Watch: Meryl Streep dishes it out to Trump in Award speech

Veteran actress Meryle Streep, who received Cecil B DeMille Award at the Golden Globes, took her time on stage to slam President-elect Donald Trump in a moving acceptance speech, pointing out that Hollywood was made of outsiders. 

 

Streep began her speech by saying that she had "lost her voice" and "mind sometimes earlier this year" so she would like to read from a written speech.

 

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", Streep said the association was made of -- Hollywood, foreigners and the press. 

 

"But who are we and what is Hollywood, anyway? It is just a place with a bunch of people from other places," Streep said, adding she was raised in New Jersey while Sarah Paulson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Amy Adams, Natalie Portman, Ruth Negga, Viola Davis, Dev Patel and Ryan Reynolds were all born in different places.

 

 

"Where are their birth certificates? 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. 

 

The multiple award-winning actresses, who is one of the most respected names in Hollywood, said the "performance" that stood out this year did not belong to an actor but Trump when he publicly mocked a disabled reporter. 

 

"There was nothing good about it, but it did its job. 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 on a public platform, it filters down into everyone's life because it gives permission for others to do the same," Streep cautioned. 

 

"Disrespect invites disrespect; violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose." 

 

The actress urged the press to stand up to Trump.  "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," she said of journalists. 

 

Streep, 67, ended her speech by quoting late Carrie Fisher: "As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once, 'Take your broken heart, make it into art.'" 

 

Viola Davis presented the honour to Streep, who has won eight Golden Globes and 29 nominations. 

 

Davis began her speech by saying Streep "stares" and that's the first thing one notices about her. She also tilts her head back with a "sly suspicious smile" and "she stares for a long time", making one think that they have something on their teeth, Davis said amid laughs from the audience and Streep. 

 

"Her artistry reminds us of the impact of what it means to be an artist, which is to make us feel less alone. 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," Davis said while paying a glowing tribute to her "The Doubt" co-star. 

 

The annual DeMille award honours those with "outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment." 

 

Check out the speech here:

 

 

 

Read the full speech here:

"Please sit down. Thank you. I love you all. You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this weekend. And I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year, so I have to read.

Thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said: You and all of us in this room really belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it: Hollywood, foreigners and the press.

But who are we, and what is Hollywood anyway? 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 was born in a sharecropper’s cabin in South Carolina, came up in Central Falls, Rhode Island; Sarah Paulson was born in Florida, raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids in Ohio. Amy Adams was born in Vicenza, Italy. And Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, raised in London — no, in Ireland I do believe, and she’s here nominated for playing a girl in small-town Virginia.

Ryan Gosling, like all of the nicest people, is Canadian, and Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, and is here playing an Indian raised in Tasmania. So Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. And if we kick them all out you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.

They gave me three seconds to say this, so: 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. And there were many, 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 hooks in my heart. Not because it was good; there was 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 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 the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose. O.K., go on with it.

O.K., this brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call him on the carpet for every outrage. That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in the Constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists, because we’re gonna need them going forward, and they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.

One more thing: Once, when I was standing around on the set one day, whining about something — you know we were gonna 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. We should all be proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight.

As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia, said to me once, take your broken heart, make it into art."