An emotional Meryl Streep received a standing ovation as she took the stage to accept the annual Cecil B. DeMille Award at Sunday night’s Golden Globes, and called out Donald Trump in a wide-ranging speech.
“You and all of us in this room belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it: Hollywood, foreigners, and the press,” she said, with a hoarse voice, as the crowd roared.
She then proceeded to list where some of the actors and actresses in the audience were born and raised. “Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners and if you kick ’em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts,” she said.
Slamming Trump without actually naming him, she said “disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence,” after recalling an incident in which the now-president-elect in November appeared to mock the appearance of a New York Times reporter with a physical disability. “When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose,” she added.
The legendary actress concluded her speech by stressing the importance of the Committee to Protect Journalists and the need to safeguard the truth.
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“As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia said to me once, take your broken heart, make it into art,” she said in her closing remarks.
Trump responded to Streep’s remarks on Sunday night in an interview with the New York Times, calling her a “Hillary lover.” Although he didn’t watch the show, Trump said he was not surprised he was slammed by “liberal movie people.”
Viola Davis, who won the best supporting actress film award tonight for her performance in “Fences,” presented the award to her “Doubt” costar.
“You are a muse” Dame Streep, she said. “You make me proud to be an artist. You make me feel like what I have in me — my body, my face, my age — is enough.”
Streep seemed an obvious recipient for the honor, as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has long been a fan of her work. In 2009, she became the most-nominated actor at the awards show, and now boasts 30 Globes nods, her most recent being for “Florence Foster Jenkins” this year. She lost to Emma Stone on Sunday for best actress in a comedy.
There’s even been a couple of years in which Streep played double duty on nominations: in 2009 (for “Doubt” and “Mamma Mia!”) and again in 2010 (for “It’s Complicated” and “Julie & Julia,” which she won).
Past recipients of the Cecil B. DeMille Award include Denzel Washington, George Clooney, Woody Allen, Jodie Foster, Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, and Steven Spielberg.
Watch Streep’s full speech below:
