Her galvanising speech about women’s rights was the finest of the night – and entirely representative of her poise and precision so far
Everyone knows that it’s not only what you win or who you wear that counts at an awards ceremony – it’s what you say. And were there a prize for most inspiring speech at the
Golden Globes, it would go straight into the hands of Michelle Williams. Her award, for playing the magisterial but overlooked dancer and choreographer Gwen Verdon in the searching eight-part drama Fosse/Verdon, was entirely deserved. It was what she said once she got up on stage, though, that really mattered.
In the most acute and pointed speech of the evening, she appealed to women to vote in the forthcoming presidential
election in their own self-interest. “It’s what men have been doing for years,” she said. The A-lister avoided a certain A-word, referring instead to the “choices” available to a woman in deciding when to have children and with whom. Williams, who has a daughter by the late Heath Ledger and is currently expecting a child by the director Thomas Kail, expressed her gratitude “to have lived in 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.”