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Patricia Arquette  

Academy Award-Winning Actress, Activist, Humanitarian & Author

Patricia Arquette is an American actress. She made her feature film debut as Kristen Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3. Her other notable films include True Romance, Flirting with Disaster, Holes, Fast Food Nation, The Wannabe, and Toy Story 4.

For her performance in the coming-of-age drama film Boyhood, which was filmed from 2002 until 2014, Arquette received widespread critical praise and won the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Critics' Choice Award, Golden Globe Award, Independent Spirit Award, Satellite Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award, along with many other critics prizes, for Best Supporting Actress.

On television, she played the character Allison DuBois, who claims to have psychic abilities, in the supernatural drama series "Medium." She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2005, from two nominations she received for the role, in addition to three Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. She went on to star as Joyce Mitchell in the Showtime miniseries "Escape at Dannemora," winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film, and as Dee Dee Blanchard in the Hulu anthology series "The Act". She received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for both performances. She won the award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her role on "The Act."

However, Arquette is also a deeply committed humanitarian. GiveLove, her nonprofit, is engaged with community-led sanitation projects to treat and compost waste, improve public health and create jobs centered around recycling. Arquette travels to Haiti regularly to oversee GiveLove's work there. Her hands-on approach to ecological sanitation has inspired some of the most well-known experts in the field.

Arquette is also very invested in bringing awareness to women's rights in the workplace. She used her 2014 Oscar acceptance speech for her work in Boyhood to call for equal pay for equal work. She is an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights as well. She used her 2019 Emmy acceptance speech for call attention to transgender rights and representation.

Speech Topics


Fighting Against Breast Cancer

More than 200,000 American women develop breast cancer every year, and about 40,000 lose their fight with the disease. After her mother died of breast cancer in 1997, Patricia Arquette vowed she would do everything she could to raise awareness about the disease and continue the fight for a long-awaited cure. Patricia has run in the annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and also was the spokesperson for Lee National Denim Day, which raises millions of dollars for breast cancer research and education. In this talk, Patricia tells the personal story of how breast cancer has affected her family, reveals the measures she takes to protect herself, and discusses how raising awareness about the disease and women’s health is more important than ever.

Turning Codependent Struggles Into Strengths

“When I arrived in Haiti after the earthquake, I realized that my marriage was in its last death throes and I was having a personal crisis,” Patricia Arquette says. “While I understood some of my own personality traits had led to this deconstruction, I also found that those same tendencies could be an asset when applied in a more significant arena.” In this personal talk, Patricia explains how, through finding a new relationship to community, others could help her just as much as she could help them. This talk takes a new look at the concept of codependency, and poses a complex question: can some of the same tendencies that wreak havoc in one’s personal life be focused in a more universal trajectory to bring mutual benefit to all? In this talk, Patricia explores how codependence can be transformed into a positive force—community interdependence—to help bring about significant changes to people’s lives.

Mutual Aid, Not Charity: Building Community-Based Recovery Efforts

Patricia Arquette’s nonprofit GiveLove is not just an ordinary charity. GiveLove takes a hands-on approach to helping those in need by empowering people to help themselves. GiveLove not only implements life-saving technologies in developing countries and emergency contexts, but also by educating communities on how to sustain those same technologies long after first recovery efforts are over. In this talk, Patricia explains GiveLove’s philosophy, which includes a major focus on education through Green School Programs and community-based technical training. These programs provide a place where children and communities learn about sanitation and ecology by seeing these principles in action and participating in the management of the projects. Their skills-transfer approach breaks from the standard aid model of dependency so that communities learn best practices to improve health in their own communities. GiveLove strives to support holistic community-led projects that help foster ecological awareness and empower Haitians of all ages with the skills they need to build and manage their own sanitation systems. This multi-media presentation, which includes photos and video footage of eco-sanitation training and technology in action, will show audiences that helping others goes far beyond monetary giving.

Turning Poison Into Medicine: Eco-Sanitation, Sustainability, and Public Health

The realities are harsh—2.6 billion people have no access to sanitation and 1.1 billion people do not have access to the most basic survival requirement: clean water. Lack of sanitation kills more children than AIDS, Malaria, and TB combined. And the number one pollutant to water sources, which is caused by poor sanitation, is entirely preventable. In this talk, Patricia Arquette addresses these harsh realities, and explains how her nonprofit, GiveLove, is using eco-sanitation technologies to work against them in Haiti. Patricia explains theromophilic composting technology, which, though a simple science, the dangerous pathogens in human excreta—the stuff that poisons millions—can be eliminated and transformed into new soil for growing crops that provide nutrients and save lives. Finally, Patricia explains how the same technologies GiveLove uses in Haiti could provide innovative, affordable solutions to one of the world’s biggest, most dangerous problems.

News


True Romance: Patricia Arquette 'Struggled' With Character | IndieWire
Feb 20, 2022 ... The actress initially objected to her iconic role because "her boyfriend murders someone and she's still like… yeah!"
Patricia Arquette Argues Liz Cheney's Vote Total Points to 2024 ...
Aug 17, 2022 ... Actress Patricia Arquette on Tuesday said the amount of votes that Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney received in Wyoming's primary shows there is enough ...
Patricia Arquette on her villainous 'Severance' character - Los ...
Aug 10, 2022 ... “I've done speaking engagements, and I've toured through those: 'Oh, here's our pinball machine room …' They feel very artificial — I don't know, it's weird.” ...
Patricia Arquette Is Still Sick of Women Coming Last | The New Yorker
Jul 3, 2022 ... The actress discusses her role on “Severance,” being wooed by Nicolas Cage, growing up on a commune, and how women are mistreated in Hollywood and beyond.
Patricia Arquette to give keynote address at Illinois State
Actress Patricia Arquette is a keynote speaker during a week of science and technology events at Illinois State University...
Patricia Arquette Hopes Sister Alexis Arquette Is Reincarnated Into a ...
Alexis Arquette, Patricia Arquette. John Shearer/WireImage. Patricia Arquette has one uplifting wish as she mourns the death of her sister Alexis Arquette.
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Patricia Arquette's Equal Rights Amendment Petition
Want to help make equal rights a reality? Sign Patricia Arquette's recently launched petition to make it so. Why the need for this petition and advocacy?
Patricia Arquette on gender pay gap: 'We've reached a breaking point'
Oscar-winning actress Patricia Arquette joined U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N. Y.) on Equal Pay Day to highlight the findings of a new Congressional report on ...
Patricia Arquette Pens Touching Statement Following Sister Alexis ...
Penned by Alexis' sister, fellow actor Patricia Arquette, and shared on behalf of the family on brother Richmond's Facebook page, the statement calls Alexis “a ...
Patricia Arquette: What Happened After My Oscar Speech on Pay ...
"When men support change, it has been shown it comes 10 times faster," says the Oscar-winning actress, who, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, recalls the ...
Patricia Arquette on equal pay and lack of diversity: 'Art is suffering for it'
Actress Patricia Arquette has made it her mission to get people talking about equal pay for women and a lack of diversity in Hollywood.
Jennifer Lawrence, Patricia Arquette Take Stand for Equal Pay at Women in Film Party
Discussions on pay inequality and gender diversity commanded the Women in Film Pre-Oscar Cocktail Party Friday night, where actresses including Jennifer Lawrence, Alicia Vikander and Patricia Arquette convened to honor 2016’s 51 female Oscar nominees.
Oscar Winner Patricia Arquette's Fight for Gender Equality Continues in an Impassioned Interview
Patricia Arquette Wins Best Supporting Actress Oscar, Demands ...
No need to consult a medium to figure this one out. Patricia Arquette capped off her victorious s...
Patricia Arquette To Speak At Texas Conference For Women
The 2015 Texas Conference for Women announced today that Patricia Arquette will appear as a keynote speaker at the 16th annual Conference on October 15, 2015 at the Austin Convention Center.
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