I haven’t accomplished anything,’ and it was so not right.
"I feel what I’ve learned from this whole experience is that women, we’re nurturers and that’s what’s expected of us. We have our children and husbands if we’re lucky enough…. but we have to find personal fulfillment. We have to follow our dreams we have to say, ‘I can do that,’ and ‘I should be allowed to do that.’
"So, when I was little, I felt like Muhammad Ali who was destined to be a boxer; I felt destined to be an actress. I saw the early Disney films [with] Hayley Mills, and I said, ‘I could do that!’ and here I am today. It will have been 45 years in September that I am a working actress, and I cannot imagine a more wonderful life."
Glenn Close’s tearful Golden Globes speech
