Meryl Streep Shares the Story of Her Own Experience With Violence
During the last six weeks, we’ve heard stories from dozens of empowered women, finally sharing their experiences with sexual assault and harassment at the hands of powerful men. But as Meryl Streep reminded us in a recent speech at an award ceremony for the Committee to Protect Journalists, that kind of threat is only one of the dangers women still face.
The Oscar-winner said there had never been a more dangerous time to be a female investigative journalist. “We do recognize the special cocktail of venom and ridicule which is always tinged with sexual threat that’s served up online for women—any woman in any profession—that stands up to tell the truth. I revere the people who do this because I am not a naturally brave person,” she said.
“But I do know something about real terror—the two times in my life when I was threatened and dealt with real physical violence, I learned something about life that I wouldn’t have known otherwise and I was lucky because my instincts served me well,” Streep said, according to The Daily Beast. “In one instance, I played dead and waited until the blows stopped—watching like people say you do from about 50 feet above from where I was beaten. And in the second instance, someone else was being abused and I just went completely nuts and went after this man. Ask Cher—she was there. And the thug ran away, it was a miracle.”
Streep and Cher both acted (and received Oscar nominations for their work) in the 1983 drama Silkwood. Cher had previously revealed that she and Streep once “saved a girl from a large mugger in New York City.”
She went on to explain how experiencing these moments of violence had changed her “on a cellular level,” saying women have been conditioned to be on “hyper alert,” to anticipate the violence so many generations of women have had to endure.
Streep also thanked the journalists who are making sure stories about women dealing with harassment and violence are not being silenced, saying, “You are the enemy of the people, yeah! Just the bad people. And I, on behalf of a grateful nation, thank you.”