Oscar winner Meryl Streep uses her Golden Globes 2017 Award to take aim at President Elect Donald Trump as she receives the Cecil B. DeMille Award.
She also used the moment to praise her friend the late Carrie Fisher, ending her speech by saying: “As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once, ‘Take your broken heart, make it into art.’ “
First though, she slammed Trump for his ‘performance’ during the election. She said, “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 honour”
Referring to UK actor Hugh Laurie’s previous speech, she said: ‘Who are we, and what is Hollywood anyway? It’s just a bunch of people from other places,” she explained, detailing her New Jersey upbringing and the other various backgrounds of Hollywood stars including Sarah Paulson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Amy Adams, Natalie Portman, Ruth Negga, Viola Davis, Dev Patel and Ryan Reynolds. She asked sarcastically, “Where are their birth certificates?”
Streep referred to the shocking moment when Trump dealt with a disabled reporter. “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 modelled 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. When the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose.”
She insisted on the importance of the press standing up to Trump, adding: “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.”
For more of the Golden Globes coverage including the winners and red carpet looks, click here.
