Meryl Streep Gives Graduation Speech at Barnard

Meryl Streep has been nom­i­nat­ed for 16 Acad­e­my Awards, and won two, over her bril­liant act­ing career. She’s one of Amer­i­ca’s greats. But it has­n’t gone to her head. Above, we have Streep giv­ing the grad­u­a­tion speech last month at Barnard (the wom­en’s lib­er­al arts col­lege affil­i­at­ed with Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty). And what comes across is some­one who does­n’t take her­self or act­ing too seri­ous­ly. Some­one who still gets a lit­tle charm­ing­ly ner­vous speak­ing in front of crowds. And some­one who rec­og­nizes that we glob­al­ly – and women par­tic­u­lar­ly – have major chal­lenges to con­tend with. It’s worth a watch, along with one of my favorite com­mence­ment speech­es: Steve Jobs at Stan­ford, 2005.

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