[ Cheers and applause ]
Thank you. Thanks, everybody.
Thank you.
Most of the people in this room,
I would pay to see them get their cars washed,
so, to be up here. [ Light laughter ]
And can I just say, honestly, really --
really, can I be -- tell the truth, now --
can I just see a show of hands?
How many people in this room
have a clip package that includes "The Love Boat"?
[ Laughter ] Anybody?
Well, you -- Charlize, no?
Well, you missed out. There you go!
Kathy! There you go.
And what do we have? [ Cheers and applause ]
♪ Love, exciting and new ♪
♪ Climb aboard ♪
[ Laughter ]
I have a cold, um,
the size of Merv Griffin's "Jeopardy!" royalties.
So, uh, forgive me.
I've been drinking a lot of savagely orange drinks
for the last 24 hours,
and I'm a little jittery.
I -- A man is...
[ Sobs ]
[ Voice breaking ] Sorry.
A man is blessed -- A man is blessed
with the family sitting down front like that.
[ Applause ]
A wife who is fantastic in every way,
who has taught me what love is,
five kids who are braver and stronger and wiser
than their old man is,
and a loving group of people
who have put away with me being away
months and months and months at a time.
Of course, otherwise, I wouldn't be standing here
if they didn't have to put up with that.
So I can't tell you how much your love means to me.
[ Clears throat ]
Uh... [ Cheers and applause ]
So, that's the wife and kids.
Um, you know, you're a dope if you don't steal
from everybody you have ever worked with.
[ Laughter ] And I have stolen
from the likes of the people that only need one name.
You know, like Meryl. [ Laughter ]
Like Denzel.
Like Antonio.
Like Meg, like Julia.
Like Sally Field.
Even though that's two names, it's still one.
[ Laughter ] But I -- I have also
been made better by watching the examples
of some of the greatest actors that have ever walked a stage.
Peter Scolari and Holland Taylor a million years ago.
[ Cheers and applause ] Uh, Robin Wright.
Barkhad Abdi, believe it or not, who was in his very first film,
but was so very much an artist, there was no doubt about it.
And Charlize, who actually is one of those one-word names.
The reason I had to leave the room --
The reason I had to leave the room for five minutes
was to go in and tell all the other producers
that, uh, "This woman that I'm auditioning right now
is gonna be in this movie somehow,
so we got to figure out how it's gonna work."
And she was.
I have never not been challenged or flummoxed or lost sleep
because of the work that was asked of me
by the directors that I've worked with,
every single one of them; the screenwriters
that I've worked with, every single one of them.
And it's been Nora and Penny,
Mari of late,
there's Steven and Ron, Paul, Bob.
The list goes on. Clint. The list goes on and on.
And every one of those -- Every one of those guys,
at some point or another, came up to me
in the course of a day and said, "Tomorrow,
if you don't do your job really well,
we don't have a movie."
And this is a thing that you --
that happens with actors at some point.
On a movie, a movie is made shot-by-shot.
Everybody knows that. Lina Wertmuller knows it.
Marty Scorsese knows it.
Jackie Chan knows it -- a movie is made shot-by-shot.
And at that moment, what is required is,
everybody has to do their job to their perfection,
they have to hit a mark, and they have to go there.
Sometimes the movie rests on the shoulders
of the makeup artist who put on Stellan Skarsgard's eyebrows.
[ Laughter ] Sometimes -- Sometimes it's
the focus puller, that if it isn't sharp,
you don't have it, and it shows up -- it shows up
and you have to do it all over again.
But it's those moments, as an actor,
where everybody I have ever worked with
has helped me get to that place --
sometimes it's 3:00 in the morning,
and sometimes it's 11:00 at night --
in which you just have to somehow
put it all together,
have faith in what the process is,
and -- and go there.
A thousand years ago, in 1977, when I was an intern
at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival,
my first professional job,
we all got yelled at by Dan Sullivan, the director.
We had partied a little bit too much the night before.
We were showing up for rehearsals,
and he screamed at us --
well, he did actually scream at us --
he said, "Hey, look, you -- you -- you guys, you guys,
you actors, you know what your jobs is?
You know what your job is?
You have got to show up on time and you have to know the text
and you have to have a headful of ideas.
Otherwise, I can't do my job!"
That was the greatest lesson
a young actor could possibly ever get.
First of all, the headful of ideas.
Bring anything, try anything. They might not use it.
If it stinks, they won't use it. Am I right, Marty Scorsese?
If it's not good,
boy, let's see the outtakes from that movie, by the way.
[ Laughter ]
Knowing the text, and it's not just your lines.
It's the whole thing. It's the red dot.
It's the theme of the movie. You've got to know it.
You might be right in what the opinion that you bring to it,
but you've got to come at it with some direction.
And as Charlize might know,
and some of the other people who've worked with us
through the Play-Tone Galaxy of Stars,
showing up on time
is one of the greatest liberating acts
you can give yourself in a movie.
[ Cheers and applause ]
That means, those people with radios in the ears
don't need to knock on your door
and say, "They're ready for you."
You're actually already ready,
and you have the liberty and you have the freedom
of being there early enough to settle down,
because when the time comes,
you have to hit the marks
and you have to go there.
There is a saying in motion pictures,
back when it was shot on film,
that you could not move on to the next scene
until the gate was good.
The film went through the little, uh...
Let me explain it to the kids at home.
[ Laughter ] The film went through a shutter,
and it had to go through the gate.
And sometimes a piece of film would fall off,
a hair, a speck of dust would be there on the negative.
And the shot would be ruined,
'cause you couldn't save it in the lab.
The gate had to be good before you could move on.
Cecil B. DeMille himself, up in that voice-of-God chair,
[As DeMille] "Alright, that's wonderful.
Cut! Shut the gate!"
[ Normal voice ] He's say something like that.
And then they would check the gate.
And if the gate was good, then you moved on.
Ladies and gentlemen [Chuckling] I'm such a...
It's -- It's the cold that is making this happen.
[ Laughter ] I swear to God.
I'm not nearly this emotional at home.
Well, uh, thank you, HFPA. Thank you all here.
Thank all for all your inspiration
and all of your work
and all of the struggle that you guys all go through
in order to hit the marks and tell the truth.
I have checked the gate.
The gate is good. Thank you.
[ Cheers and applause ]