Everything That Happened at the Golden Eve
Just a few days before this year’s Golden Globes, a new awards show arrived: the Golden Eve: The Golden Globes Honor Helen Mirren & Sarah Jessica Parker, to celebrate the recipients of its Lifetime Achievement awards. Held on January 6 at the Beverly Hilton, Sarah Jessica Parker received the Carol Burnett Award for television excellence, and Helen Mirren received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for film excellence. Below, their acceptance speeches and some words from those who honored them that evening.
What did people say about Sarah Jessica Parker at the Golden Eve?
For Parker’s introduction, she brought her husband, Matthew Broderick, who remembered the first time he met her, as she was wearing “boots, an orange puffer coat, and long textured underwear” to go see a movie. But what really captivated him about Parker was her work on screen. “I think because she makes it look so effortless, it is easy to forget it takes real chops to unleash what a surprising and unpredictable and zany about yourself and infuse it into your work,” Broderick shared. “To make Sarah Jessica laugh, which he does easily and with abandon, is to see and hear one of the great delights of the world. This I know firsthand having on occasion been the recipient of that joyful noise.” Later on, Colman Domingo led a toast in honor of Parker and Burnett for their “humor, elegance, nerve, and grace.”
It wouldn’t be a SJP honor without one of the ladies from Sex and the City. Kristin Davis tearfully remembered their first meeting with “her warm attention, her gentle caretaking, and inquisitiveness” as she honored the show’s theme of “chosen family” and how the two have remained close friends.
Once Parker took the stage to accept the award, she gave credit to Burnett for her parents getting together, as they met auditioning for a local production of Once Upon a Mattress, and for fostering her love of acting. “30 years later, I would not have had the daunting privilege of playing Princess Winnifred and Broadway’s first revival, where Carol came as audience and was, as expected, gracious, generous, and oh so loving,” Parker gushed. “Carol was a northstar.”
Helen Mirren is a bad ass, per Harrison Ford
For Dame Helen Mirren’s Cecil B. DeMille award, her on-screen husband, Harrison Ford, says the word that comes to his mind when thinking of Mirren isn’t dame, it’s “badass.” “And when she goes full badass, it is awesome to watch,” he adds. Viola Davis was next up to say a few words for the honoree. “Dame Helen Mirren, you always find a way in. Stealthily, fearlessly, quietly, boldly, with grace, seemingly with ease, and suddenly we witness with who we came to observe and we are astonished at how like us they are,” Davis beautifully shared. “Helen, you are an alchemist to the highest degree. Your artistry reminds us that no queen, prime minister, sleuth, writer, philosopher can escape the beautiful position of being human. Without wonder and insight, acting becomes a trade.”
As Mirren began her speech, she spoke of the honor of having “two large balls,” referring to the Globes statue, and how it felt accepting an award for her life’s work. She shared, “The DeMille Award was described to me as a career recognition, but I prefer to think of it as a life lived, a life survived, a life enjoyed, a life sweated and a life carried on, hopefully. And given that hope, I prefer to think of this as an ongoing reflection of my career, rather than a eulogy; I’m not writing my own eulogy. Although I have to say, if this were my memorial, looking out at this audience, I’m absolutely thrilled who showed up for me, and I am making a list of the no-show.”
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