“We are a community of storytellers, aren’t we?” Jane Fonda said on Sunday night, while accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award, given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association during the Golden Globes for lifetime achievement in film. “And in turbulent, crisis-torn times like these, storytelling has always been essential.”

In her six decades in Hollywood, Fonda, 83, has helped tell dozens, if not hundreds, of stories. And she has been awarded many times along the way, winning two best actress Oscars (for “Klute,” in 1971, and “Coming Home,” in 1978) and eight Golden Globes, her first in 1960 for “Tall Story.” She is the 16th woman to receive the award, the association’s highest honor for film professional, which has been presented since 1952.

And in that time, Fonda has carved a distinct path not only as an actress, but also as a producer, documentarian and activist passionate about global peace, human rights and climate change (a cause for which she was arrested multiple times in 2019). On Sunday, she took time to address the diversity issues hanging over the awards show. “There’s a story we’ve been afraid to see and hear about ourselves in this industry,” she said. “A story about which voices we respect and elevate and which we tune out, a story about who’s offered a seat at the table and who is kept out of the rooms where decisions are made.”

Here’s Fonda’s acceptance speech, in its entirety:

Oh my gosh, thank you. Thank you, all the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, I’m so moved to receive this honor, thank you. You know — hi, Amy — we are a community of storytellers, aren’t we? And in turbulent, crisis-torn times like these, storytelling has always been essential. You see, stories have a way — they can change our hearts and our minds, they can help us see each other in a new light, to have empathy. To recognize that for all our diversity, we are humans first, right? You know, I’ve seen a lot of diversity in my long life, and at times I’ve been challenged to understand some of the people I’ve met, but inevitably, if my heart is open and I look beneath the surface, I feel kinship.

That’s why all of the great conduits of perception — Buddha, Mohammad, Jesus, Lao Tzu — all of them spoke to us in stories and poetry and metaphor, because the nonlinear, noncerebral forms that are art speak on a different frequency. And they generate a new energy that can jolt us open and penetrate our defenses so that we can see and hear what we may have been afraid of seeing and hearing.

Just this year, “Nomadland” helped me feel love for the wanderers among us, and “Minari” opened my eyes to the experience of immigrants dealing with the realities of life in a new land. And “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “Small Axe,” “U.S. vs. Billie Holiday,” “Ma Rainey,” “One Night in Miami” and others have deepened my empathy for what being Black has meant. “Ramy” helped me feel what it means to be Muslim-American. “I May Destroy You” has taught me to consider sexual violence in a whole new way. The documentary “All In” reminds us how fragile our democracy is and inspires us to fight to preserve it, and “A Life on Our Planet” shows us how fragile our small blue planet is and inspires us to save it, and ourselves.

Stories, they really can change people. But there’s a story we’ve been afraid to see and hear about ourselves in this industry, a story about which voices we respect and elevate and which we tune out, a story about who’s offered a seat at the table and who is kept out of the rooms where decisions are made. So let’s all of us, including all the groups that decide who gets hired and what gets made and who wins awards, let’s all of us make an effort to expand that tent so that everyone rises and everyone’s story has a chance to be seen and heard. I mean, doing this simply means acknowledging what’s true, being in step with the emerging diversity that’s happening because of all those who marched and fought in the past and those who’ve picked up the baton today. After all, art has always been not just in step with history, but has led the way. So let’s be leaders, OK? Thank you, thank you so much.

Nancy Coleman contributed reporting.