The Princess of Asturias Foundation

The holder of three Oscars, eight Golden Globes, two BAFTAs and three Emmys, after more than forty years of acting career, Meryl Streep is considered one of the best contemporary actresses.

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American actress Meryl Streep has been granted the 2023 Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts, as announced today in Oviedo by the Jury responsible for conferring said Award.

The Jury for the Award –convened by the Princess of Asturias Foundation– was chaired by Miguel Zugaza Miranda and made up of Claude Bussac, María de Corral López-Dóriga, Josep Maria Flotats i Picas, Dionisio González Romero, Cayetana Guillén Cuervo, Sergio Gutiérrez Sánchez, Maribel López Zambrana, Antonio Lucas Herrero, Joan Matabosch Grifoll, Helena Pimenta Hernández, Sandra Rotondo Urcola, Martha Thorne, Rosa Torres-Pardo, Patricia Urquiola Hidalgo, Carlos Urroz Arancibia, Tadanori Yamaguchi and Aarón Zapico Braña (acting as secretary of the jury).

This candidature was put forward by Pedro Almodóvar, 2006 Prince of Asturias Laureate for the Arts.

Born in Summit, New Jersey (USA) on 22nd June 1949, Mary Louise Streep, known as Meryl Streep, began her artistic studies at the age of twelve with singing classes, which she complemented with acting classes when in high school. A graduate of Vassar College (1971) and the Yale School of Drama (1975), Streep began her career in the New York theatre, starring in several Broadway productions, including the 1977 revival of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.

The holder of three Oscars, eight Golden Globes, two BAFTAs and three Emmys, after more than forty years of acting career, Meryl Streep is considered one of the best contemporary actresses. Known above all for her film roles, she has stood out for her characteristic versatility, which is supported, according to critics, by an extraordinary ability to interpret a wide variety of characters and reproduce different accents. She holds the absolute record for Oscar (21) and Golden Globe (32) nominations and is one of only two living actresses to have won the US Academy Award three times. The first one was for Best Supporting Actress for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), with which she also won the Golden Globe in the same category. At the beginning of the eighties, she had her first leading roles, for which she gained special recognition: The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981), for which she received a BAFTA and a Golden Globe, repeating the latter award for her role in Sophie’s Choice (1982), for which she also won her second Oscar. Films such as Out of Africa (1985) by S. Pollack, Ironweed (1987) and A Cry in the Dark (1988), for which she received an award at Cannes, figure as some of her best performances of that decade. The list of films with some of her most emblematic characters includes The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Marvin’s Room (1996), The Hours (2002), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Doubt (2008) –an interpretation distinguished by the Screen Actors Guild of the United States–, the musical Mamma Mia! (2008) and The Iron Lady (2011), in the role of Margaret Thatcher, which, in addition to a Golden Globe and a BAFTA, earned her her third Oscar. Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), The Post (2017), Little Women (2019), Let Them All Talk (2020) and Don’t Look Up (2021) are some of her latest films.

Philanthropist and committed to defending women’s rights and gender equality, she has been a member of the advisory board of the Equality Now organization and, in 2018, participated in the documentary This Changes Everything, about gender discrimination in Hollywood. Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters of France, Streep has received numerous honorary awards such as a César Award (France, 2003), the Donostia Award at the San Sebastian Festival (Spain, 2008), the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival (Germany, 2012), the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award (UK, 2015) and the Cecil B. DeMille Award (USA, 2017), among others. She was also awarded the 2010 National Medal of Arts and the 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom.

As stated in the Foundation’s Statutes, the Princess of Asturias Awards are aimed at rewarding “the scientific, technical, cultural, social and humanitarian work carried out at an international level by individuals, institutions or groups of individuals or institutions”. In keeping with these principles, the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts is to be granted to “the work of fostering and advancing the art of film-making, theatre, dance, music, photography, painting, sculpture, architecture or any other form of artistic expression.”

In all, 44 candidatures comprising 20 different nationalities were put forward for the Award this year.

This has been the first of the eight Princess of Asturias Awards to be bestowed in what is now their forty-third year. The corresponding Awards for Communication and Humanities, Social Sciences, Sports, Literature, International Cooperation, Technical and Scientific Research, and Concord shall be announced in the coming weeks (in the preceding order).

As is customary, the presentation of the Princess of Asturias Awards will take place in October in a solemn ceremony presided over by TM The King and Queen, accompanied by TRH Leonor, Princess of Asturias, and Princess Sofía of Spain.

Each Princess of Asturias Award comprises a Joan Miró sculpture representing and symbolizing the Award, a diploma, an insignia and a cash prize of fifty thousand euros.

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