Meryl Streep Receives Honorary Palme d'Or At Cannes, Gets Thunderous Applause

Meryl Streep last appeared at the festival for 1989's 'Evil Angels'.

Meryl Streep won the honorary Palme D'or at Cannes Film Festival 2024.

(Photo Courtesy: X)

Veteran Hollywood actor Meryl Streep was overwhelmed as she received the honorary Palme D'or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. Streep got a two-minute-long standing ovation for the honour on 14 May.

A video showed the actor pretending to walk off the stage, but she returned and danced to the applause. Speaking at the event, Streep said she thought her career was over by the time she turned 40.

"I'm just so grateful that you haven't gotten sick of my face," Meryl Streep, 74, joked to the audience as she received her honorary Palme d'Or from French actor Juliette Binoche.

While handing the award, an emotional Binoche told Streep, "When I see you on the screen, I don't see you...Where does it come from? Were you born like this? I don't know, but there's a believer in you; a believer that allows me to believe."

Calling her an 'international treasure', Binoche added, "You changed the way we look at cinema."

While addressing the audience Streep said that watching clips of her career was like "looking out the window of a bullet train, watching my youth fly into my middle age, right onto where I am standing on this stage tonight. So many faces and so many places that I remember.”

She recalled when she attended Cannes the last time she was about to turn 40 and was a mother of three. "I thought that my career was over," she told the audience.

She then continued, "That was not an unrealistic expectation for actresses at that time. And the only reason that I’m here tonight and that it continued is because of the very gifted artists with whom I’ve worked, including Madame La President," as she pointed at jury president Greta Gerwig.