Demi Moore gives powerful speech as she wins Best Actress at 2025 Golden Globes

Demi Moore gave one of the most moving speeches of the night at the 2025 Golden Globes.

The actress and star of one of the most talked about films of the year, The Substance, took home the award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture: Musical or Comedy, a hotly contested category that featured fellow Hollywood heavyweights, including Cynthia Erivo and Zendaya.

During her acceptance speech, Moore addressed the magnitude of the moment and acknowledged how, at one point in her career, she thought being critically acclaimed — let alone winning a Golden Globe — wouldn’t be something she’d ever achieve.

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“Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress, and at that time, I made that mean that this [award] wasn’t something that I was allowed to have,” Moore began her speech. “[It meant] that I could do movies that were successful and that made a lot of money but that I couldn’t be acknowledged, and I believed that. That corroded me over time, to the point where I thought a few years ago that maybe this was it, maybe I was complete, maybe I had already done what I was supposed to do.”

“I was at kind of a low point, and then 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 [I’m] not done,” she continued. “I am so grateful to Coralie [Fargeat] for trusting me to step in and play.”

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The actress went on to remind the audience of the core message of the film: “I’ll just leave you with one thing that I think this movie is imparting. In those moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough or pretty enough or skinny enough or 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. 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.”

Other significant winners from the night included Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist and Wicked, while Baby Reindeer and Shōgun took home the biggest prizes in the television categories.