Angelina Jolie walks red carpet with Zahara before paying tribute to Amanda Gorman
Jolie paid tribute to Gorman in her speech at Variety's "Power of Women" event, calling her "fearless"
At Variety‘s Power of Women event, Angeline Jolie walked the red carpet with her daughter Zahara, before paying tribute to Amanda Gorman with a moving speech.
The Los Angeles event brings “an intimate group of philanthropic women who have been selected as Variety’s honorees as well as the most powerful women working in media and entertainment, together.” This year’s impressive honorees include Gorman, Channing Dungey, Lorde, Rita Moreno, and Katy Perry. They are all featured on Variety‘s latest Power of Women issue, which was released on Sept. 29.
Honoring Gorman at the event was none other than Jolie, who brought her daughter Zahara Jolie-Pitt along with her.
Jolie took to the red carpet embracing her daughter and Gorman ahead of the star-studded event on Thursday.
Jolie’s powerful speech lifted up Gorman and certainly gave her all of the flowers. She shared with the audience, “The young woman of grace, who stepped fearlessly to the podium on Inauguration Day. Not just the youngest but the strongest voice we could ask for in that moment. The Amanda we see today might seem as if she leapt into our times, fully formed, to summon our better angels. But there was an Amanda we didn’t see.”
She continued to speak to Gorman’s youth, describing the ‘poetess’ as a “sweet little 7-year-old,” who was wrestling with language,” and “inventing her own dictionary”.
“All of those hours of thought and creation forged the unfaltering woman you see today,” she explained. “As well as celebrating your extraordinary achievements, Amanda, we honor 7-year-old you and every other girl who feels she is an outsider, alone, when she is simply coming into her own.”
Jolie then mused on how many women do not get the opportunity to see their fullest potential in this world. “So many girls have their progress in life derailed — by poverty, by the disapproving word, the clenched fist, or the steel of the gun. How many Amandas are living in Afghanistan, hiding their journals, waiting to see if they will be allowed to go to school? As if anyone has the right to decide what a woman can or cannot do with her own mind and body.”
She concluded, “There is nothing more beautiful, more challenging and more unsettling perhaps than the free mind of the thinking woman. That is surely why so much effort is put into constraining her…those who have the power of free speech, the weapon of free speech, must combine to defend those who do not. We need voices like Amanda’s, those lights in the dark. Amanda, may you burn fiercely and light the way for others.”
Watch Jolie’s stirring speech below:
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