Inspiring Quotes from 2017 Golden Globes Nominees

Golden Globes Nom Quotes - LEAD — Photo: Amanda Edwards/WireImage; Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic; Rob Kim/Getty

Golden Globes weekend is officially upon us—and if there’s one thing to be said about this year’s nominated projects, it’s that they’re downright inspirational. Thanks to moving narratives packed with memorable characters, Hollywood delivered unforgettable stories that rocked us to the core in 2016. And the powerful messages extended beyond the camera, with the most critically-acclaimed stars sharing words of wisdom offscreen, too. Here’s what 24 of the most buzzed-about nominees told InStyle over the past year.

01 of 24

Amy Adams

Nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama for Arrival
“I love this character because she saves the world, fully clothed and with absolutely no makeup on,” Adams told InStyle at the Toronto International Film Festival. “She also stands up to men with information and facts, not petulance. It was exciting for me to play her because I really admire her intellect.”

02 of 24

Gina Rodriguez

Nominated for Best Actress in a TV Series, Musical or Comedy for Jane the Virgin
“There are definitely times when the industry suggests you may not be pretty enough, thin enough, or have the right skin tone to play particular roles,” Rodriguez said in InStyle’s March 2016 issue. “I’m not worried about how adults, who should already have a strong sense of self, interpret that. I'm worried about what it says to kids who are still figuring out how to navigate society. One of the reasons I love playing Jane is that she's uplifting and positive—that's what makes her a badass. Her story is one I want younger generations to hear.”

03 of 24

Joel Edgerton

Nominated for Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama for Loving
“I hope that Richard and Mildred Loving become household names because of this film,” Edgerton told InStyle at the Toronto International Film Festival. “I also hope that it puts this civil rights shift in people’s consciousness. I think that it’s very tethered to what’s going on today in terms of breaking down race barriers. I want it to remind people that there are peaceful ways we can make change."

04 of 24

Caitriona Balfe

Nominated for Best Actress in a TV Series, Drama for Outlander
"Being judged on how you look has an effect, and it's not always a healthy thing,” Balfe said in InStyle’s April 2016 issue. “I don't feel that way when acting. I have insecurities, [and] my figure isn't what it was at 26, but it's important that we show real women onscreen. Who you are as a person is more important than having a perky butt."

05 of 24

Kerry Washington

Nominated for Best Actress in a Series, Limited Series, or TV movie for Confirmation
“I choose to feel optimistic, because I don't know that I could get out of bed if I didn’t,” Washington said in InStyle’s September 2016 issue. “The key will be when we stop allowing our otherness to separate us. Whether it's immigrants' rights, women's rights, civil rights, or LGBT rights, we're all under attack, because none of us belongs to that small group who have held power for a very long time. We have to unite to open doors and keep them open. When people say, ‘Well, that's not my problem,’ that worries me more than anything.”

06 of 24

Jeffrey Tambor

Nominated for Best Actor in a TV Series, Musical or Comedy for Transparent
“People who watch the show tell me about the transgender experiences that they've had themselves or with their families,” Tambor told InStyle at the Toronto International Film Festival. “It’s very interesting when people come up to me and start talking about it. I was sitting on a plane and a man who was very bejeweled, pointed at me and said, ‘You—wait right there. I have something to tell you.’ I thought, he is going to lay me out. And instead, he came right up to me, grabbed my hand, and said 'Thank you for teaching us about something we don’t know.’ And I thought to myself, well that right there is the revolution.”

07 of 24

Sarah Jessica Parker

Nominated for Best Actress in a TV Series, Musical or Comedy for Divorce
“You needn't have experienced something to play it,” Parker said in InStyle’s January 2017 issue. “It's just feelings of disappointment, failure, anger, rage, jealousy, regret, contrition, love. What is the well from which all those feelings spring? It's divorce and infidelity. Even if this story isn't yours or mine, it's about a woman who's going through something. If you don't identify, you can still relate to the desire to right the wrong for your children, to find a full life, to make up for loss. To me, what she says in the pilot, ‘I want to save my life while I still care about it,’ is what this show is about.”

08 of 24

Viola Davis

Nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for Fences
“You teach people how to treat you, and in the same vein, you teach people how to see you,” Davis told InStyle for our January 2016 issue. “Within our own community, we need to put out images that are varied, different, and represent the wide spectrum of ‘black beauty’…and we need to do it continually and without apology. We also need to have narratives that reflect our lives in their entirety. Our pathology is very vast, as are our relationships. We can be a beautiful mess.”

09 of 24

Rami Malek

Nominated for Best Actor in a TV Series, Drama for Mr. Robot
“I always really tried to humanize [my character, Elliot],” Malek said during a panel at South by Southwest in April. “I saw a really complicated character I was drawn to and a guy that was suffering, just struggling to survive in his own skin and be normal. He had this tool through a computer, but in a sense it wasn’t doing him any good. He’s lacking some type of human connection. […] I think we could all relate to having that loneliness and sometimes being distanced by technology and manicured Facebook pages that we create. There were some things I would read that he was saying and I’d be like, ‘Man, that’s getting me.’ He’s easy to connect to on so many levels, and I think that’s what people have found very endearing: his honesty as he goes through the turmoil that he does.”

10 of 24

Natalie Portman

Nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama for Jackie
“Like most of the world, I knew [Jackie Kennedy] as a style icon,” Portman told InStyle at the Toronto International Film Festival. “But what I loved about this film is that the approach was to think of her as a human being. She knew she was this symbol for people and she played that role well, but she also had a very complex and private interior life that we wanted to look at.”

11 of 24

Nicole Kidman

Nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for Lion
“I just loved that the story was made, and it’s very powerful,” Kidman told InStyle at the Toronto International Film Festival. “It’s about finding home, and it’s about the power of mothers and love, really. And I think that that’s such a beautiful thing to put out in the world right now.”

12 of 24

Evan Rachel Wood

Nominated for Best Actress in a TV Series, Drama for Westworld
“The show is science fiction and it’s about artificial intelligence, but it’s all based on real technology and a glimpse at how broken humans are,” Wood told InStyle for our October 2016 issue. “It’s very graphic, and the violence is hard to watch because it’s supposed to be. A lot of the show is a commentary on why we find that entertaining and why we are desensitized to it. It’s all there for a reason, and there’s a message behind it. It’s really unsettling, but amazing at the same time.”

13 of 24

Ryan Gosling

Nominated for Best Actor in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy for La La Land
“Initially my character was younger, and the world hadn’t beaten him down yet,” Gosling told InStyle at the Toronto International Film Festival. “We changed him to being someone that had experienced a lot of failure and maybe was once an optimist, but now had become pretty cynical, and was really on the verge of becoming a bitter person. But the finger of fate intervenes, and this love that he finds keeps him from becoming the worst version of himself.”

14 of 24

Ruth Negga

Nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama for Loving
“The discussion about strong female characters is becoming a bit more intelligent now,” Negga told InStyle at the Toronto International Film Festival. “It’s not just necessarily a certain type. There’s many different forms of strength and I think that, on the surface, Mildred wouldn’t strike you as your typical strong lady—but she had a very quiet tenacity.”

15 of 24

Hailee Steinfeld

Nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy for Edge of Seventeen
“There was so much that I was drawn to and so much I could identify with [in this film], even though I didn’t go to a traditional high school,” Steinfeld told InStyle at the Toronto International Film Festival. “I think that everyone, regardless of where they’re from or who they are, we all go through these life experiences. Time changes and modes of communication change, but there are certain things that don’t, and that’s first love or being betrayed by your best friend.”

16 of 24

Tracee Ellis Ross

Nominated for Best Actress in a TV Series, Musical or Comedy for Black-ish
“This whole message that ‘I woke up like this’—uh, no, I didn't, and neither did anyone else,” Ross said in InStyle’s August 2016 issue. “It's important to pull the curtain back. Why not help people instead of making them feel worse? This is what shame stands for: Should Have Already Mastered Everything. But you can’t.”

17 of 24

Dev Patel

Nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture for Lion
“I’ve had a tumultuous relationship with technology,” Patel, whose character in the film uses Google Maps to find his birth family, said in InStyle’s December 2016 issue. “I’m a very active human, so the idea of sitting down behind a desk or being on a computer, it kind of takes away from that human interaction—which is why I'm doing what I'm doing, you know? That's what acting is—it's exploring what it's like to be human.”

18 of 24

Naomie Harris

Nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for Moonlight
“Addiction can seem so alien, but ultimately we’re all dealing with some form of numbing our own personal pain,” Harris told InStyle for our December 2016 issue. “I wanted to show that there's a loving heart underneath [my character’s] addiction. I hope I've presented her in such a way that she won't be dismissed because of her problems.”

19 of 24

Michelle Williams

Nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture for Manchester by the Sea
“This is the kind of [project] that, really, I’ve waited my whole life for,” Williams told InStyle at the Toronto International Film Festival. “It’s the kind of work that I’ve wanted to do my whole life, and as soon as I read the script, the answer was yes. My part is small, but that’s never been a deterrent to me. I saw a very complete person on the page.”

20 of 24

Sterling K. Brown

Nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Limited Series, or TV Movie for The People v. O.J. Simpson
“I think that there’s a different way of expressing truth cinematically and theatrically,” Brown told InStyle. “In theater, you have to speak to the back of the room, but when you have a camera right in your face and a microphone on your lapel, you’re much freer to express yourself in a multitude of varieties. You’re just trying to get to what’s real and authentic in that particular moment. You’re always just trying to get to the truth—and that’s as good as it gets.”

21 of 24

Riley Keough

Nominated for Best Actress in a Series, Limited Series, or TV movie for The Girlfriend Experience
“There are so many women characters on TV and in movies that are just perfect wives,” Keough told InStyle at the Sundance Film Festival. “[My character] is not at all. She’s this person who’s super happy to have casual sex with people. Yet, she never doubts herself or her morals, which is admirable. You end up rooting for her, even though she’s a trainwreck.”

22 of 24

Mandy Moore

Nominated for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Limited Series, or TV Movie for This Is Us
“I feel like there’s a discernible difference between acting and making music,” Moore told InStyle. “Music feels much more insular and solo—it just feels like something I do myself. It’s something I ruminate on, and I help write the lyrics and the music. Sure, you have a team assembled around you to help it come to fruition, but being on a set—being part of a television show, for instance—is so much more of a team effort. It’s not just the cast, it’s the entire crew. It takes so many people for it to come to fruition and to end up on television screens in people’s homes.”

23 of 24

Tom Ford

Nominated for Best Director, Motion Picture for Nocturnal Animals
“Fashion doesn't influence me in film,” Ford told InStyle at the Toronto International Film Festival. ”I separate the two. You know, fashion is a wonderful thing and it's a wonderful business, but it's very quick. We move through it. Movies are forever. Storytelling and what I do as a filmmaker, even though it's only my second film, they last forever. They're totally different things."

24 of 24

Emma Stone

Nominated for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy for La La Land
“For me, what really unlocked a part of the character from the outside-in was working on the dance,” Stone told InStyle at the Toronto International Film Festival. “Going to dance rehearsal each day was really wonderful. [My character] Mia is not a dancer, she’s an actress, but I think physically it did something that was kind of freeing and got me out of my head. It’s very technical, but you’re trying to let go and be free within it.”