Donna Langley Quotes Viola Davis While Discussing Her Status as One of Hollywood’s Most Powerful Execs: ‘I Hope My Ceiling Is Somebody Else’s Floor’

variety.com:

Angelique Jackson The first time Donna Langley came to the Cannes Film Festival she was a junior executive working on 1999’s “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.” “I had just been promoted and I was fortunate enough to get picked to come on this trip to be part of the support team, and it was great!

It was very different to this experience, I will say,” Langley said, eliciting a laugh from the well-heeled crowd at the Kering Women in Motion dinner, held at the Place de la Castre high above the Croisette. “[But] we had the time of our lives.

We were just in so much awe to be in the cinema capital of the world.” Indeed, the chairman of NBC Universal Studio Group no longer needs to share an apartment with four other young women — especially not one situated behind the fancy hotels.

After all — and as Cannes president Iris Knobloch noted while presenting Langley with the Women in Motion Award — the studio head is not only “one of the most powerful women in Hollywood, but one of the most powerful people, regardless of gender.” Langley explained that thinking about her first experience in Cannes reminded her about the power of saying “Yes.” “Somebody said, ‘Yeah, you can take that trip.