The Substance’s Demi Moore just won Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role at the 2025 SAG Awards—and added more momentum to her Oscar campaign. The star took the stage and gave an acceptance speech centered on her decades-long journey as an actor and how her fellow SAG-AFTRA members shaped her life.
“This is extraordinary and so deeply meaningful,” she began. “As I was thinking about this night, I realized I hadn’t thought back to when I got my membership to this incredible organization. It was in 1978. I was 15, almost 16. And it changed my life because it gave me meaning, it gave me purpose, and it gave me direction because I was a kid on my own who had no blueprint for life, and I certainly knew nothing about acting.
“But I watched, and I listened and I learned from all of you. You have all been my greatest teachers. And I am so, so grateful that I have continued over these so many years to be able to try and sometimes succeed and sometimes fail, but to be able to keep going and I could not do that without the support of my incredible team, the people who stood behind me.”
She thanked her team, then widened her scope to other members of the industry. “As a young actor, it was the casting directors and directors and producers who got me in the room to audition where I could feel you, and you could feel me and your feedback meant everything. It’s what helped me and so as these young actors who are having to do it all, I just encourage you, don’t lose sight of the human connection. That’s the work that we do. It’s to be connected to one another.”
She ended her speech by reflecting on the “idea that what we believe is so much more powerful than what we think… [like the saying] ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ But the reality is, when I believe it, I will see it, and I am so grateful for this. Thank you. That little girl, that little girl who didn’t believe in herself, I just… The words are kind of beyond me, so I’m just gonna have to just say thank you, thank you so much.”
Moore already won the Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award for Best Actress. At the Critics Choice Awards two weeks ago, the actress said onstage, “For anybody out there who is still on their journey, who is still struggling to find their way, because it hasn’t happened, it doesn’t mean it’s not happening, dreams do come true.”
She made a similar point in her Golden Globes speech for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. “I’ve been doing this a long time, like over 45 years, and this is the first time I’ve ever won anything as an actor,” she began. “And I’m just so humbled and so grateful.
“Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a ‘popcorn actress’ and, at that time, I made that mean that this [award] wasn’t something that I was allowed to have. That I could do movies that were successful, that made a lot of money, but that I couldn’t be acknowledged, and I bought in and I believed that.
“And that corroded me over time, to the point where I thought, a few years ago, that maybe this was it. Maybe I was complete. Maybe I would—I’d done what I was supposed to do.
“And as I was at kind of a low point, I had this magical, bold, courageous, out-of-the-box, absolutely bonkers script come across my desk called The Substance. And the universe told me that you’re not done. And I am so grateful to [director] Coralie [Fargeat] for trusting me to step in and play this woman. Margaret [Qualley], for being the other half of me that I couldn’t have done without, for looking out for me. To the people who’ve been with me for over 30 years…all of the people who stood by me, especially the people who’ve believed in me when I haven’t believed in myself.
“And I’ll just leave you with one thing that I think this movie is imparting is: In those moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough or pretty enough, or skinny enough or successful enough, or basically just not enough. I had a woman say to me, ‘Just know, you will never be enough. But you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick.’
“And so today I celebrate this as a marker of my wholeness and of the love that is driving me and for the gift of doing something I love and being reminded that I do belong. Thank you so much.”
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