Demi Moore’s emotional acceptance speech on Sunday seemed to jolt awake a sleepy Golden Globes ceremony. Moore’s first win — after three career nominations, including one for “Ghost” back in 1991 — came for female lead actor in a motion picture musical or comedy for “The Substance.”
The darkly satiric film, written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, has captured something in the moment about women, aging and media, inspiring memes, conversations and countless Halloween costumes. In the film, Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, an actress turned television fitness guru who is unceremoniously dismissed for being too old. She turns to an underground drug, known only as “the substance,” to create a younger, more perfect version of herself, played by Margaret Qualley. Elisabeth and her double soon find themselves locked into a battle for control of their life.
“I’m just in shock right now. I’ve been doing this a long time, like over 45 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor, and I’m just so humbled and so grateful,” Moore said. “30 years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a ‘popcorn actress.’ And at that time, I made that to mean that this wasn’t something that I was allowed to have. That I could do movies that were successful, that made a lot of money, but that I couldn’t be acknowledged. And I bought in[to], and I believed that.
“And that corroded me over time to the point where I thought a few years ago that maybe this was it,” Moore, 62, continued. “Maybe I was complete. Maybe I’ve done what I was supposed to do. And as I was at kind of a low point, I had this magical, bold, courageous, out-of-the-box, absolutely bonkers script come across my desk called ‘The Substance,’ and the universe told me that you’re not done.”
Moore went on to thank Fargeat and Qualley, as well as her publicist, manager and agents, noting, “All the people who stood by me, especially the people who believed in me when I haven’t believed in myself.”
“And I’ll just leave you with one thing,” Moore said, “that I think this movie is imparting. In those moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough, we’re pretty enough, we’re skinny enough, we’re successful enough, or basically just not enough. I had a woman say to me, ‘Just know you will never be enough, but you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick.’ And so today, I celebrate this as a marker of my wholeness and of the love that is driving me and for the gift of doing something I love and being reminded that I do belong. Thank you so much.”
As the room erupted into thundering applause, award presenter Kerry Washington quipped, “Good luck to the next person” who had to follow Moore’s powerful speech.
