Laura Dern won a Golden Globe on Sunday (7 January) for her role as Renata Klein in ‘Big Little Lies’, and used her moment in front of the microphone to ask those watching to help combat a “culture of silencing” victims.
“Many of us were taught not to tattle,” she said. “It was a culture of silencing and that was normalized. I urge all of us to not only support survivors and bystanders ― who are brave enough to tell their truth ― but to promote restorative justice. May we also please protect and employ them.”
She added: “May we teach our children that speaking out without the fear of retribution is our culture’s new North Star.”
One of Hollywood’s most politically outspoken actresses, Laura has been intimately involved in the creation of Time’s Up, a recently launched campaign by women in Hollywood to combat workplace sexual harassment. I
n an interview about the initiative with InStyle published last week, Laura admitted she has “normalized plenty of behaviour” growing up in the entertainment industry, but said she hopes her daughter’s generation doesn’t do the same:
I’ve normalized plenty of behavior. I was raised on movie sets, I was raised by actors, I had even been comfortable around people who talk crassly and are irreverent in the workplace. I just presumed that’s what it was—but it isn’t anymore. It isn’t my daughter’s generational experience as a 13-year-old. She is being raised in an environment where same-sex families aren’t being made fun of, where a child of divorce or a child who comes from a diverse family, as my children do, there are no comments to be made. It’s just the norm. And I pray that the same will be in the area of power—if something felt uncomfortable to her generation, that they would immediately shut it down.
Laura has used the Golden Globes to make political statements before. In 2009, shortly after the election of Barack Obama, she accepted an award for her work on “Recount” by saying, “I will cherish this as a reminder of the extraordinary, incredible outpouring of people who demanded their voice be heard in this last election”.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.