I've lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this weekend,

and I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year.

So I have to read.

Thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said.

You and all of us in this room, really,

belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now.

Think about it. Hollywood, foreigners, and the press.

But who are we? And, you know, what is Hollywood anyway?

It's just a bunch of people from other places.

I was born and raised and educated in the public schools of New Jersey;

Viola was born in a sharecropper's cabin in South Carolina came up in central falls Rhode Island

Sarah pulson was born in Florida raised by a single mom in Brooklyn

Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio. Amy Adams was born in

Vicenza vento, Italy and Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem where their birth certificates

and the beautiful Ruth Negga was born inaddis ababa Ethiopia

raise done in no in Ireland I do believe

and she's here nominated for playing a small-town girl from Virginia

Ryan Gosling like all the nicest people is Canadian

and Dev Patel was born in Kenya raised

in London is here for playing an Indian raised in Tasmania

so Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners

and if we kicked them all out you'll have nothing to watch

but football and mixed martial arts which are not the art

they gave me three seconds to say this

so an actor's only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us

and let you feel what that feels like

and there were many many many powerful

performances this year that did exactly that

breathtaking compassionate work but

there was one performance this year that

stunned me it sank its hooks in my heart

not because it was good it was

there's nothing good about it but it was effective

and it did its job it made its

intended audience laughs and show their teeth

it was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat

in our country imitated a disabled reporter someone he outranked in privileged power

and the capacity to fight back it it kind of broke my heart

when I saw it I still can't get it out of my head because it wasn't in a movie

it was real life and this instinct to humiliate when it's modeled by someone

the public platform someone powerful

that filters down into everybody's life

because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing

disrespect invites disrespect violence incites violence

when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose

ok go up with that thing

ok this brings me to the press

we need the principal press to hold power to

account to to call them on the carbon for every outrage

that's why that's why our founders

enshrine the press and its freedoms in

our Constitution so I only ask the

famously well-heeled hollywood foreign

press and all of us in our community to

join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists

because we're going to need them going forward

and they'll need us to safeguard the truth and more thing

once when I was standing around

the set one day whining about something

you know we're going to work through

supper or for the long hours or whatever

Tommy Lee Jones said to me isn't it such

a privilege Merrill just to be an actor

yeah it is and we have to remind each other of the privilege

and the responsibility of the active empathy

we should all be very proud of the work

Hollywood honors here tonight

as my as my friend the dear departed

Princess Leia said to me once

take your broken heart make it into art

thank you