ENGLISH SPEECH BY JENNIFER ANISTON : Find Your Voice
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Thank you Awkwafina, for taking that beautifulbullet for all of us, and thank God I wrote my speech down. Hi! Ellen, we got to keep the best friend stuffgoing on the deal okay, because a lot of my best friends are here. Okay, I mean, you would think after 30 yearsof being in this industry, getting up here would be easy, and it's not. It's terrifying. It's not that often we're surrounded by peoplewho found their voice and are using it, and using it to hold people up and bring peopletogether and that to me is true power. I mean, it's funny because I've never, youknow, I've never actually thought about myself as powerful. I mean, strong? Yes, but powerful, not mm-hmm. It's a distinction I've actually been thinkinga lot about lately because the word power and its counterpart, abuse of power keep comingup in light of what is happening in our country and in our industry, a rebalancing of thescales, I guess you could say.
I've been thinking about my own relationshipwith that word, with the word power, which got me thinking about my early associations,from my early associations with my own sense of power. It is something I believe comes from usingour voice. And I remembered a parental figure sayingto me around the rather critical age of about 11. After a dinner party that I was excused fromthe table because I didn't have anything interesting to add to the conversation. Ouch, and it's stuck with me like painfullyworded sentences can, and if I'm being honest, and I'm being honest because I'm 58 and, youknow, that comes with the territory.
That's right, so I carried that sentence withme into adulthood. I always felt incredibly comfortable givingyou know a voice to the words of others but put me at a dinner table with strangers orat a podium like this, and I go right back to being 11 years old. The last two years have made me think a lotabout the messages that we send young kids, little girls, especially how the things thatwe say and do can either build them up, or it can tear them down and make them feel likemaybe their voices don't matter. And it wasn't until Friends took off thatI started seeing myself in a different light.
I started meeting all of these people whoexpressed to me how much the show meant to them, how it lifted their spirits during abad breakup or got them through an illness, and I was just so incredibly moved by that. I began to change the way I thought aboutmy own voice and what it meant to have a platform to use it. Still no prompter. And then enter Marlo Thomas. Marlo Thomas, as some of you might remember,she was my mama on friends, and I remember one day we were on set, and she said to meI'm going to this St. Jude Gala tonight would you like to be my date. I said yeah, I'd love to be your date andgo to that so there we are at this big elaborate gala there's tuxes and gowns and tiny littlefood on toothpicks that you can't eat in any dignified manner. I sat down at the table, and they startedto roll this tape of the hospital, and I sat there watching it moved to tears, and thatwas it for me.
I wanted to be a part of this extraordinaryorganization, and that was 25 years ago. I am very honored to be a part of St. Jude,and I've been in love with him ever since. And right around this time every fall, weshoot the PSA for a holiday PSA, and I get to spend a day with a family of St. Jude,and I always say it's the best day of the year and the hardest day of the year, anda few years back, I met a little girl named Sawyer, who I still think about to this day. She was seven at the time, and I remembershe had this little pink dress on in these big angelic eyeballs. The chemo had taken all of her hair. She had these tiny little tumors on her bodythat she called her bumps, her alleys. She just sat on my lap and smiling and cuddlingwith me the whole time as we ran through the script again and again and again.
After hearing this word, at the end of theday, after hearing the word repeated over and over again, she looked up at me with this,those big blue eyeballs, and she asked me what is cancer? I just looked at her, and I was like, "Ohgod, I'm not equipped to answer this question: birds and the bees." Oh, you're too young for that, but so I never…sorry, but seriously I never forgot about that moment here was this little girl whowas fighting this deadly disease every single day. She didn't even know what the word was forit, and it was just part of her reality. She was just making the absolute best of it,and that's what's unbelievable about these children despite everything that they areup against and as much pain as they are often in they are vibrant, they're joyful they arefearless, and that's part of the magic of St.
Jude and why I'm so honored to supporttheir work because they are giving children the best care on the planet so that they canreclaim their childhood so that they can find their little inner superhero. They're doing it at no cost so that the familiescan focus on their little ones live without worrying about crippling hospital bills andtheir pioneering treatment cutting-edge treatments that will soon one day find a cure. And that is what every child deserves to knowthat they are seen, they are powerful, and they are loved and that they deserve a seatat the table and that anything they have to say or any question they have to ask is ofvalue even if we don't have all the answers for it. So, thank you very much for recognizing thework of this remarkable organization and for celebrating the power in each and every oneof us. Thank you.
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