At the Committee to Protect Journalists annual awards Wednesday, Meryl Streep opened up about her experiences facing "real, physical violence."
"I do know something about real terror," she said. "The two times in my life when I was threatened and dealt with real physical violence, I learned something about life that I wouldn’t have known otherwise and I was lucky because my instincts served me well."
Streep said during the first experience, she "played dead and waited until the blows stopped — watching like people say you do from about 50 feet above from where I was beaten."
"In the second instance," Streep continued, "someone else was being abused and I just went completely nuts and went after this man. Ask Cher — she was there. And the thug ran away, it was a miracle."
The two Academy Award-winning actors worked together in 1983. In an interview with Us Weekly, Cher talked about the time she and Streep saved a girl from a mugger in New York. Streep may have been referring to that encounter in her speech.
Streep added, "[I was] changed by these events on a cellular level because women do know something particular about coming to the danger place. We come to it disadvantaged through the many millennia preceding our present moment and because of our vulnerability, we anticipate danger, we expect it, we’re hyper alert to it."
Key takeaways: Don't fuck with Meryl Streep. Don't fuck with Cher. Don't fuck with women.
