- I never imagined in my
wildest dreams that I would be successful. You live where you are. I think actors live
exactly where they are. The really good ones. Empathy is the engine that
powers all the best in us. I don't really have a
bag of tricks to go to or a method, you know? I don't. There are some days when I
myself think I'm overrated. - She's an American actress
cited in the media as the best actress of her generation. She's known for the
versatility in her roles, adaptations in the
characters that she plays and be able to take on multiple accents. She's one of only six actors
to have won three or more competitive Academy Awards for acting. She's Meryl Streep, and
here's my take on her top 10 rules for success. Number 10 is my personal
favorite, and I'm curious to find out which one you guys like the most. - I never imagined in
my wildest dreams that I would be successful. - [Crew Member] Role play. - [Director] Action. - [Meryl] The fear is
always there with actors. That you'll never work again. Help. Help me, help me. That goes with the territory. Oh gee, where am I going to go now? You have that fear, the
second job, third job, fourth job, you have it
all the way down the line, so each happy event, as it's
happened has been a surprise. - I'm not out of date am I? Picking flowers for a woman
as a sign of appreciation? - No, not at all, except
those are poisonous. (laughs) I'm Damacles with the sword,
you know, I really think it's up there by a hair. And every day it doesn't
happen I'm just thrilled. Yeah! I never thought it was
going to happen to me. You can't if you're an actor. I'm really freaking here
Johnny, why is he here? Some people do, I guess, go
in saying I'm going to be a star, and they are, but
for all those people that say that I bet there are hundreds
of thousands who say that and are still struggling. - Where you going? - I don't know. I know a lot of my success
has to do with luck. I've also poured a lot
of hard work into it, so I feel in some way
that I can justify myself but I'm just happy that
things have happened this way. I know about you and Thelma Rice. I know everything. It's all here. - Shit. - You didn't even have
the decency to hide the evidence, you just threw it in the drawer. Hotel, motels. - Aw, shit. - You couldn't even pay cash
like a normal philanderer. You charged everything,
I mean look at this. Flowers, look at all these
flowers that you bought for her! And you occasionally brought
me home a bunch of wilted zinnias, how can you do
this if I'm such a vixen? Tell me. - Is what you do an art? Is it a craft? Is it a job? - You mean is it high falutin
or mid falutin or a paycheck? Yeah, I don't know. When other people do it,
sometimes when I watch other people do it really well,
I think it's beyond an art it's like making music. - But at its best for you? - But at its best it's
like flying, it's great. It's great, and that's the
part I wouldn't give up and that's the part I
won't give up even though I love my children and being
home and doing what they need me to do. I certainly also need to
express myself in this way. I don't expect you to understand
but you must know that Jonas has become dangerous. He must be stopped. He must not get beyond
the triangle of rocks. - What do you want me to do? - You know, Jonas. I want you to find him. And then I want you to lose him. - How are actors different
than the rest of us? - Well, they live a zen life. It's very uncertain. And all lives are uncertain,
but actors know it. And actors, because you're
unemployed so often, and you live so intensely
in the moments that you are working, that when you come back to earth and
look around and that balloon has gone, and there's no other one on the horizon so you live where you are. I think actors live
exactly where they are. The really good ones. And that's why they seem kind of crazy. - But we all should be
there, isn't that where we should all want to be? - But there really ... Yes, I think so. I think it's an authentic way to live. I am an optimist. I believe in the future. And people who do are the
ones who make history instead of just sitting around
- [Male] Ellie. watching it. No they're willing to take the big risks. Yes, I made a decision. Oh, god. Where are all the men anymore? My father Tyler Prentiss
never asked, "Is this okay? "Is this okay?" You know what I'm saying, Mark? He just did what needed to be done. - You said that in trying
to find a character you look for what comes out of the eyes. - I think I meant that in
connection to working ... I don't feel like I exist
until I'm with someone else.
- [Interviewer] A partner? Yeah. - How important is listening? - It's everything. And it's where you learn everything. And I always think of acting ... when I was applying to law
school and thinking, "Well, "acting is a stupid way
to make a living, and it "doesn't do anything in the world." But I think it does. I think it does. I think there's a great
worth in it and the worth is in listening to people who maybe don't even exist or who are voices in your
past, and through you come through the work and you
give them to other people. And I think that giving
voice to characters that have no other voice is a ...
that's the great worth of what we do. Because so much of acting is vanity. So much of this is ... I mean this feels so great
to come out here and sit here and have everybody clap,
but the real thing that makes me feel so good is when I know I've said something for a soul, you know I've presented a soul. - Ah! Ah! - Yes! No! Oh, damn. This is pointless. Wait a minute. This is ridiculous, we
can't even hurt each other. We can't even inflict pain. - Pain? I'll tell ya about pain! - I've thought a lot about
the power of empathy. In my work it's the current
that connects me and my actual pulse to a fictional
character in a made up story. It allows me to feel
pretend feelings and sorrows and imagined pain. And my nervous system is
sympathetically wired, and it conducts that
current to you, sitting in a movie theater. And to the woman sitting next
to you, and to her friend so that we all feel that
it's happening to us at the same time. It's a very mysterious and
valuable resource of the human species. And women I think access
it most effortlessly. We cry at sad movies, we
don't feel we lose face or stature or position doing it. We see a news story that enrages us and we write letters through
tears, our hearts pounding. I've often, I used to wonder
why human beings developed these inconvenient and
embarrassing responses, this sniffling, choking, wet obstruction. (laughs) You know, the thing that
physicians and soldiers, and stock traders and
journalists and fashion models, and politicians, and news
commentators, and venture capitalists all must suppress
in order to work most efficiently. (laughs) I thought what possible value, function could it serve
in the Darwinian scheme of survival of the fittest and
the strongest and the most heavily armed. No seriously, I thought
why and how did we evolve with this weak, and
useless passion in tact within the deep heart's core. And the answer as I've
formulated it to myself is that empathy is the engine that
powers all the best in us. It is what civilizes us. It is what connects us. Every woman needs makeup. Don't let anybody tell you different. The only woman pretty
enough to go without makeup was Elizabeth Taylor and she wore a ton. Your shoulders are all slumped
and your hair's all straight and you don't wear makeup. You look like a lesbian. - Mom. - Do you continue to learn? - [Meryl] Yeah, sure. - Do you really? - Yeah. - In other words, having
done this experience you are better. - I don't know, I don't know. This was so fun. And sort of effortless
that it, it didn't ... I think you learn more from
the challenging things, things that are tougher to do. In the past. - What was the toughest? - Oh. - Sophie's Choise or? - No. No, no, no. There have been tough things
that I care I probably won't go into, but just because they my molecules change in me,
according to how happy I am and my creativity gets ... What I learn every time
is how to wrangle all the elements that make me
love what I do and make it sort of happen effortlessly. And when that doesn't come
easily I don't really have a bag of tricks to go to
or a method, you know? I don't. So I come unmoored, and part
of that is a very good thing because you have to reassemble. Nobody knows what I'm talking about. - No we do! I'm sitting here thinking ...
- Actors do. - So, no, no, no. - And so it's very good to
have to start blank and figure out how to begin again. How to begin again, it's very good. - Methinks the right, honorable
lady doth screech too much! (laughs) - If the right, honorable
gentleman could perhaps attend more closely to what I'm
saying rather than how I am saying it he may receive a
valuable education in spite of himself. Many many of my friends woke
up at 3 years of age and said, "I have to be on the stage." And I've never, never had that. I've always been an omnivore. Interested in way too many
things and I actually found the one profession that
fed all my appetites. - What is it that you really like to do? - Eat. (laughs) That's what I like to do! - I know, I know. I know. And you are so good at it, look at you. - I know. And I reached a point senior
year where my adjustment felt like me. I had actually convinced
myself that I was this person and she, me, pretty,
talented but not stuck up. A girl who laughed a lot
at every stupid thing every boy said, and who lowered
her eyes at the right moment and deferred. Who learned to defer. When the boys took over the conversation. I really remember this so clearly. And I could tell it was
working and I was much less annoying to the guys than I had been. They liked me better and I liked that. This was conscious but it was
at the same time motivated and fully felt. This was real, real acting. I got to Vassar which 43
years ago was a single sex institution like all the
colleges and what they called the Seven Sisters, the female Ivy League. And I made some very quick
but lifelong and challenging friends and with their help
outside of any competition for boys my brain woke up. (applause) I got up and I got outside
myself and I found myself again. I didn't have to pretend,
I could be goofy, vehement, aggressive, and slovenly, and
open, and funny, and tough and my friends let me. I didn't wash my hair
for three weeks once. (laughs) They accepted me like
the Velveteen Rabbit. I became real instead of
an imaginary stuffed bunny. This is your third parish in five years. Why? - Call the pastor. Ask him why I left. It's perfectly innocent. - I'm not calling the pastor. - Okay, I'm a good priest. - Go after another child,
and another child until you are stopped. - What nun did you speak to? - I won't say. - I've not touched a child! - You have! - You haven't the slightest
proof of anything. - But I have my certainty. May I ask what you're writing
down? With that ballpoint pen? - Oh, nothing it's an idea for a sermon. - Oh, you had one right now? - I get them all the time. - How fortunate. - Sister Aloysius is quite
an unpleasant character. How did you prepare for that role? - Yes, she is an unpleasant
character, but for me the process has to do with being her and being in her
life and I imagine events in her life that might have effected her. Events that led her to marry
early to get out of the house. Events that after her husband
died led her to the convent. I look at the time in which she lived. This takes place in 1964
when for very smart ambitious women, there were very
limited opportunities. This will not do. - It's just til June. - I'll throw your son out of this school. - Why would you do that if
it didn't start with him? - Because I will stop this. I had very brilliant women
teachers who now would not be teachers because the salary is too low. They'd be lawyers or
doctors or businesswomen. Just because those opportunities
weren't there for women then. So I imagined, I just imagined
the whole context of where she exists, how she came to be here. But I don't know how
anybody can possibly believe that I have less of a stake
in mothering that little boy than Mr. Kramer does. I'm his mother. I'm his mother. How thrilling! Not to have it be about me. (laughs) Charlie Kaufman's acceptance
speech which he just faxed. Thursday night February 20th. It's been suggested that I
write a speech in case I win the BAFTA Award. I've been told Meryl Streep
has been kind enough to offer to accept on my behalf should I win. I feel some pressure to
come up with a speech that Meryl won't mind reading aloud. (laughs) I feel pressure to give her
a joke, but simultaneously the great fear that I might
give her, inadvertently, a bad joke and it will bomb and it
will be as if I have spit on Meryl Streep from across the ocean and this after she has
been kind enough to offer to accept on my behalf. This man is out of his mind. I don't want to do that. After all, she is just
great in adaptation, a truly amazing performance. (laughs) Oh god, I'm going to kill him. I should reiterate that
this is Charlie saying this not Meryl Streep who I
find exceedingly modest. Maybe one of the most
modest, nicest people ever. (laughs) Oh, I'm being set up. Again, that was me, Charlie. So, to be safe I'll keep it
simple and straightforward. I would like to thank BAFTA
for this wonderful honor. I would like to spank- (laughs) Thank Spike Jones. (laughs) I want to thank Meryl Streep
who I understand is here tonight. (laughs) Looks into the crowd,
he's giving me direction. Nic Cage, and Chris Cooper
whom I understand are not. I am not here either. I wish I were. Thank you very much. (applause) Oh boy, thank you. You know there are some
days when I myself think I'm overrated. (laughs) But not today. Now take back the soul of
Dennis George Finch Hutton. Whom you have shared with us. He brought us joy, and we loved him well. He was not ours. He was not mine. Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because
Mai Taruto asked me to, so there's a famous
entreprenuer that you want me to profile next leave
it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know which
of Meryl Streep's rules meant the most to you,
what advice struck you the hardest, what impact it's
going to have on your life. Super curious to find out. Leave it in the comments
below and I will join in the discussion. Thank you so much for
watching, continue to believe and I'll see you soon.
