Robert De Niro is among a growing number of celebrities who have paid tribute to Meryl Streep following her attack on Donald Trump at the Golden Globe awards on January 8.
De Niro, who last year expressed the desire to punch the president-elect in the face, sent his sometime co-star a letter, the text of which was obtained by People magazine.
It read:
Meryl — What you said was great. It needed to be said, and you said it beautifully. I have so much respect for you that you did it while the world was celebrating your achievements. I share your sentiments about punks and bullies. Enough is enough. You, with your elegance and intelligence, have a powerful voice — one that inspires others to speak up as they should so their voices will be heard too. It is so important that we ALL speak up. We love you. Bob.
Streep’s speech, made as she picked up the lifetime achievement award, took Trump to task for his impression of a disabled reporter.
“It kind of broke my heart ... and I still can’t get it out of my head, because it wasn’t in a movie,” she said. “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.”
Following the ceremony, the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association sent Streep an email to praise her address.
It read:
Dear Meryl, Congratulations once again on being the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Cecil B DeMille award recipient. We stand proudly behind our choice, and we applaud your 40 years of captivating work. You’re a class act, in and out of character. As an organisation of journalists, the HFPA stands by your defence of free expression and we reject any calls for censorship. We thank you for your unwavering support for the arts. With gratitude and respect, Lorenzo Soria.
Trump took to Twitter to defend himself against Streep’s speech, calling her “overrated”, but his social media retaliation did not find favour with many of Streep’s peers.
“Aren’t you supposed to be running the country?” said George Clooney, in response to the president-elect’s tweets. “We have to get back to talking and telling the truth, understanding that not everybody is an enemy, and that not all people who voted for Donald Trump are bigots — not even the overwhelming number of people who voted for Donald Trump. They’re disenfranchised, they’re mad, they’re losing their jobs.”
Meanwhile Viola Davis, who introduced Streep at the Globes ceremony, before herself critiquing the incoming president backstage, said: “[Streep] told me she was going to [expletive] off some people of so I was bracing for impact. I love it!
“I feel like anyone who was the mouthpiece of anything progressive, whether it was Martin Luther King or John F Kennedy, Mahatma Gandhi or whatever, [expletive] people off.
“She’s earned the right to say that, and I think all of us felt a sigh of relief. Sometimes you need the first person to dive in there and have the courage and the bravery to give a mouthpiece to what we were all feeling.”
