Always forthright, elegant, vocal and amazing, the talented Meryl Streep does not hold back her political views and made that very apparent Sunday night at the Hollywood Golden Globe Awards while accepting the esteemed Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. Streep first took the opportunity, without mentioning his name, to censure Donald Trump and his political entourage for the attacks on immigrants and refugees.
As she cites Hugh Laurie's earlier comments, she says the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is part of "the most vilified segments in American society right now.” Think about it , she says. It’s made up of “Hollywood, foreigners and the press … But who are we, and what is Hollywood anyway? It's just a bunch of people from other places." Streep brings up her own diverse background along with that of some of her acting colleagues like Sarah Jessica Parker, Amy Adams, Natalie Portman, Ruth Negga, Viola Davis, Dev Patel and Ryan Gosling who are not only from different parts of the country, many were born in different parts of the world. Mocking Trump, she sarcastically asks:
"Where are their birth certificates?"
She says,"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!"
Streep goes on to talk about the job of actors and the great performances of this past year. But there was one performance that haunts her, referring to Donald Trump publicly mocking The New York Times' Serge Kovaleski, a disabled reporter.
“An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like. There were many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that — breathtaking, compassionate work.
But there was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hook in my heart. Not because it was good, there’s nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth.
It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It, (Streep pauses with her voice breaking up) it kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie, it was real life.
And this instinct to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in a public platform, someone powerful, it it filters down into everyone's life because it gives permission for others to do the same thing.
Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence.
When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose."
The actress then segues into the importance and need for a strong and fearless media right now. And she asks the audience and television viewers around the world to join her in supporting the committee to protect journalists.
"We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage ... We're going to need them going forward and they're going to need us to safeguard the truth.”
At the end of her speech Meryl Streep, in tears, pays a very moving one-sentence tribute to actress, activist and author Carrie Fisher.
"As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once, 'Take your broken heart, make it into art.' "
To watch Meryl Streep’s 6-minute speech in full, the Twitter video clip by Hollywood Reporter (@THR) is below.
Thank you to celebrities like Meryl Streep and to all those behind the scenes in the entertainment world who stand up for human rights, while speaking out against hatred, injustice and corruption. Through voice and actions, they seem to care more about the lives of innocent people here and around the world, than they do about losing fans, losing income and/or losing possible jobs. Some risk much more. So this is about courage, compassion and integrity and these are the human traits that are going to be tested going forward — perhaps now, more than ever in our lifetime.
H/t Ashley Lee/Hollywood Reporter