Stone, who received the Woman of the Year Award, took a chair while onstage and had a slow sit before crossing her legs and gently asking the audience to repeat after her. The actress thanked GQ for choosing her for this year’s award and during her acceptance speech inspired the audience with her story.
“Some years ago I was sitting on a sound stage and my director said, ‘Can you hand me your underpants because we’re seeing them in the scene and you shouldn’t have underpants on but we won’t see anything’. I said, ‘Sure.’ I didn’t know this moment would change my life,” Stone told the audience.
The actress spoke passionately about the moment that could change someone’s life, when they need to discover and love who they are.
“Each and every one of you is going to have a moment like mine, a moment that changes your life. One you might be aware of when it’s happening and one you might not, but I’ll tell you this ‘you’re going to have one, if you hadn’t have already, and you are going to be held accountable for it, if you haven’t already, and people are going to ask you a lot of difficult questions, if they haven’t already. So the time that decides who you are is now. The time to decide what to you do with the tender, important, beautiful, savage, passionate most important part of yourself. What you going to do with it?,” Stone said.