Acceptance speeches aren’t usually the most thrilling part of awards season. Filled all too often with faux-humble thanks and endless name-checking, they can be enough to have us wishing we could fast-forward real life and / or live TV. This time around, though, things have been much more interesting, from Meryl Streep’s headline-grabbing takedown of Donald Trump to the two Ryans (Gosling and Reynolds, as if you needed reminding) giving heart-warming thanks to their respective wives, Eva Mendes and Blake Lively.
Ryan Reynolds has been particularly effusive in his praise of Blake, memorably thanking her (and their two young children) after unveiling his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in December. ‘I want to thank my wife, Blake, who is sitting right there, who is everything to me. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me,’ he said. Sweet, no?
Now, after beating Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep to win Best Dramatic Actress at the People’s Choice Awards, Blake has had a chance to return the favour. Accepting her trophy for her part in shark thriller (that much-vaunted dramatic genre) The Shallows, the actress echoed Ryan’s words, giving a ‘thank you to my husband, who’s everything to me.’
‘You can’t have him, he’s mine!’ she laughed after an audience member whooped at the mention of his name. That’s us told, then.
Before giving a shout out to her husband, though, Blake used her speech to highlight the importance of ‘girl power’, emphasising that stories about women are important ‘now more than ever’ (and throwing it back to her childhood love of the Spice Girls – can someone organise a meet-and-greet?)
‘So I was always an ambitious kid and so I set a goal for myself,’ she reminisced, after receiving her trophy from Westworld’s Luke Hemsworth. ‘I knew if I could accomplish this, that I would be successful and I’d be happy – and that was to meet the Spice Girls. Still haven’t accomplished it. It was very ambitious.’
‘What was so neat about them was they were all so distinctly different and they were women and they owned who they were and that was my first introduction into girl power,’ she went on.
‘When you guys voted for this, you didn’t just vote for this movie or me but you voted for girl power, so thank you […] You guys are awesome for doing that so thank you for sending a message to Hollywood that people want to hear stories about women, and we want to hear your stories, whether it’s social media, your iPhone, whatever. Tell your stories – now more than ever. You need to be heard. You are valuable and no one can limit you.’
Amen to that.
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