Viola Davis receives the prestigious Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 82nd Annual Golden Globes.
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00:00Oh my god, I feel like someone just set me on fire.
00:14Thank you Meryl, you're just a great broad.
00:21You forgot I followed you into the toilet that first day of rehearsal.
00:27I just wanted to smell you.
00:35Thank you Golden Globes.
00:38I discarded my speech before I got here and oh my god I wish I hadn't.
00:44But because I didn't thank anybody.
00:55All the people in my life know that they are loved.
00:59You do, right?
01:01All of you.
01:02Theo, Gabby, Jamaica, Sergio, Franklin, Kevin, Lisa, Krista, Stell, all of you.
01:16This is my testimony.
01:22I think I decided to be an actor because acting was just a cosmic carrot for a much
01:32higher journey.
01:36A journey into finding me, finding a sense of belonging, finding my worth.
01:47You know I saw life as just a big, fat, fucking dude.
01:55You know someone with a big belly and eating a really greasy, moist turkey leg that just
02:06drips all over the place and every time he stands up and goes to the toilet he just has
02:14endless amounts of gold that is just falling down randomly.
02:21Just hitting people and just dropping gold in front of them like just some of the shittiest
02:28people in the world that don't deserve it.
02:33People then work for it but they got the blessings of the dripping gold and then some people
02:39who the gold just rained down on them because they worked for it.
02:46Then after he comes back from the toilet he's full and just falls down on top of people
02:53just squelching them randomly.
02:58That's how I saw life.
03:04I was born into a life that just simply did not make sense.
03:12I didn't fit in.
03:16I was born into abject poverty.
03:21I was mischievous.
03:23I was imaginative.
03:26I was rambunctious but I was so poor.
03:33Growing up in a house with alcoholism and rage, infested with rats everywhere, toilets
03:41that never worked.
03:42You had to fill up a bucket just to put it in the toilet just for the toilet to flush.
03:48Was a bed wetter.
03:49Every single day I just wet the bed and went to school with the same clothes that were
03:55just soaked with urine.
04:00My life just didn't make sense.
04:04And on top of all that, all anyone ever said was that I wasn't pretty.
04:13By the way, what the hell is pretty?
04:16I wasn't pretty, wasn't pretty, wasn't pretty.
04:24I just wanted to be somebody.
04:29I mean, going back to Gordo, the raging life with the dripping turkey leg, I wanted some
04:36of those little gold nuggets to just rain down in front of me, but what I had was magic.
04:54I was curious.
04:58You know what my magic was?
05:01That I could teleport.
05:04That I can take myself out of this worthless world and relieve myself of it at times.
05:16I could go to a place where I can belly laugh, where I can have fun.
05:22And the biggest magic was I could see people.
05:31I could see that woman at the corner standing there in freezing cold weather with dirty
05:39hair and really, really bad acne, smoking a cigarette with bloodshot eyes, and in those
05:49like corduroy coats with that faux fur coat in the inside.
05:55And they had those, she would have those pants that all the women would buy at Rainbow Shop.
06:02They cost $9.99 and they were never zipped up properly.
06:08She'd just be standing there with dirty sneakers, sneakers untied.
06:17And then the car would roll up and she would lean in and talk to whoever was in the car,
06:23make an exchange and get in.
06:30Nobody gave a shit about people like that, but she was my Mona Lisa.
06:40She made me curious.
06:44I would enter her and tinker around in there going, who are you?
06:52Who were you when you were a little girl?
06:54Oh, my God, you were so cute.
06:59You would dream big?
07:02You thought life was gonna work out for you?
07:04Oh, my God.
07:06But let me get into this memory.
07:08I know.
07:09Yeah, yeah, yeah.
07:10There's always a resistance to that one memory.
07:12That one thing that you live for.
07:16But I could always get in there.
07:21And it was magic.
07:28The seeker is the mystery that the seeker needs to know.
07:34I was curious.
07:37That's all you need in life is curiosity.
07:43So that was acting.
07:47And that's how I started my journey.
07:51And I had enough curiosity to know not only could I perform magic and inhabit these people,
08:01but what could they give me?
08:06What could I find in all of these lives that could somehow rain down those gold nuggets
08:15from Gordo and give to me to make my life make sense?
08:23So I started this journey of acting.
08:27And let me tell you something.
08:29Not to be a contradiction, but when I started off my career, I took a lot of jobs because
08:35of the money.
08:38Okay?
08:41Because sometimes for a dark-skinned black woman with a wide nose and big lips, that's
08:45all there is out there.
08:46All right?
08:47If I waited for a role that was written for me, well-crafted, then I wouldn't be standing
08:53up here.
08:56So I took it for the money.
08:58I do not believe that poverty is really the answer to craft.
09:06I never did.
09:07I don't think that there's any nobility in poverty.
09:12You know, I've maybe seen too many rat-infested apartments.
09:16I've seen too many relatives dying or dead because of lack of health care.
09:23No.
09:24I thank every job I got, even if it were for the money, because it was an opportunity to
09:34get in there and tinker.
09:37Right?
09:40And then sometimes those gold nuggets would rain down on me, and I got the Mrs. Millers
09:46and the Annalise Keatings and the Abilene Clarks and the Amanda Wallers, and I would
09:53go, oh, my God, I am cooking it.
09:57I'm going to be the next Meryl Streep.
10:07And then nothing.
10:12More often than not, I got the dead characters, like the woman standing on the street corner
10:19with the cigarette and the bad skin, the characters that are dead, that nobody cares about, no
10:26one loves.
10:29I got them.
10:32And I believe that they came to me because they knew that I would love them.
10:39And I knew that there was something really, really, really beautiful within there where
10:46once again, I could find that answer, that curiosity about, why the hell am I here?
11:01And there's no one in this room that has not answered that question, that curiosity.
11:06Why am I here?
11:10And each of those characters gave me some level of an answer.
11:18And I would use everything that I could to bring them back to life.
11:22I was a defibrillator.
11:25They were like chards of glass left on a dystopian beach, and the only clue I had was, I don't
11:33know, a little tie, a little shoe.
11:36And then I would craft it from there using memories, memory of when I was at my father's
11:41deathbed and I had to tell him to go, memories of falling in love, memories of bedwetting,
11:51memories of a belly laugh, memories.
11:55And I could fill in the blank and make them whole.
12:02And somewhere in the whole journey of that, just like Joseph Campbell says, you know,
12:09when you go on that journey, that hero's journey, where you answer that call to adventure, the
12:15final phase is always a phase you feel like you're going to lose your life.
12:21But you go to the inmost cave where you don't see God, you don't see demons.
12:28You just see yourself.
12:34And I got the elixir.
12:37That's what acting gave me.
12:41And the elixir was that it's on me.
12:48My life is orchestrated by me.
12:56And who little Viola was, was enough.
13:03And the mystery is not understanding Gordo with the dripping turkey leg and who randomly
13:11hands out blessings.
13:14What you got to figure out is you, your story.
13:24You as is.
13:27You are worthy.
13:32And my ruby slippers.
13:37You know, they say that the only two people you owe anything to is your six-year-old self
13:43and your 80-year-old self.
13:48And six-year-old Viola, sometimes I have to rely on to give me perspective of even
13:54this moment.
13:55Otherwise, it's too big for me to imagine going from bedwetting and poverty and despair
14:06and wrongness to this.
14:13And little Viola is squealing.
14:20She can't believe she married the most handsome man in the world.
14:31She can't believe that she has a daughter that has burst her heart wide open.
14:40She cannot believe that despite the fact that she smells or was mischievous or was
14:50messy and rough around the edges, that she has friends who see all of that but love her.
15:02And thinks she's beautiful.
15:17So little Viola is squealing.
15:24She's standing behind me now.
15:25She's pulling on my dress.
15:29And she's wearing the same red rubber boots that she wore rain or shine because they made
15:35her feel purty.
15:39She's squealing.
15:45And she's saying one thing.
15:47She says, make them hear this.
15:53And what she's whispering is, I told you I was a magician.
16:02Thank you, Golden Globes.