Meryl Streep Honors Carrie Fisher As Speech Makes Waves At Golden Globes

Few can hold the attention of a room quite like Meryl Streep. Especially a room with such glittering stars as the Golden Globes. Arriving to accept the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement, the 67-year old had seemingly lost her voice amid the moment that caught everyone's attention.

"I love you all," began the actress and the crowd erupted in applause. "You have to forgive me, I have lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this weekend and I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year so I have to read."

Before thanking the Hollywood Foreign Press, Streep wanted to point to all the nominees for their diverse backgrounds as the speech turned political.

"But who are we and, you know, what is Hollywood, anyway?" she asked rhetorically. "It’s just a bunch of people from other places. I was born and raised and educated in the public schools of New Jersey, Viola (Davis) was born in a sharecropper's cabin in South Carolina, came up in Central Falls, R.I. Sarah Paulson was born in Florida, raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio, Amy Adams was born in Vicenza, Veneto, Italy and Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates?"

Trump's Mocking Of Disabled Reporter Broke Streep's Heart

As Streep triumphed the multicultural melting pot that is Hollywood, she pinpointed one moment in the election that left her dumbfounded. On stage, Trump mocked a disabled reporter and it left the Florence Foster Jenkins star wanting to voice her thoughts on the matter.

"There was one performance this year that stunned me," remarked Streep. "It sank its hooks in my heart, not because it was good, it was -- 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 and power and the capacity to fight back."

What drove the point home for Streep was not the act purely in itself, but who it targeted.

"It, 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 real life. And this instinct to humiliate when it’s modelled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing."

Streep Honors Late Friend Carrie

Identifying one moment with a co-star, Streep said she had to stop for one moment to reflect on her life and how easy it can be taken for granted.

"Once when I was standing around the set one day," recalled Streep, "whining about something, we were going to work through supper or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me: 'Isn't it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor?' Yeah, it is. And we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy."

And not to pass up the opportunity to mention her beloved Carrie Fisher, the actress used her in the best context she knew how.

"We should be very proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight," she concluded. "As my, as my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once: 'Take your broken heart, make it into art.'"

Source: Los Angeles Times

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