Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez Celebrate “a Real Sense of Community” at THR Women in Entertainment Event

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Women in Entertainment event, presented by Lifetime, returned Wednesday for its yearly celebration of the ladies leading Hollywood on screen, on set and from the exec suites.

This year, the star-studded event — which coincided with the publication of THR’s annual Women in Entertainment Power 100 — honored Gwyneth Paltrow with the Sherry Lansing Leadership Award, given to a woman who is a pioneer in her field. Jennifer Lopez was also recognized with the Equity in Entertainment Award, honoring her work amplifying the voices of underrepresented communities in the entertainment industry. (See photos of the event here.)

Inside the breakfast — once again taking place at the Beverly Hills Hotel — Rachel Sennott kicked off the program, joking, “You know you’ve made it as a woman in Hollywood when one of three things happen: when people call every photoshoot you do ‘a humiliation ritual,’ when someone uses AI to make a video of you frenching the sloth with Zootopia or when you get asked to speak at a brunch.”

Jimmy Kimmel then made an appearance to introduce a keynote address from his wife, Molly McNearney, who also serves as co-head writer and executive producer on his late night show, on the topic of free speech, which, he deadpanned, “is interesting because no one — not the FCC, not ABC standards and practices, not even President Trump himself — has taken more action to infringe upon, and forcibly limit, my freedom of speech” than his partner. On a more serious note, Kimmel celebrated McNearney as “kind, loving, funny and cares very deeply about this country,” referring to her as “the speaker of our house.”

McNearney took over the mic and teased back, “I feel like maybe we gave him a little too much freedom of speech. Can we take like 20 percent back?”

Getting into the heart of her speech, she spoke about Jimmy Kimmel Live! being suspended for the host’s comments following the Charlie Kirk shooting, saying, “I’ve watched Jimmy and my friends and my co-workers hold our leaders accountable without fear night after night. I watched other late night shows and journalists and activists and politicians and civilians in the street stick their neck out there for all of us. I watched many of you rally around truth and justice and integrity. And when our freedom of speech was on the line, I observed millions of people across the aisle — some in this very room — using their voices to protect ours.

“I cannot emphasize enough how important this is. We must not be afraid to speak up and speak out, to protect this country and all the people in it,” McNeary continued, quipping with a nod to Lopez sitting in front of her, “Even if what we’re wearing is dumb and J.Lo. looks better than any of us ever will.” She added, “My husband and my workplace, my livelihood and my friends, have been threatened multiple times by the president of the United States and the propaganda machine that feasts on deliberately misinterpreting our words and making comedy the enemy. And I’m one of the lucky ones. We got knocked down, and with all of you, you helped us get back up. And I can’t thank you all enough.”

THR Editor-in-Chief Maer Roshan and THR Executive VP and Publisher Lori O’Connor took the stage to give welcome remarks, followed by comments from Mary Ellen Coe, YouTube’s chief business officer. The group then brought up Goldie Hawn and Sarah Paulson, who were on hand for a special tribute to the late Diane Keaton.

Hawn, who starred alongside Keaton in The First Wives Club, emotionally noted how the icon, who died in October, lived in the house down the street from her, and when Hawn “went over to my backyard to my rose garden, I just looked down — she can’t be gone. She just cannot be gone. No one like that should ever die. She just brought so much joy, so much life, so much exuberance. She was like lightning in a bottle.” Hawn added that she believes Keaton is now a star, as she thinks “stars are really people who died a long time ago that did something really good for the world. I think maybe it’s where she is right now.”

Paulson then took over and admitted she was reluctant to “stand inside my grief” to do the tribute for her friend of 25 years, calling Keaton “surely one of the great loves of my life.” She hilariously read through messages Keaton had sent her throughout the years and tearfully read an email she would have now written back to her, saying, “I want to tell you how much crummier the world is without you in it. I want to tell you everything that happened in my life in the 54 days since you left. I want to tell you how the world lost its mind with grief the day you died. And I want to tell you, I will miss you forever and I continue to be a moron, and I know that you would be heartened to know that.”

Kerry Washington presented the first honor of the day, having previously received the Equity in Entertainment Award and now bestowing it on fellow Bronx native Lopez, calling the Kiss of the Spider Woman star “one of the most important cultural influencers of our time. She has broken barriers for women and for the Latin community; she’s transformed American culture through storytelling, music, fashion, marketing and through just being.”

Accepting her award, Lopez was in tears at the podium, joking, “All of these amazing women, I should have spent more time on my speech. I’m so busy!” She recalled feeling like “an underdog” in the early days of her career as “the Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx who wasn’t supposed to be in the room, let alone at the center of it. I was told in a hundred different ways what roles people like me were expected to play, and I played some of those roles. I saw how stereotypes tried to box me in before I even had the chance to show what I could do.”

Lopez added that “equity in entertainment is a relay, I think. Someone hands you a story, a role, an opportunity, and you pass it forward hopefully farther, and in my very flawed and human in a human way, I have tried to be intentional and honor that.”

Shifting into the scholarship portion of the morning, Dakota Johnson joined One Battle After Another stars Regina Hall and Chase Infiniti to present a video highlighting the high school mentees in THR‘s long-running mentorship program, which pairs some of the brightest high school girls from underserved communities in Los Angeles with some of the most powerful female executives in film and TV.

The graduating mentorship class each received a $10,000 scholarship to attend the university of their choice from Lifetime and a MacBook from Casey Wasserman and the Edie Wasserman Women in Hollywood Fund, while the incoming 2026 class each received a MacBook courtesy of Dany Garcia and Seven Bucks Productions. Three full-ride university scholarships provided by the Chuck Lorre Family Foundation, amounting to a value of more than $1 million, were also handed out, with two to Chapman University (to mentees Elisa and Luna) and one to Loyola Marymount University (to mentee Leah).

For the event’s headlining moment, Robert Downey Jr. took the stage to present Paltrow with the 20th annual Sherry Lansing honor, immediately teasing her for being “impossibly intelligent, but forever confused by the basic tenets of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its inhabitants” — as she has frequently gone viral for forgetting key Marvel moments and even which of the superhero films she’s been in.

He looked back at her long career, compiling an impressive film résumé while at the same time “birthing and building Goop between takes on the set of Iron Man” and raising her kids; RDJ also referenced how her split with ex Chris Martin “introduced the planet to the possibility of ‘conscious uncoupling’ — you remember that? — which Hollywood has done a great job not emulating.” He then touched on current day, with the “sidelining of a second unannounced acting retirement for emerging talent Josh Safdie, make-out sesh with Timmy [Chalamet] — Marty Supreme!”

Downey Jr. mused about Paltrow’s “polarizing public persona,” saying that “polarizing” is “a word used by dingbats to falsely describe powerful women who demonstrate decades of irrefutable relevance and reinvention.” He continued, “That’s why we are here. In an age where we so crave leadership, example, integrity, resolve, and too often we come up short, we have here a woman that is willing to go to trial, confronting her retired optometrist accuser regarding an alleged injury on a Deer Valley ski resort slope — and comport herself so honorably that a musical theater production is born to commemorate her moral strength and intestinal fortitude; not to mention her impeccably tasteful, civil suit chic-yet-practical courtroom attire.”

Paltrow — who graces the cover of THR this week — was greeted by a standing ovation and teased Downey Jr. for being “the older brother I never had and wasn’t sure I wanted.”

She credited her time at all-girls schools with teaching her to “revere good women — women who are smarter than I and more talented than I am, women who are expressive and really fearless” in both her acting and entrepreneurial career. “My life thus so far has been so weird and rich and full of mysteries and heartbreaks and revelations and breakthroughs, so if I can be called a leader at all, I don’t think it’s because of anything I’ve achieved, but because I just kept declaring myself the whole way through at all costs, regardless of reactions or perceptions or misperceptions,” Paltrow continued. “I just keep trying to identify who I actually am at every stage and chapter, and living from that place in the truest way I know how.

“And many, many, times, the world has declared back to me that I’m not doing it right; that my ideas are too new, and that people would prefer me this way or that way,” she added. “And yet I just keep declaring myself — as messy or surprising or controversial as it may be.” Getting choked up, Paltrow concluded, “I have felt a real sense of community this morning, a community that seems to be OK with me in all of my iterations and has welcomed me back.”

Also in attendance at the gala were WIE honorees and notable names including Paltrow’s husband Brad Falchuk, Olivia Munn, Selma Blair, Rhea Seehorn, Rachel Zoe, Gabourey Sidibe, Mamie Gummer, Andie MacDowell, Lake Bell, Nikki Glaser, Mckenna Grace, Leanne Morgan, Katherine LaNasa and Justine Lupe.

The Women in Entertainment event was sponsored by Delta Air Lines, Medicube, Reyka Vodka and Seven Bucks Productions, and put on in partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles, Entertainment Industry Foundation, Gersh, Chapman University and Loyola Marymount University.