Paul Drinkwater/NBC

As for Johansson, she used her opportunity at the microphone to address abuses of power and reflect on her own experiences as a young actress. "How is it ok for someone in a position of power to use that power to take advantage of someone in a lesser position just because you can? Does that ever make it ok?" she asked. "If a person isn't saying yes, but they aren't saying no, how can anyone feel justified to make that decision for them?"

In reaction to recent revelations in Hollywood and other industries, the actress experienced a range of emotions as she turned inward.

"Suddenly, I was 19 again and I started to remember all the men I'd known who had taken advantage of the fact that I was a young woman who didn't yet have the tools to say no, or to understand the value of my own self-worth," the Avengers star described. "I had many relationships both personal and professional where the power dynamic was so off that I had to create a narrative in which I was the cool girl who could hang in and hang out, and that sometimes meant compromising what felt right for me and that seemed ok compromising my voice and therefore allowing myself to be unseen and degraded and whether it was intended by the other party or not because it allowed me to have the approval that women are conditioned to need."