Stephen Sondheim, Meryl Streep & More Will Receive 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom

Stephen Sondheim and Meryl Streep (descriptors are unnecessary) are among the 19 recipients of the 2014 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor. President Obama will present the award to the honorees in a ceremony on November 24.

Sondheim’s contributions to American musical theater include Company, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. He has won eight Tony Awards, eight Grammys, an Oscar and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Streep, who stars in the forthcoming film adaptation of Sondheim’s Into the Woods, holds the record for most Oscar nominations of any actor in history. She has won for Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie’s Choice and The Iron Lady. She made her Broadway debut in 1975 in Trelawny of the “Wells” and was nominated for a Tony the following year for A Memory of Two Mondays/27 Wagons Full of Cotton.

Additional recipients include author Isabel Allende, journalist Tom Brokaw, physicist Mildred Dresselhaus, congressman John Dingell, social justice advocate Ethel Kennedy, Native American writer and activist Suzan Harjo, congressman Abner Mikva, golfer and desegregation pioneer Charles Sifford, economist Robert Solow, actress Marlo Thomas and Grammy-winner Stevie Wonder. Medals will be awarded posthumously to choreographer Alvin Ailey, congresswoman Patsy Takemoto Mink, Representative Edward Roybal and civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.