Three-time Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep spoke in support of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at the party’s national convention on Tuesday night, taking the stage in an American flag shirt and letting out a triumphant scream as she arrived at the podium to deliver her speech.
“We’ve got some fight left in us, don’t we?” Streep opened up her brief remarks toward the end of the second night of the convention.
“What does it take to be the first female anything?” Streep continued. “It takes grit, and it takes grace.”
The 67-year-old Devil Wears Prada star went on to relay the story of Deborah Sampson, who became the first woman to “take a bullet” for the United States while serving under George Washington’s Continental Army disguised as a man.
“When she took a blast in battle, to her leg, she was afraid to reveal her secret, so she took out a pen-knife, dug out the musket-ball and sewed herself back up again,” Streep explained. “That’s grit.”
“And grace?” the actress went on. “Hillary Clinton has taken some fire over 40 years of her fight for families and children. How does she do it? That’s what I want to know. Where does she get her grit, and her grace? Where do any of our female firsts, our path-breakers, where do they find that strength?”
Streep was perhaps the most esteemed celebrity to appear at the Democratic convention on Tuesday.
The actress has been a vocal critic of Clinton’s opponent, Republican nominee Donald Trump. In June, Streep donned orange makeup and a fat suit to imitate the candidate during a performance of Shakespeare in the Park in New York City.
Streep’s love for Clinton is apparently mutual. In 2014, Clinton said in an interview that if she were to choose an actress to play her in a biopic film of her life, she’d choose Streep.
At the Women in the World Summit in 2012, Streep said she found plenty of “similarities” between herself and the now-Democratic presidential nominee.
“We’re roughly the same age, we both have two brothers — mine are annoying — we both grew up in middle-class homes with spirited, big-hearted mothers who encouraged us to do something valuable and interesting with our lives. We both went from public high schools to distinguished women’s colleges. We both went on to graduate school at Yale.”
Streep has also been an active supporter of Michelle Obama’s Let Girls Learn initiative. The actress joined Obama and her daughters Sasha and Malia for a trip to Morocco last month to promote the initiative.
Watch Streep’s full speech at the DNC above.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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