Donald Trump says Meryl Streep 'overrated' after Golden Globes speech, denies mocking reporter
Updated
US President-elect Donald Trump has called Hollywood star Meryl Streep "one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood", after she criticised him at the Golden Globes.
The actress never mentioned Mr Trump by name, but it was clear who her target was in pointedly saying a performance from the past year that stunned her came from the campaign trail.
She noted an incident where "the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country" imitated a reporter with a disability from The New York Times.
"It kind of broke my heart when I saw it," she said.
"I still can't get it out of my head, because it wasn't in a movie. It was real life."
Streep said that "when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose".
Mr Trump responded in a series of early-morning tweets, calling Streep "one of the most overrated actresses in Hollywood" and "a Hillary flunky".
He also defended himself against claims that he was mocking Times reporter Serge Kovaleski.
At the White House, press secretary Josh Earnest said that Streep had clearly delivered "a thoughtful, carefully considered message" that reflected her deeply held beliefs.
"It seemed to me to be a fairly straightforward exercise of her First Amendment rights, as this is the United States," Mr Earnest said.
Streep noted "Hollywood" was a reviled place, but she said it was really a community filled with people from other places united in the mission to show different people and make audiences feel what they feel.
"Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners, and if we kick them all out, you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts," she said.
Streep put in a plug for vigorous journalism, urging that contributions be made to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and it apparently worked.
The CPJ said it had received about 700 online donations totalling $US60,000 ($81,000), communications associate Mehdi Rahmati said.
He said ordinarily only a handful of donations would have been received during that time period "and people are still reaching out".
While Streep won the annual Cecil B DeMille Award and boasts 48 Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, her career is still current.
She was nominated this year for her portrayal of a bad opera singer in Florence Foster Jenkins.
AP
Topics: us-elections, film-movies, government-and-politics, united-states
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