Acting legend Jane Fonda drew a rousing ovation for her speech at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in which she gave her definition of the polarizing word “woke” and urged others to “resist successfully what’s coming at us.”
Fonda, 87, was the recipient of the Life Achievement Award at the 2025 SAG Awards on Feb. 23 at the Shrine Auditorium and Expo Hall in Los Angeles.
“Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke,” she said in her speech. “And by the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people.”
“A whole lot of people are going to be really hurt by what is happening, what is coming our way,” she said.
The Oscar winner and activist did not mention President Donald Trump by name but appeared to reference the actions of his administration. She also reference actor Sebastian Stan’s portrayal of a young Trump in the SAG award-nominated film “The Apprentice.”
“And even if they’re of a different political persuasion, we need to call upon our empathy and not judge, but listen from our hearts and welcome them into our tent, because we are going to need a big tent to resist successfully what’s coming at us,” she continued.
The “Grace and Frankie” star also put the current moment into the context of other weighty historical times in America.
“Have any of you ever watched a documentary of one of the great social movements, like apartheid or our civil rights movement or Stonewall and asked yourself, would you have been brave enough to walk the bridge? Would you have been able to take the hoses and the batons and the dogs?” she said.
“We don’t have to wonder anymore because we are in our documentary moment. This is it. And it’s not a rehearsal,” she continued. “We mustn’t for a moment kid ourselves about what’s happening. This is big time serious, folks. So let’s be brave.”
She also urged people to come together.
“We must not isolate,” she said. “We must stay in community. We must help the vulnerable. We must find ways to project an inspiring vision of the future. One that is beckoning, welcoming, that will help people believe. To quote the novelist Pearl Cleage, ‘On the other side of the conflagration, there will still be love. There will still be beauty. And there will be an ocean of truth for us to swim in.’ Let’s make it so.”
Fonda also spoke to TODAY in an interview that aired on Feb. 21 about receiving the prestigious award for an acting career that began nearly seven decades ago.
“It means the world to me,” she said of receiving the honor. “You know I haven’t always been so popular in this town and so getting this award means a lot.”
Jane Fonda’s full speech at 2025 SAG Awards
“This means the world to me. What about the sound system? I’m going to talk loud. This means the world to me! You can’t know. Thank you SAG-AFTRA. Thank you. Wow.
And your enthusiasm makes it seem, I don’t know, less like a late twilight of my life and more like a ‘Go girl, kick ass.’ Which is good, because I’m not done.
You know, I have had a really weird career. Totally not — as my agents there at that table will testify — totally un-strategic. I retired for 15 years, and then I came back at 65, which is not usual. And I made one of my most successful movies in my 80s. And probably in my 90s, I’ll be doing my own stunts and an action movie.
Have you ever heard the phrase, how does it go, ‘It’s OK to be a late bloomer as long as you don’t miss the flower show.’ I’m a late bloomer. This is the flower show (puts hand on her award).
I love acting. We get to open people’s minds to new ideas, take them beyond what they understand of the world and help them laugh when things are tough. Like now. And for a woman like me who grew up in the ’40s and ’50s when women weren’t supposed to have opinions and not get angry, acting gave me a chance to play angry women with opinions. Which as you know, is a bit of a stretch for me.
I’m a big believer in unions. They have our backs. They bring us into community, and they give us power. Community means power. And this is really important right now, when workers’ power … workers’ power is being attacked, and community is being weakened. Yes. But SAG-AFTRA is different than most other unions because us, the workers, we actors, we don’t manufacture anything tangible.
What we create is empathy. Our job is to understand another human being so profoundly that we can touch their souls. We know why they do what they do. We feel their joys and their pain. (Pre-recorded announcer is briefly heard) And I can conjure up voices.
We have to drill deep, don’t we? We have to know, for example, if a young woman is cutting, or she’s a sex worker, there’s a good chance that as a young girl she was sexually abused or incested. I’m thinking Bree Daniels in “Klute.” And I’m sure many of you guys have played bullies and misogynists, and you can pretty much know, you actors, right, that probably their father bullied them and called men that he felt were weak, he called them losers or pussies.
And while you may hate the behavior of your character, you have to understand and empathize with the traumatized person you’re playing, right? Thinking Sebastian Stan in “The Apprentice.”
Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or woke. And by the way, woke just means you give a damn about other people. Back to empathy. A whole lot of people are going to be really hurt by what is happening, what is coming our way. And even if they’re of a different political persuasion, we need to call upon our empathy and not judge, but listen from our hearts and welcome them into our tent, because we are going to need a big tent to resist successfully what’s coming at us.
I made my first movie in 1958. It was the tail end of McCarthyism, when so many careers were destroyed. Today it’s helpful to remember, though, that Hollywood resisted. We did. Overseas, brave American producers like Hannah Weinstein hired blacklisted writers. Myrna Loy, John Huston and Billy Wilder founded the Committee for the First Amendment.
They had a radio show on ABC radio called ‘Hollywood Fights Back.’ Members of the committee included every big-name actor in town.
Have any of you ever watched a documentary of one of the great social movements, like apartheid or our civil rights movement or Stonewall, and asked yourself, would you have been brave enough to walk the bridge? Would you have been able to take the hoses and the batons and the dogs?
We don’t have to wonder anymore because we are in our documentary moment. This is it. And it’s not a rehearsal.
This is it. And we mustn’t for a moment kid ourselves about what’s happening. This is big-time serious, folks. So let’s be brave. This is a good time for a little Norma Rae or Karen Silkwood or Tom Joad. We must not isolate. We must stay in community. We must help the vulnerable. We must find ways to project an inspiring vision of the future. One that is beckoning, welcoming, that will help people believe that, to quote the novelist Pearl Cleage, ‘on the other side of the conflagration, there will still be love. There will still be beauty. And there will be an ocean of truth for us to swim in.’ Let’s make it so.
