Meryl Streep gets teary-eyed accepting honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes 2024

This year’s Cannes Film Festival began with presenting veteran actress Meryl Streep with the honorary Palme d’Or. As she walked up to the stage, Meryl was received by the audience with a thunderous, two-minute standing ovation as she got teary-eyed at the massive love.

Being her usual chirpy self, Meryl Streep pretended to walk off the stage as she got a standing ovation but then obviously came back and did a little jig, thanking everyone for the love and appreciation.

French star Juliette Binoche presented the honorary award to Meryl Streep and said, “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.”

Meryl Streep is an "international treasure," says French actress Juliette Binoche

Binoche called Streep “an international treasure” before naming some of her iconic films that we have grown to watch and love and fan over.

Meryl then took to address the audience and thanked Cannes Film Festival for the honour, for welcoming her back after 35 years, when she made her last appearance at the festival for 1989’s Evil Angels.

Meryl Streep's Cannes speech

She said that watching her filmography clip on such a big stage 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 said that the last time she was at Cannes, “I was already a mother of three, I was about to turn 40 and I thought that my career was over. 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,” she said, referring to the jury president Greta Gerwig, who directed her in 2019’s Little Women.

Meryl Streep added, “And, incidentally, that was my daughter she was beating up in ‘Frances Ha’ in the first clip. I’ll speak to you about that later.”

Streep ended her speech by saying that she is “just so grateful that you haven’t gotten sick of my face and you haven’t gotten off the train.

"My mother, who is usually right about everything, said to me: ‘Meryl, my darling, you’ll see. It all goes so fast. So fast.’ And it has, and it does,” Streep said. “Except for my speech, which is too long.”

In addition to Meryl Streep, Star Wars stalwart George Lucas will also receive an honorary Palme d’Or at the closing ceremony.

Also Watch: Cannes Exclusive Interview - Manthan Goes To Cannes