Meryl Streep: A Life In Pictures

Bale Streep is considered by many to be quite simply our greatest living film actress she's won two Oscars a BAFTA the French Lieutenant's woman six Golden Globes and has just added another faster nomination for her role in doubt she's famously perfectionist in preparing for her roles and her work encompasses critical and box office successes now across three decades Meryl Streep welcome to your life in pictures your first big movies in terms of public perception with The Deer Hunter and Manhattan and I wondered how you came to get those two parts as a such as sludging actress at the time were you ever a kind of unemployed waitress waiting filled big break I was a waitress a lot of the time but it was during university I paid for my scholarship I got a scholarship at the School of Drama at Yale and I paid for that with waiting on tables while I was in the school and during the summer the deer hunter came because Bob De Niro saw me in the Cherry Orchard where I played dunyasha the maid and I had taken as my what's the highfalutin acting word my endeavour I think you call it your endeavour I'd look at it - yeah I was going to fall down every time I came on stage for some reason or another just to make myself and the other members of the cast laugh that was my thing and that he saw that performance a shameless performance and cast me in the Deer Hunter was sort of amazing he went around into a lots of theater that that season he saw Chris Walken who was in I think sweet bird of youth and and John Savage who was in a play and it was early in his career when he first had some some clout and he took Michael Cimino around and and they they cast it from the theater actors in New York I think it was that we were as at stage in his mine you said in direct contrast in fact it to what many actors claim that all your parts are you in some shape or form and I wondered if that how you find the humanity in them and if that was a particular challenge in Sophie's Choice I think the the response that you have when you first read a script is the most the most honest one and the one that is sort of undeniable so I always would say I picked things to do reading scripts by when and if my heart started to race in a certain moment and that's happened more or less on different levels with it with most things that I've done certainly with Sophie's Choice it was a part that I really really coveted and it was difficult to convince the director Alan Pakula that I was up to it why does he think he might not be he wanted a real Eastern European girl he wanted or leave Ullman just something foreign and how did you convince him I remember those early meetings we just talked in depth and I read him some poetry in in a voice like Sophie a little bit and and I gave me the chance you know it's interesting that you should have gone to that part there Michael because in many ways it seems to embody a lot of the qualities that you've subsequently looked for in your roles a sense that you don't really know who she is you think you do and then you don't and you know that that sort of sense of an accuracy yes it's always intrigued me about about film because we do we do that with characters I do it when I in a film and I just in the first 10 minutes live I've decided who everybody is I've decided about the four and whether there are any good and I've decided who the character is and my absolute favorite favorite thing is to be convinced through the course of the film that I'm wrong because I so rarely am and it's just I like playing characters that you misconstrue and and because this is what we do is as actresses translate people and to each other and the ones that are most interesting are the ones that are the most misunderstood you mentioned them trying to convince and convincing a lacuna that you were right for the part and I wondered if there was a point at which you found that you were in the position discuss interviewing directors I've never done it I've never I've never I don't think been in that position and I've certainly never exercised it I've always project have come to me with the director even if it's a first time director they pick me I feel like it's important that there be somebody in charge and that it not be me are you sure and then from then all I try to take over but I do like the feeling of it being someone else's fault and just what does a good direct to bring an advance directive bring well the best ones are hideously over prepared I mean they they know the material they know everything about their own personal connection to the story they have one they're very very prepared or if they're not they convince you that they are not very important because you must feel trust and you must feel safe and you must feel that you can make all the mistakes in front of in front of her or him and they we'll fix it in the editing and they'll because they know what the piece is and having said that the second component is that they're willing to expand the piece to Delta they take all the good ideas and the bad ideas from it from everybody you feel collaborative they incorporate them or they don't but the door is open and it's just a wonderful feeling and the bad ones bring none of those things bad ones are jealous of the bad ones are I've had one director who said to me I noticed you're talking with the other actors when you're off the set and when I'm not there and I'd like it if you wouldn't do that because I don't like it when people are you know I like to be in on the thing that is like sorry you know like wow you playing Karen Blixen million as of Africa and in some ways like Sophie she's an intelligent and therefore perhaps a slightly unsympathetic woman do you think that that the to do seem to go hand in hand often and that's part of your challenge as an actress of the parts that you've taken oh darling then the whole evening in itself that conversation yes if the intelligence is attractive in a woman to a point and I think we all know you know beyond which we can't go so it's just we're talking about the Nexus of sex appeal and smarts it's it's a very interesting thing I think this was a dilemma in her life actually this was the problem how smart she was how how far she could see into the relationship and beyond and where it was going to go how far she could see her own the limitations of her own jealousy and and his needs to feel completely free of all commitment that some familiar this so most marks the beginning I think of people's fascination with your ability for accents and it always seemed escaping with a fascination as I imagine it's part of the job description Jeremy Irons gave me tapes of his Danish nanny and I had those and I actually there was a film of her very late in her life when she came to the United States she did a television program called omnibus and she read a short story borrow I are for Barney or something and it was beautiful she was very old and broken I mean at that point I think she was just eating three grapes a day and champagne which sounds like a perfectly good diet to me but she was very ill and she died soon after but I listened to that I was very lucky to have that and she spoke in a very specific kind of patrician Danish accent it's one of them only two films really that you've made that could be classed as Catholic romance I wonder if it was a genre but you had sort of resolutely avoided and because of I sense it was a trap involved in it as an actress I had never bought it evaded it I had never not been asked to do too many big romances but there weren't too many big romances either I mean out of Africa was unusual in its day for the epic sweep and it was a very expensive film to make at that time and people thought Sidney and his backers were crazy but Sydney is the director and it was a anomalous in its time and so I I would have done a million out of Africa's if they've been around but no it was you know singular but I think one thing I noticed when I see these films I just see how slowly they're allowed to play out the scenes it's a really interesting thing we're allowed to look at we're allowed to be in the breath of the people it's not not the way we were we edit films now I feel a difference you talked and you said that very early on you were aware of the potential for people to try and pigeonhole you that people would be wanting to try and pigeonhole you and how at the beginning you were the long blonde hair woman and you could see yourself being boxed in as a sort of mournful long blond hair woman and I wondered how much your choice of parts had been influenced by that kind of foresight mm well I saw early on because I had gone to drama school and I've never ever in three years played a realistic part at that time there was a prevailing theory at the school propounded by its Dean Robert Brustein no more masterpieces you should never revisit anything that's ever been done by anybody ever again and certainly will never do Arthur Miller you know since we all looked way down our very long to get Arthur Miller and everything realistic and it was just crazy but it did prepare me to think about my body and my face as a malleable instrument and one that could be all sorts of things and then of course you get to New York cast in a movie the dear Hunter and suddenly I was up for Kramer vs Kramer another part like that and then Manhattan and suddenly I saw my entire future sort of shooting out in front of me and it wasn't the way I thought about myself I thought I didn't think of myself just as this sort of modely person with this gigantic long blonde hair and and a mournful look in her eye I thought that there was so much more and I certainly wanted to have more fun with my career and so I looked for opportunities yes to screw with how I looked how I founded - it was conscious in a way to not be pigeonholed because I thought ah I'll die I'll die if I can't you know beam and throb and make a mess and all the things that are that are wonderful about acting now played Lindy Chamberlain his 9 week old baby disappeared from an Australian campground in 1980 Lindy claimed a dingo had carried her baby away that was convicted of murder and then in 1986 the baby's Kurt was found close to a dingo land she was exonerated a particularly difficult part to play and how did you approach it well I was it was an enormous responsibility because at the time we were shooting Lindy's case to be exonerated within the courts most of the people working on the crew felt that she was guilty she did the I just thought it was a brilliant script because it was one of the earliest investigations of the way our news has now become entertainment back then it's hard to put ourselves back but then the news wasn't scored like it is that was the very beginnings of they would cover her trial her face would come on and music yeah and it was absolutely amazing and we were all aghast of course that's the way the news is it's scored like a movie and edited for opinion but then I felt very very certain about her innocence and had long talks with her and her husband and I felt for her because she was such a cantankerous character Danil what was inherently he didn't wild like if she had a woman no she just if she just been sweet her you know so much would have come her way the sympathy of a nation and the fact that she regarded the scrutiny as an intrusion was something I should be taught and synthesized with she couldn't behave appropriately she saw her grief with private and she wouldn't display it for the entertainment of the evening you know News and she also you know didn't know that her eyebrows like this and I thought it was so important a thing about women who's you know it's why they all everybody gets Botox now so this everything will things up and is not threatening but her her eyebrows she poked them and I thought that had a lot to do with it you know with why she was judged so harshly looks count well after you and make that film I'm heavy for Hollywood for a period of time you went to live there because your children were young and you been asked by one of them not to drive them around the world anymore so he decided to go whether yes the kind of luck was where the work was and that led to you making and some more mainstream and different from she-devil death becomes her talk to me a bit about about that and hang you enjoyed living in diem the epicenter of the movie world well the first film I made out there with postcards from the edge which I absolutely adored and I thought you know this is pretty great smells like jasmine every day the Sun is always shining it's 75 every single day and those are the reasons that I hated it after five years I needed a little misery in my life or at least the dim racial memory of misery or at least the acknowledgement that you're allowed to be miserable or that you could you know have a bad day I don't know I found it relentless and sort of good weather the good humor the good way everybody looks good I mean that's me I'm you're the next one we're going to look at his adaptation which you described as I think as the most ambitious script you'd ever read perhaps that was at the time but it took to read that well that's that's Charlie Kaufman there's always a lot for the actors to contend with a lot of ideas and it's always always funny so I think I loved adaptation and I loved that he took this this book of Susan Orlean and turned it into a rumination on being I mean he let me go wild in this motel room you know all by myself and all I was drawing murals on the wall on the window the air conditioning oh and I filled the whole thing we were drawing you know we had to cut out some of this yeah I'm sure had a wonderful time and in a way you know the fact that you came up with that scene and and he he inserted in the film it seems to me to kind of confirm this sense that you know that was a great story it was a really interesting script postmodern irony laced with it but actually on paper perhaps lacking some humanity well it's it's great when you feel that you can add and the actor is the one that's going to add humanity if if there's going to be any do you think that you look for the gap then or the scripts where they're filled in most I don't I don't I always gravitate to films that are literate and where the writing is very good and I look at my lines and what I have to say and I'm seduced the way a theater actress is by the text because the text is king in my training and then I make the movie and I realize that the most powerful things in a movie or when she reaches back in the airplane and holds his hand in out of African you know it's just wordless it's the thing that is unsaid and left out and so anyway these are the things we discover on the set can't plan those sources the Devil Wears Prada such a brilliant and sharply observed comic town but I also wondered if perhaps it was territory that was really more alien to you than anything else you'd covered in that it dealt with the world of you know extreme high fashion and were you worried at all when you took the part that it sort of confirmed that stereotype of the very very nasty successful career woman it was very much of a of a piece of the book that it was adapted from with that scary stereotype and that was sort of part of its popularity people just love to hate certain kinds of overbearing women and I was similarly Kramer vs Kramer was the same kind of blockbuster hit where the wife was without question a and vilified and so I just said about to undermine that a little bit with what I knew about being a person with a lot of responsibility where enormous sums of money are resting on your shoulders and how well you perform and if you don't everything goes not only your job but everybody else's and and I used what I knew about how difficult it is to be a woman in power and what I've observed of friends who have made it to the top of certain businesses and the tricky negotiation and and how really it is easier sometimes to just be mean because it's what's expected you know I've had a few women directors and and the way the crew responds to them and or with the male directors if it's very very very different and so all of that was I thought I could deliver some of it in in The Devil Wears Prada and make it a film about work I was also reading in McEwan's book about a doctor a person who just loves his work and just lives to work and and I have a little bit of that in me your new film The Devil Wears a habit it could become titled yes what we're bacteria with or God or God and really it's the aloysius and and dad and I just want to have successful you think gang-related the transfers plays to screen is and because it's something that you've done a lot of both of you know you're asking the wrong person I think it's it's a very successful piece of film it's an unusual film in that it's almost like for me it was like Van Dyke you know seeing only faces and hands is just it sort of reduces everything down to just the confrontation visually orally and it's it's lean and I like I like that about it it's a difficult thing and that I don't understand how people do it because I don't think about things that way I think very subjectively about my character but I think it's quite a trick for a play writer to to adapt what's essentially a verbal thing into a visual a visual medium primarily and so this is this has the best of I think both and and it's also one of those one of those films where you make judgments about it early on and then you kind of have to unravel that all at the end and think about what you just saw one of the wonderful things refreshing things about this film is that you're left at the end still wondering with the you know hence the title and I wonder if it was true that you used to go about the set in between tapes Thank You Philip Seymour Hoffman I know you did it no it's not true yeah but John Patrick Shanley what a writer he is and he's the one who has gone around town and I'm the one who goes around cleaning up the mess because I never did this but he's made up this story now it's a I'm sure I'll be following it on the internet into my dotage you know but no it never happened I'm thinking it's unlikely you'll ever have a dotage minute right now you're in it as opposed to being in it and it's not really happening it I mean in recent years and particularly the wake of Mamma Mia you've overtaken axes like Angelina Jolie in terms of box-office draw and it clearly a very exciting scenario only areas oh yeah we know that them actresses should and do disappear at 40 and only come back to place of eccentric maiden arms and briefly before they die and what why do you think your career path is so different yeah that's very true I've always sort of consoled by the fact that Betty Davis made All About Eve which is about a crumbling elderly actress on her way out when she was 40 18 19 years younger than I am and Reza took heart from that yes I I do I think things that to me that says things have changed she did Baby Jane or whatever happened to be in hush hush sweet Charlotte with Joan Crawford these monstrous ghoulish old hags and they were I think 9 and 10 years younger than I am now so it's that you know 48 was really you were just getting the shovel ready instead of to go ahead changed are you just exceptional I think it's changing I think I'm forging a path I think I'm you know I'm out there on behalf of all the old broads and I'm proud to be there and and some people are happy about it some enough so screw and I wondered what you were thinking when you said yes so this is all singing oh except I was thinking I get to sing the winner takes it all that's all I thought Oh God because I you know I had taken my daughter who was ten and her birthday party to the theater in 2001 right after September 11th we had we lived downtown school and clothes blah blah and everybody the kids were all very you know kids they're just they were muffled and I wanted them I wanted something to really kick them into back into gear and so we went to this I opened the paper and it said unadulterated joy and I thought okay I called up I got tickets and we went they all choose in what is this and by the end they were standing up with all the Japanese tourists and they old ladies and you know the whole place was rocking people poured out of the theater at the end dancing down the street we had to go right and buy the deed CD and I thought this is a tonic for New York City I wrote them the cast a letter said thank you you gave us back our dancing shoes you know and it was awesome I still think about it and so I had no compunctions for one second I couldn't believe that they wanted me to be in it based on my body of work the restless gajam I was thrilled and we had the greatest time that any cast and crew has ever had to finally have what do you plan to do with this newfound power the super grossing meh gerd grossing box-office delivering well no superwoman I found out this month that I have a slot I'm sure you don't know what that is I'm I'm going to disappear as you of what that means that means I have a slot in the summer when it's a good time to put out a blockbuster and yes so they call it you know like they called it the Devil Wears Prada slot mama mia went into it and next year Julie Julia is going in so nice I have a clot guy my dang are you thanks for doing this mine it's [Applause] [Music]

Channel: BAFTA Guru

Views: 91,026

Rating: 4.899868 out of 5

Keywords: BAFTA, BAFTA Guru, British Academy Of Film And Television Arts (Award Presenting Organization), creative, career, film making, TV, gaming, actor, advice, movie, movies, movie making, meryl streep, oscars, winner, meryl, streep, meryl streep interview, interview, actors on actors, actors, long

Id: TEKDl_mnkps

Length: 30min 18sec (1818 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 17 2017