Jane Fonda is the latest recipient of the prestigious Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2021 Golden Globes.
During her acceptance speech on Sunday night, the actress called for greater diversity in Hollywood and praised how storytelling can change perspectives around the world.
The 83-year-old activist, star of “Barbarella,” “Klute,” “Coming Home,” “On Golden Pond” and “9 to 5,” received the Globes’ version of a lifetime achievement award, one of the few honorees to accept a Globe in person in Beverly Hills.
Wearing a white suit just as Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris did for significant political speeches, Fonda said, “We are a community of storytellers, aren’t we, and in turbulent, crisis-torn times like these, story-telling has always been essential.”
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She said stories let us “have empathy, to recognize that for all our diversity we are all humans.”
Honoree Jane Fonda accepts the Cecil B. DeMille Award onstage at the 78th Annual Golden Globe Awards held at The Beverly Hilton.
(Polk/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images)
But she said there is another “story we’ve been afraid to see and hear about ourselves in this industry, about which voices we respect and elevate and which we tune out, who is offered a seat at the table and who is kept out of the rooms where decisions are made.”
Fonda called for Hollywood’s leaders to “make an effort to expand that tent” so that “everyone has a chance to be seen and heard.”
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The DeMille award honors “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment.”
Previous winners include Walt Disney, Judy Garland, John Wayne, Sidney Poitier, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks and Fonda’s father Henry Fonda. The Fondas become the first parent and child to both receive the DeMille award.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
