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Meryl Streep Turns 68

June 23rd 2017

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Streep won the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes earlier this year, but it was her acceptance speech that truly resonated with viewers. “There was one performance this year that stunned me. It, it sank its hooks in my heart,” she said, referring to then President-elect Donald Trump’s mocking of a disabled New York Times reporter in 2015. “Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.”
Various public figures attend the annual Women in the World Summit, including a diverse range of politicians, journalists and academics. Streep is a regular veteran, having taken the stage to speak out on various issues. In 2016, the three-time Oscar-winning actress closed out the New York City-based event by saying that the inroads made by women were all, “very, very, very, very recent, only a little bit more than a hundred years ago, which is a fraction of a millisecond of the whole human clock.”
"I remember when I turned 40, I was offered, within one year, three different witch roles. To play three different witches in three different contexts. It was almost like the world was saying or the studios were saying, 'We don't know what to do with you,'" she told NPR in 2012. Streep has been passionately outspoken about combatting the age-old problem of ageism in not only Hollywood but our society in general.
Streep has long been vocal about the importance of gender equality and feels strongly about female empowerment, which was evident in a 2015 interview with MORE. “There’s another specific challenge facing women and girls right now: We’re viewed as equals – but we’re still not there yet. For the first time, we have the expectation that we can have a broad array of choices, that we could lead in almost any part of society. And yet we face resistance.”
"What I try to do is deepen the humanity of each woman that I play. It comes from some kind of aggrieved part of my childhood where I felt disregarded—not by my parents—so that I needed to question things and show a woman who is saying: 'I'm not what I look like. I'm a different thing.'” This quote was reported by The Guardian in 2008, as part of a wider discussion about gender stereotypes, as well as how to refute them

Meryl Streep has spent four decades in the limelight, having won three highly-elusive Oscars, an American Film Institute Life Achievement Award, and just about every other gilded statue that can be bestowed upon Hollywood’s most elite stars and starlets. She led the applause during Patricia Arquette’s famous speech demanding equal pay for both men and women, and has been particularly outspoken about improving diversity within the film industry. She famously denied identifying as a feminist, seeing herself, rather, as a “humanist”. As the actress turns 68, we take a look at her most powerful statements off-screen.

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