Miley Cyrus champions entertainment community while accepting Palm Springs honour

Miley Cyrus took to the stage at the 36th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival on January 3, where she was presented with the Outstanding Artistic Achievement Award for her contribution to the soundtrack of Avatar: Fire and Ash.

Accepting the award for her song Dream As One, Cyrus acknowledged the communal experience of working in the entertainment business.

“So often during awards season, we’re set up as competitors, but we’re meant to be a community, not opponents,” she said. “There is no single best, it’s only our personal best work.”

“Numbers can make it feel like a sport, but performance runs so much deeper than a scoreboard, because each artist, they bare their soul in a completely unique way, and every contribution leaves its own mark on history,” the singer-songwriter added in her speech.

“Whether you’re in or out of this industry, we all have a persona, even the ones that are rooted in authenticity, because self creation is an art form, and all of us, we perform genuinely,” she went on to note. “That’s something that I deeply admire in both award-winning actors and actresses, and the drag queens of Toucans — they’re kind of the same.”

Further shouting out her “friend” James Cameron for “stories like ‘Avatar’” — “it’s always cool to say that,” she joked about the boast — the former child star thanked the audience in attendance for “recognizing their work that I’m totally backpacking off of. They’ve worked on this movie for 16 years; I’ve been involved for like a month, and I get to go to all the same events!”

Miley Cyrus’ song for the James Cameron-directed threequel of Avatar is further nominated for a Golden Globe this year, with the awards ceremony set to take place on January 11.