Cannes 2024: Meryl Streep dances to ‘Mama Mia’ as she gets Palme d'Or award

Streep reveals that she believed her career was finished when she reached 40 years of age.

Hollywood star Meryl Streep received a two-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival as she accepted the prestigious Palme d'Or.

The event featured music from 'Mamma Mia' including 'The Winner Takes it All' and ‘Dancing Queen’.

After the Tuesday night event, E! News posted a clip of the memorable moment when the actress strolled the red carpet and danced to the tunes from 'Mamma Mia', evoking nostalgia among fans for one of the actress's standout roles as hotel owner Donna Sheridan.

During the event, she revealed that she believed her career was finished when she reached 40 years of age. The award was presented to her by French actor Juliette Binoche.

While presenting the award, Binoche became emotional and expressed, "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."

Referring to Streep as an 'international treasure,' Binoche remarked, "You changed the way we look at cinema."

Speaking to the audience, Streep expressed gratitude to Cannes for inviting her back after 35 years. Her previous appearance at the festival was in 1989 for 'Evil Angels'.

She remarked that watching clips of her career felt 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.”

Streep reminisced about attending Cannes when she was about to turn 40 and a mother of three. "I thought my career was finished," she recalled.

She went on to say, "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 added, pointing to jury president Greta Gerwig.

For those who may not know, Streep and Gerwig collaborated on 'Little Women' in 2019.

Meryl Streep ended her speech by expressing her gratitude, saying that she is "just so grateful that you haven’t gotten sick of my face and you haven’t gotten off the train.”

She also shared, "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. Except for my speech, which is too long."

In her nearly five-decade career, Meryl Streep has won three Oscars and received 21 nominations.