Despite spending decades as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, Demi Moore was the last person expecting to see herself on stage accepting a Golden Globe.

The 62-year-old, who made her TV debut in 1978 and starred in her first film in 1981, was taken aback when her name was called Sunday night. "I really wasn't expecting that," she said after stepping up to the microphone. "I'm just in shock right now."

"I've been doing this a long time — over 45 years," she said in her speech. "This is the first time I've ever won anything as an actor. I'm just so humbled and so grateful."

For Moore, whose career includes films like "Margin Call," "Striptease" and "Charlie's Angels," the idea of ever winning a major acting award seemed far fetched. She said that 30 years ago, a producer told her she was "a popcorn actress."

"At the time, I made that mean that this [award] wasn't something that I was allowed to have, that I could do movies that were successful and made a lot of money but that I couldn't be acknowledged," she said.

Moore said that she "bought in, and I believed that," and that thinking of herself as that type of performer "corroded" her belief in herself as an artist.

As she aged, she thought that her time on the big screen might be coming to an end and she had "done what I was supposed to do."

"As I was at kind of a low point I had this magical, gold, courageous, out-of-the-box, absolutely bonkers script come across my desk called 'The Substance,' and the universe told me 'you are not done,'" she said.

Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle in the body horror film, a celebrity who is fired from her job because of her age and goes to extreme lengths to recapture her youth. The film has received rave reviews, with Moore in particular being praised for her performance.

"I celebrate this as a marker of my wholeness and of the love that is driving me," she said. "And for the gift of doing something I love and being reminded that I do belong."

Moore wasn't the only actress in the building to once be told that they wouldn't make it. Nicole Kidman, who was nominated for her performance in "Babygirl," last year said that her height made it challenging to break into acting.

"I was told 'You won't have a career, you're too tall,'" the 5' 11" actress said at the time. "I remember auditioning for 'Annie'. I had to talk my way through the door because they were measuring you before you went in. I was mortified, I was over the mark."

Finding success after dealing with so much rejection helped her develop a level of resilience that she described as being her "superpower."

"I tell my daughters 'None of it matters. What does matter is how you allow other people to either say yes or no to you and whether you accept that,'" she said. "That inner resilience as a human being, that's the superpower really, above all superpowers."

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