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Here are some photos of Angelina Jolie at The Hollywood Reporter’s Women In Entertainment Breakfast. You’ve gotta get up really early in the morning to honor women, apparently! It’s not even a brunch, it’s a breakfast! So… I kind of think Angelina is slightly overdressed for a breakfast event, but that’s my own bias speaking – the idea of doing full hair and makeup and putting on a sparkly black dress early in the morning seems awful to me. Angelina did it though, and she did it because she’s campaigning for Best Foreign Film. Jolie was the keynote speaker at this event and she was an amazing Debbie Downer. I love her so much. She was basically like “yeah women have it hard in Hollywood but women literally have it harder everywhere else.” Here’s her speech:

Part of her speech:

“We have a level of freedom that is unimaginable for millions of other women around the world — women who live with conflict and terrorism and displacement and poverty, who never get a chance, whose voices are always silenced. We don’t have to keep our heads down, we don’t have to think that the film we make or our comment on politics, or a joke we tell on stage could land us in prison where we might be tortured or punished. We don’t have the censorship. We don’t have to worry that acting in a play or singing on television will bring violence or dishonor to our families. We don’t have to tailor our clothes or our opinions to when it’s acceptable to religious authorities or violent extremist groups. We are not shunned and considered immoral because we dare to speak our mind about why we consider to be wrong as a society. We have the right to think thoroughly and to speak freely and to put forward our ideas on equal terms. There are women across the world who face serious danger and get hurt just trying to have a voice and an opinion.”

“It is hard to celebrate our progress while that is still the case, but it means that asserting ourselves as female artists represents something important in today’s world. Participating in art and culture is not a luxury for a privileged few in society. It is in fact a human right, laid down in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Every woman has a right not only to independence and security, but to live her life to the full and to express herself to the full, including through art and ideas as well as politics. That right is often denied to women because it is so powerful. Art influences. Art catches the imagination. Art challenges orthodoxy and societies where women are denied freedom of expression are being shaped without the voice and influence and wisdom of women.”

“That is why I am so grateful to be part of this community and the wider community of artists around the world,” she concluded. “Together we stand for more than our own rights and freedoms, but the freedom and rights of all women. We in this room have the ability to help find those women artists struggling to make their voices heard today; to show solidarity with them, to champion them, to help them tell their stories. … I pay tribute to all the women before us who pushed the boundaries in their lifetimes so that we could be here today. And above all, I pay tribute to the women artists, journalists, human rights defenders and lawyers around the world who refuse to be intimidated; the brave people who are fighting so that others may one day have the freedoms we now have.”

[From The Hollywood Reporter]

I love her. I love her message of inclusion and perspective, I love that she made her speech about all of this rather than some first-world message of “actresses are the most oppressed people ever!” I think Jolie is sort of leaning into this idea that she’s now part of the Hollywood Establishment too – she’s always viewed herself as an outsider to the system, but now here she is, wearing an appropriate gown at a Hollywood breakfast, working within the system, telling stories about her children, all to a rapt audience. Good for her.

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Photos courtesy of Getty.