CANNES - Meryl Streep was guest of honour at the opening of the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, unfolding this year against the background of a director's daring escape from Iran and mounting #MeToo pressure on the French industry.
Streep is among a host of Hollywood A-listers flocking to the Cote d'Azur for the festival that runs to May 25, including legendary directors George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola.
"I'm just so grateful that you haven't gotten sick of my face," Streep joked to the audience as she received her honorary Palme d'Or from French actor Juliette Binoche.
Binoche presented the award to Streep with a tearful speech, telling her she had "changed the way we look at women".
Streep has only been to Cannes once before in 1989, when she won best actress for "A Cry in the Dark".
"Thirty-five years ago when I was here last time, I was already a mother of three, I was about to turn 40 and I thought that my career was over. And that was not an unrealistic expectation for actresses at that time," she said.
With France's film industry in the midst of a renewed #MeToo reckoning, Binoche was among 100 stars calling for a comprehensive new law to crack down on "systemic" sexism and gender-based violence in an open letter Tuesday.
The host of the opening ceremony, Camille Cottin, star of hit series "Call My Agent!" and an outspoken feminist, also took digs at the "biggest bad guy of all time: the patriarchy".
"The late-night work meetings in hotel rooms of all-powerful gentlemen are no longer part of the Cannes vortex," she said.