Actress Michelle Williams has used the Golden Globes as an opportunity to highlight reproductive rights, saying she feels "grateful to have lived in a moment in our society where choice exists."
Winning the award for Best Actress in a Mini-Series or Movie for FX's Fosse/Verdon, Williams continued: "Because, as women, and as girls, things can happen to our bodies that are not our choice.
"I've tried my very best to live a life of my own making and not just as a series of events that have happened to me, but one that I could stand back and look at and recognise my handwriting all over. Sometimes messy and scrawling, sometimes careful and precise but one that I have carved with my own hand.
"But I would not have been able to do this without employing a woman's right to choose."
Williams, an active participant in Hollywood’s Time’s Up movement, added: “I know my choices might look different than yours, but thank god or whomever you pray to that we live in a country founded on the principle that I am free to live by my faith and you are free to live by yours."
The actress closed out her speech by encouraging American women to vote in their own best interest: "So, women, 18 to 118, when it is time to vote, please do so in your own self-interest.
"It’s what men have been doing for years.”
Behind Williams on stage, actress and award presenter Tiffany Haddish applauded enthusiastically, telling the room: “I’m about that women’s right to choose."
Williams's speech rounded out a ceremony in which host Ricky Gervais appeared to discourage award-winners from getting political, telling them to instead thank their "God and agent".
