Why Do We Love Meryl Streep?

there are certain celebrities who are untouchable people who for the most part everybody agrees are pretty awesome and you're definitely in a minority if you don't think so you're Beyonce's if you will but if we're talking sainted celebrities subcategory actresses as we do on this channel we're talking Meryl Streep Meryl Streep holds a special place in pop culture with three Oscar wins and 21 Oscar nominations under her belt she's the most nominated actor ever by far and given that she's a regular presence in huge blockbusters that make a ton of money it's no question people love Meryl Streep from the Hollywood elite to the average film consumer so much so that it's basically taken for granted so how did this happen what is it about Meryl Streep that makes her so great and when did Meryl become Meryl today we're going to talk about Maris career what in particular sets her apart from other actors and how has she stayed on top since that early 80s what is it about her that makes her so good [Music] Meryl Streep arrived in New York City in 1975 to begin a stage career and from these early moments she was considered an actress to be taken seriously now we can't know what Meryl was like on stage because theater but labels like rising and ascending star happened for a reason critics saw quote nothing short of a succession of resounding triumphs prompting them to write things like Meryl Streep remember the name you'll be hearing it again in her first season in New York City alone Meryl landed seven leading roles and nearly won a Tony for 27 wagons full of cotton it's impressive of course to get that many roles but what astounded audiences and critics alike was her range which establishes our first and probably most obvious factor in her success her skill more specifically her versatility in her first two years as a professional Meryl was in Shakespearean comedies of Brechtian musical plays by check off and Tennessee Williams critics compared to her to Buster Keaton for her physical comedy one moment and praised her as the female equivalent of Laurence Olivier in the next she could be comical yet sturdy and mature perhaps more important than her ability to convincingly inhabit these characters is that she developed a reputation that she could Meryl can play anything was pretty much the brand from the beginning but how we define that versatility has grown and shifted with her career Meryl entered film with a few high-profile supporting roles that launched her as a verifiable and respected film actress by 1978 and by 1979 she had an Oscar for Kramer vs Kramer which we'll discuss in a bit more detail later but it was in 1981 that Meryl finally landed a leading role that would bring acclaim for her versatility to a new medium in the French Lieutenant's woman she played a dual role essentially the perfect vehicle for showing range as Roger Ebert pointed out she is offhandedly contemporary one moment and then gloriously and theatrically Victorian the next she followed that up with something entirely different and what may be one of the best recorded performances ever in Sophie's Choice Meryl plays a Polish survivor of the Holocaust wrestling with haunting memories of the family she once knew while navigating complicated romantic relationships sophie was her most elaborate role to date giving her the space to explore both the highest highs and lowest lows of humanity Merrill disappears into this character you can see Sophie thinking and calculating to the point that nothing about her seems like the invention of an actress I think Vincent can be described at best her performance is a ravishing combination of technical skill and mysterious artistry and how such a fusion is achieved I have no idea all one can do is appreciated part of what made her so effective was her affinity for accents Sophie's Choice building on the British accent she used in the French Lieutenant's woman highlighted her chameleon-like ability to shift identity and nationality which became a key aspect of her notoriety this helps explain why she spent the rest of the 1980s and roles requiring a variety of accents and vocal affectation typically in period pieces and yes I did make a chart by 1991 the New York Times referred to her as the woman of a thousand accents I mentioned this because a lot of skill in acting is really difficult to measure but accents are a tangible way to observe how Meryl sets herself apart from her peers and it has been since her early theatre days eleven of Meryl Streep's 21 Oscar nominations involves some kind of accent and I'm not even counting what she does in Julia and Julia or The Devil Wears Prada for example compare this to the next most nominated American actresses Katharine Hepburn never once attempted to change her voice in her life Betty Davis and Geraldine page did twice Glenn Close Jessica Lange Ellen Burstyn did once Jane Fonda it never did to be clear I don't necessarily mean to suggest a causal relationship here that accents are the reason Meryl is successful at the Oscars I mean the only other frequently nominated American actress with an equal percentage of accents is Amy Adams and it's clearly not working for her rather what these numbers reveal is that Meryl Streep is trusted with a diversity of identities with a frequency her peers are not we can see that her roles vary wildly in persona in the 1980s alone she transitioned from a polish Holocaust survivor to an Oklahoma labor activist to a British fire in the French Resistance to a Danish author to a drunken Albany an Australian mother and then some Sophie's Choice rightly won Meryl her second Oscar in three years which cemented her in hollywood's hive mind as a genius however the prestige drama accent thing can really only go so far although critics regularly singled her out as the greatest actress of her generation by the late 80s they basically got bored it wasn't really interesting anymore to see Meryl endure another tragedy has some variation of a foreign woman she gained a reputation for intellectualizing her work for not being organic or as Ladies Home Journal put it in 1988 for her humorless selection of characters people wanted to see more Meryl in Meryl Streep movies to see more than just a hint of her comedic skill Bernard Weintraub bluntly put it lighten up enough with the accents if she wanted to surprise and re-engage audiences to last in Hollywood she needed to expand to their idea of her versatility beyond drama by the late 80s we see a pretty abrupt shift in the tone of her movies in a concerted effort to diversify her filmography she-devil defending her life death becomes her did these films actually achieve a new communities for her kind of at the time most of her attempts in this area were reviewed quite negatively at least for her she changed management and as she moved into the 90s and 2000's sporadically took more traditionally mayoral roles to revive and sustain her career like The Bridges of Madison County Angels in America and ours and then the Devil Wears Prada happened The Devil Wears Prada is extremely important to the Meryl Streep discourse because that's when everybody finally bought it and this is where I would argue that Meryl became Meryl I think at this point most people have seen The Devil Wears Prada or at least have heard some of its more famous quotes now The Devil Wears Prada is a good movie but it is absolutely not the same without Meryl her deep voice calmly and authoritative Lee puts her inferior x' in their place a slight rise of the eyebrows shows the gravest disdain and yet through all the witticisms she conveys a complex in her life earning sympathy for a character who unless deft hands may have appeared purely antagonist the result crucially United critics and audiences The Devil Wears Prada became her highest-grossing film to that date and she gained an entirely new generation of younger fans top critics couldn't help but add to the praise Denis Lim wrote that if Meryl didn't win an Oscar for this role it was because in her own iconic institutional way she's underrated Ella Taylor wrote Streep whose dramatic performances tend toward the over wound and accent heavy has found a second wind as a comedian Molly Haskell echoed this sentiment in a tribute and film comment magazine after years of respecting the work of Meryl Streep what is it that made audiences suddenly fall in love with her in The Devil Wears Prada there's a different kind of excitement about Streep that wasn't there before when she's on screen it's such outrageous fun that the actress and her career are cast in a new light Meryl is proving now that she can do effortless as well as strenuous ensemble as well as star and enjoy rather than hide behind her talent I think that pretty much nails it The Devil Wears Prada opened up Meryl her versatility appeared universally accepted as all-encompassing Meryl became a major box-office draw in her late 50s in the industry that considers middle-aged women disposable and we do see a wider variety of genre in the following phase than in any other throughout her career consider that she made mama Mia her greatest box-office achievement by far doubt and Julie and Julia in a row she has the range and then came the Iron Lady in 2011 for which she won her third Academy Award the wind served less as a congratulations for an especially outstanding performance if you want good Margaret Thatcher content watch Glinda Jackson's rant about her in Parliament and more enough well campaigning and the sense that Meryl had essentially become deified routinely turned out incredible work and yet had not been recognized for her achievements since the early 1980s once again her propensity for accents and disappearing into character work carried her across the line it's pretty incredible that the same woman who played Margaret Thatcher played Miranda Priestly played Sophie play Donna played sister aloysious her versatility speaks to her skill obvious but also to how Hollywood allows women to function because her filmography is the exception that proves a rule [Music] so Hollywood wasn't such a great place for women in the 80s and 90s mostly because there weren't very many opportunities for them consider this headline from 1996 titled finally enough actresses to nominate for Oscars the article describes how the Academy had four years and during the embarrassment of trying to find five nominees in the Best Actress category and that many considered the fact that they finally had enough a fluke yikes Meryl entered Hollywood in the late 1970s meaning a bulk of her early career was spent in that environment with many actresses fighting for very few leading roles Meryl strengths as we've established is her versatility the diversity of her character work led her to being typecast as a prestige actress who is not typecast she can play anything be anyone as joy Horowitz wrote in 1990 one mystery seems to have fashioned her career on being unpredictable that word unpredictable was not a privilege afforded to many actresses in her peer group Hollywood establishes types meaning it usually calls upon an actor to play variations of the same role over and over again based on his or her strengths whether or not a majority of an actors roles actually are of a certain type doesn't actually matter because we end up attributing certain characteristics to entire of rows of work anyway like how we think of Julie Andrews as a forever nanny or how it's weird seeing Keira Knightley in modern clothing because I'm pretty sure she lives in the past somewhere very few lead actors avoid this notable exceptions include Barbara Stanwyck kind of Cate Blanchet I could see an argument for Nicole Kidman or Toni Collette there are definitely others but we're here to talk about Meryl Streep her success has a lot to do with her versatility but more broadly it also has to do with the boxes most actresses are forced to stay in so rather than simply looking at Meryl to understand her longevity we have to look at her peers if we look at the filmography of actresses who started at a similar time or who are comparable in age we can clearly see how Hollywood types them for example I think most people know what a Diane Keaton role is she's quirky a little insecure wearing some wide legged pants and and sexual hang-ups she'd like to tell you about the one-two punch of fatal attraction and Dangerous Liaisons branded Glenn Close is conniving and villainous for a long time Sigourney Weaver is tough as hell Sally Field is spunky and lovable [ __ ] Spacek is Southern Bette Midler is a funny singer Jessica Lange though never solely a sex symbol Marva Norrish ingenue had roles that frequently revolved around her looks avoiding typecasting gave Meryl maneuverability meaning more cross genre opportunities and the perception that she could be more useful longer imagine for example casting Diane Keaton or [ __ ] Spacek as Margaret Thatcher honestly I would still pay to see those movies but something about it doesn't intuitively make sense because we aren't used to seeing them that way conversely I still confused it's complicated and something's got to give because there's too much white casualwear and Marilyn Diane could easily switch roles and you'd think nothing of it Meryl is perceived to be able to do both now this is by no means a qualitative judgment it's not that other actresses couldn't do anything else it's that they were rarely asked to and there weren't very many opportunities for them to try plus the window for ample and substantial roles for women is much smaller than their male counterparts the sad reality is that looks and age affect women's careers to a larger extent than men's consider Cary Grant or the bonds or anyone Grace Kelly was paired with ironically marrows longevity is also due in part to the fact that she was never a sex symbol because they have the shortest shelf life think Raquel Welch Sharon Stone Kathleen Turner or even Megan Fox not that long ago Karen Hollinger points out that Streep is unique as a Hollywood actress and that her stardom is almost entirely based on her reputation as a great actress rather than glamour and sexuality over the course of her career Streep has avoided overly sexual roles and ones that require nudity that doesn't mean people didn't recognize her beauty journalists frequently brought up her hair and her cheekbones as they should the key distinction being between elegance and beauty and glamour and sex part of marrows charm is that she never once presented herself as hot one even though she totally could have her authenticity takes its root in general disdain for celebrity culture she doesn't like interviews has chosen to live in Connecticut for a majority of her career famously has never mastered the red carpet and has only been married once to king of plus-ones Don Gummer Meryl is distance but charismatic herself and specifically everyone she plays now this seeming relatability is another key factor in Merrill's career because skill alone does not a beloved actor make our icons serve some need or tell stories that resonate with us or reflect society in a meaningful way from the earliest days for career Meryl Streep has often chosen roles that have done just that frequently in subtle ways that make her a more accessible figure too many women of her generation Molly Haskell writes even when not overtly feminist her films of the late 70s and 80s are hooked into the American cinemas ongoing struggle to sort out its ideas and feelings about modern womanhood probably the best example of this is Kramer vs Kramer released in 1979 the film spoke to very real conflicts women had with the traditional family structure in the later stages of second wave feminism at face value Merrill's character is the least sympathetic in the film turns out abandoning your child is not a good look but where others may have easily fallen into demonization Meryl instead found nuanced by closely working with the director in some cases rewriting her own lines to ensure that the audience understood her character's revolutionary self-actualization she speaks about feeling robbed of her self of intense guilt so while not a film specifically about her or the women's movement it felt in touch with an inner turmoil of many women of that time Meryl won her first Oscar for this role and continued to find moments that connected her with audiences through different stages of adulthood and related to the changing status of women in society take this scene in plenty from 1985 at a time when many working women were adjusting to majority male office spaces on a large scale Merrill's character the lone woman at this meeting makes a suggestion which is promptly ignored when a male colleague rephrase is the exact same suggestion the group embraces it later she expresses the anxiety of negotiating these gender dynamics to a friend and so with the men that I've met at work my friends as you'd say I usually feel that I'm holding myself in if I fear of literally blowing them out of the room women recognize the subtle yet poignant moments they understand a mother in Marvin's Room grappling with a rebellious teenage son and an ailing parent or a woman following her passion to find her career in Julie and Julia even in Mamma Mia a mother watching a child enter a new phase in life it's important to note that these roles intentionally do not alienate audiences her work remains within certain boundaries less likely to turn audiences away Meryl does play complicated flawed women but she is not a risk taker she never accepts dangerous or controversial roles in the way that say Isabel who pair frequently does she's also been careful to distance her personal politics and life so as to avoid audiences associating those things with her characters or using them against her never taking controversial stances like Jane Fonda or Vanessa Redgrave for example at least until recently which ironically only r.e.m ffice eyes to how much everyone loves her mr. Trump you can refuse to release your taxes you can call to ban an entire religion you can play footsie with a dictator but calling Meryl Streep overrated no but even here she's meeting The Times brother at women are undeniably using our political voices more strongly now for her to do so is only an accurate extension of how she mirrors us [Music] I can't definitively say Meryl Streep is the best actress alive or anything like that that's borderline impossible to determine what I can say is that she's continuously worked in an industry that hasn't been super friendly to women and specifically to older women and that's really impressive obviously part of that is because she's enormous ly skilled but I hope I've shown that this is a broader conversation it's about how Hollywood treats women generally it sucks that a working woman over 60 is more of an exception than a rule this is also about how vital good roles are to a person's career I hope we never see another year like 1996 where even filling the Best Actress category feels like an accomplishment I hope we do see more stories about women that resonate with us and speak to our condition in society Meryl has succeeded because of these factors cumulatively we can be thankful for every tear she's made us shed every laugh every gasp learn a lot of lessons from her long and wonderful career and look forward to what comes next I would do Meryl Streep that would be Maura

Channel: Be Kind Rewind

Views: 364,214

Rating: 4.8974762 out of 5

Keywords: meryl streep, best actress, oscar, academy awards, sophie's choice, iron lady, postcards from the edge, plenty, kramer vs. kramer, the devil wears prada, jane fonda, diane keaton, mamma mia, theater, she devil, death becomes her, the bridges of madison county, don gummer, red carpet, meryl streep interview, august osage county, oscar nomination, debbie reynolds, actress, the french lieutenant's woman, it's complicated, 2012, 1983, 1979

Id: SbA4NkKUX2g

Length: 20min 3sec (1203 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/YOUREABOT]

I agree with this assessment, and THANK YOU for pointing out how she really got her third Oscar. Thank u for pointing out that she fought typecasting that led to her accepted, comfortable, non-challenging career that also mirrors Hollywood and our times. I really enjoyed ur assessment of The Devil Wears Prada and didn't even notice the commentary said about her and her performances in my time of 2006. I still don't think she deserved her third Oscar, but given box office draw resurgence and how she uses the game to point out how bad the rules are, I do give her props for having a career still.