Watch Glenn Close’s Emotional Speech After Winning for ‘The Wife’

Grab your tissues. Glenn Close was absolutely shocked during the 2019 Golden Globe Awards when she took home the award for Best Actress in a Drama on Sunday, January 6, for her role in The Wife. After giving many hugs – including one to Lady Gaga, who was also in the category for A Star Is Born, Close, 71, made her way to the stage.

“This is such a great honor, and I’m so honored to be with my category sisters. And we have gotten to know each other a little bit so far, and I can’t wait to spend more time with you,” she began while choking up. “Everything that you did this year, or what you are here for – we all should be up here together, that’s all I can say.”

“It took 14 years to make this film … it was called The Wife; I think that’s why it took 14 years to get made,” the three-time Oscar nominee continued with tears in her eyes. “But, anyway, to play a character is so internal. And I’m thinking of my mom who really submitted herself to my father her whole life. In her eighties, she said, ‘I feel I haven’t accomplished anything.’ It was so not right. I feel what I learned through this whole experience [is] we are women and nurturers. We have our children and our husbands, if we are lucky enough, our partners, whoever. But we have to find personal fulfillment. We have to follow our dreams. And we have to say, ‘I have to do that, and I should be allowed to do that.’”

Close continued, adding that she was “destined to be an actress” just like Muhammad Ali was “destined to be boxer.”

“I saw the early Disney films, and Hayley Mills said, ‘I can do that.’ And here I am today; It will have been 45 years in September that I am a working actress, and I cannot imagine a more wonderful life,” she noted before thanking her daughter, actress Annie Starke, “who played the foundation of this character.”

Close has been nominated for 14 Golden Globes. This was her third win.

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