Angelina Jolie accepted the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and thanked her fiancé Brad Pitt, her children and her late mother, Marcheline Bertrand, at the 2013 Governors Awards on Saturday.

"My love, your support and your guidance make everything that I do possible," she told a teary-eyed Pitt while accepting the Oscar honor.

She then focused her attention on her son, Maddox, who sat next to his dad.

"I'm not going to cry I promise, I won't embarrass you," she told him. "You and your brothers and sisters are my happiness and there's no greater honor in this world than being your mom."

The 38-year-old went on to recall fond memories of her mother, who passed away in 2007 from cancer. She spoke about all the times she drove Jolie to her acting auditions.

"She would wait in the car for hours," she said. "She would always make me feel really good all the times I didn't get the job and when I did, we would jump up and down and scream and yell like little girls."

The mother of six also said that it was her mother who encouraged her to help others. While it took Jolie a while to understand what it truly meant to help the world as much as she could, she said she realized what needed to be done after she began to travel.

"When I met survivors of war and famine and rape, I learned what life is like for most people in this world," she said. "And how fortunate I was to have food to eat, a roof over my head, a safe place to live and the joy of having my family safe and healthy."

Jolie, who has built a successful film career, has lent her time to over 40 United Nations Refugee Agency field missions. She's also founded many charitable organizations on her own, including the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation, which assists humanitarian crises around the world. She's also the co-founder of the Prevent Sexual Violence Initiative.

In her speech, Jolie also mentioned Louis Zamperini, whom she called her "hero." The actress is directing the film, Unbroken, based on the Olympian and war hero's life.

As a part of the U.S. team, Zamperini raced in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In 1943, during World War II, he and two other crewmen survived a plane crash in the Pacific without food and water for 47 days. After washing ashore on enemy lines on a Japanese island, they were taken and sent to a prison camp. As a prisoner, Zamperini was tortured.

The film will come to U.S. theaters in 2014.