Actress and Hillary Clinton supporter Meryl Streep was “shocked” to hear that fellow Hollywood veteran Clint Eastwood prefers Republican Donald Trump in this year’s presidential race.
“I’ll have to speak to him,” the three-time Oscar-winner told Variety in an interview. “I’ll have to correct that! I’m shocked. I really am. Because he’s more — I would have thought he would be more sensitive than that.”
Streep, who spoke in support of Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last month, was responding to a recent Esquire interview in which Eastwood said what while he doesn’t always agree with Trump’s campaign rhetoric or policy proposals, he would prefer to vote for him over the Democratic nominee.
Streep told Variety that people in large groups, and at Trump rallies in particular, often behave differently than they would in private.
“When you get a lot of people in a group, it can go good or it can go bad in a way that [overrides] each individual person,” the 67-year-old star told the outlet. “The aggregate of everybody’s emotion, it’s such a powerful thing. You can see it in the Trump rallies, where people I just know, in their living rooms, would be better people, are driven to the worst possibilities by the bloodlust in a crowd. It just gets ginned up and they’re outside of themselves. They’re behaving as a larger unit, not just themselves.”
At the Democratic National Convention last month, Streep relayed the story of Continental Army soldier Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man so she could fight alongside George Washington. The actress said that as the first female candidate for president, Clinton embodied the same “grit” that drove Sampson.
“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,” Streep said during her speech. “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’s admiration for Clinton is apparently mutual; in a 2014 interview, Clinton said that if she were to choose any actress to play her in a film about her life, she would choose Streep.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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