Meryl Streep received the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes on Sunday night, and slammed Donald Trump’s “performance” in her acceptance speech.
“Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners, and if you kick us all out, you’ll have nothing to watch except for football and mixed martial arts, which are not arts,” she said, tearfully and with a faint voice, upon accepting the career-spanning honor.
She echoed Hugh Laurie’s comment about how the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is part of “the most vilified segments in American society right now” — Hollywood, foreigners and the press. “But who are we, and what is Hollywood anyway? It’s just a bunch of people from other places,” she explained, outlining her New Jersey upbringing, plus the non-Los Angeles backgrounds of Sarah Paulson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Amy Adams, Natalie Portman, Ruth Negga, Viola Davis, Dev Patel and Ryan Reynolds. “Where are their birth certificates?”
Streep then noted that one “performance” stood out this year: that of Donald Trump when he mocked a disabled reporter at a rally. “There was nothing good about it, but it did its job,” she said. “It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out my head because it wasn’t in a movie, it was in real life. That instinct to humiliate when it’s modeled by someone in a public platform, it filters down into everyone’s life because it gives permission for others to do the same.”
“Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence,” she continued. After calling for the press to stand up to Trump, Streep concluded her speech by quoting Carrie Fisher: “Take your broken heart, make it into art.”
Viola Davis presented the honor to the prolific actress has won eight Golden Globes and collected 29 nominations. “Her artistry reminds us of the impact of what it means to be an artist, which is to make us feel less alone,” she told her Doubt co-star. “You make me proud to be an artist. You make me feel that what I have in me — my body, my face, my age — is enough.”
At the Beverly Hilton Hotel ceremony, Streep was also nominated for her performance in Florence Foster Jenkins, directed by Stephen Frears and written by Nicholas Martin.
The annual DeMille award honors those with “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment.” Recent recipients include Denzel Washington, George Clooney, Woody Allen, Jodie Foster, Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Warren Beatty.
This article was originally published by The Hollywood Reporter.
