Meryl Streep took dead aim at the controversial rhetoric and behavior of President-elect Donald Trump in her Cecil B. DeMille Award speech at the 74th annual Golden Globes — without ever mentioning him by name. It wasn't long before she drew a rebuke from the incoming Commander-in-Chief. Streep, who was a passionate supporter of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign, used her platform (where she was being honored for her lifetime achievement as a film actress) both to defend Hollywood against charges of elitism and to call for people in the performing arts to remain resilient and proactive in the face of intolerance. More from NBC News:

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"Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners," Streep said after describing the diverse backgrounds of some of her acting contemporaries ("Where are their birth certificates?" she asked pointedly). "So if you kick them all out, you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts. And that is not the arts," she said.

Deray McKesson tweet Although the president-elect told the New York Times early on Monday that he did not watch the telecast, he called Streep a "Hillary lover" and said that he was "not surprised" he'd been the subject of anger and butt of jokes by "liberal movie people." The "Florence Foster Jenkins" star also called out Trump's infamous mimicking of a disabled New York Times reporter earlier last year, which many have argued was a deliberate attempt to mock members of that community. Trump has denied mocking the reporter. "It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I can't get it out of my head, because it wasn't in a movie. It was real life," Streep said. "And this instinct, to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. "Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose," she added. "We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call him on the carpet for every outrage." She called on the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (which organizes the awards) and the audience to support the Committee to Project Journalists and ended her emotional speech with a tribute to Hollywood performers' ability to convey empathy through their work.

In this handout photo provided by NBCUniversal, Meryl Streep accepts Cecil B. DeMille Award during the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 8, 2017 in Beverly Hills, California. Getty Images

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