Eight-time Golden Globe winner Meryl Streep will take home a special statuette at the 2017 Golden Globe Awards. She’ll accept the Cecil B. DeMille Award, given for “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment,” Variety reports. The actress, who has been acting onscreen for about 40 years, holds the record for most Golden Globe nominations, a whopping 29. She received her first nod in 1979 for “The Deer Hunter,” and scored her first win one year later for “Kramer vs. Kramer.”
Streep is also a 19-time Academy Award nominee, and has taken home three Oscars. Her latest film, “Florence Foster Jenkins,” sees her playing an untalented but hardworking aspiring opera singer. Streep is considered likely to score nominations for the role come awards season.
Previous recipients of the Cecil B. DeMille Award include Jodie Foster, Barbra Streisand, and Bette Davis.
“It’s no surprise that the HFPA has chosen Meryl Streep as the recipient of the 2017 Cecil B. DeMille Award,” Hollywood Foreign Press Association president Lorenzo Soria said. “Meryl’s enthralling body of work across a diverse set of genres has made her a role model over the past 40 years, and she will continue to do so for generations to come. She has always taken roles with strong female leads, creating art by showing vulnerability and portraying truth on the big screen. Simply put, she is a trailblazer, having paved the way for women in television, film, and stage. For shattering gender and age barriers, all with finesse and grace, the HFPA is humbled to bestow this honor upon her.”
Streep is one of the very few actresses over the age of 60 to get starring roles — or even appear onscreen. The actress has said that after she turned 40, she was offered three witch roles in the span of one year. “I was not offered any female adventurers, or love interests, or heroes, or demons,” Streep shared. Of course, ageism isn’t just an issue facing actresses. As such, Streep has repeatedly funded The Writers Lab, a four-day intensive workshop for twelve female screenwriters over the age of 40.
Streep’s recent credits include “Suffragette,” “Ricki and the Flash,” and “Into the Woods.” She’ll star in 2018’s “Marry Poppins Returns” alongside Emily Blunt.
The 74th Golden Globe Awards ceremony will take place January 8, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California.
