Jane Fonda SAG Awards speech takes aim at Trump: 'Empathy is not weak or woke'

Jane Fonda is getting on her soapbox at the SAG Awards.

The SAG-nominated actress was recognized for her decadeslong career with the Lifetime Achievement Award at Sunday's ceremony. Fonda was presented with the honor by fellow actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

"This means the world to me," Fonda said. "And your enthusiasm makes it seem less like a late twilight of my life and more like a 'Go, girl. Kick ass,' which is good because I'm not done."

Apart from waxing poetic about her love of acting, Fonda got candid about her passion for social justice, starting with her appreciation for workers' unions.

"I'm a big believer in unions. They have our backs," Fonda said. "Community means power, and this is really important right now when workers' power is being attacked, and community is being weakened."

Fonda's fiery speech couldn't even be derailed by a malfunction in the SAG Awards teleprompter. "I can conjure up voices," she joked.

The actress also took a shot at President Donald Trump's attack on diversity, equity and inclusion while discussing the importance of empathy in acting. Fonda briefly referenced Sebastian Stan's portrayal of Trump in the 2024 biopic "The Apprentice."

"Make no mistake, empathy is not weak or 'woke,'" Fonda said. "And by the way, 'woke' just means you give a damn about other people."

Read Jane Fonda's full SAG Awards speech

"This means the world to me. And your enthusiasm makes it seem less like a late twilight of my life and more like a 'Go, girl. Kick ass,' which is good because I'm not done. I have had a really weird career — totally un-strategic. I retired for 15 years and then I came back at 65, which is not usual. And then I made one of my most successful movies in my 80s. And probably in my 90s, I'll be doing my own stunts in an action movie.

Have you ever heard the phrase, '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. 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 get angry, acting gave me a chance to play angry women with opinions, which, 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 is being attacked, and community is being weakened.

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 joy and their pain... 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 (if) she's a sex worker, there's a good chance that as a young girl she was sexually abused or (the victim of) incest. 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 that probably their father bullied them and called men that he felt were weak 'losers' … And while you may hate the behavior of your character, you have to understand and empathize with the traumatized person you're playing, right? I'm 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 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 hose 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. Thank you for this encouragement."

(This story was updated to add new information.)

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jane Fonda SAG Awards speech takes aim at Trump