When one is asked to name the finest, and greatest actors of our
time, one is invariably left to utter the name, Meryl Streep.
When a filmgoer is left to decide, should a film be seen, will it
be good? One can generally without fail use the mark of measure,
oh, but Meryl Streep is in it, so it must be good.
The living film legend, Meryl Streep is a two-time Academy
Award® winner and recipient of a record breaking fourteen
Oscar nominations. Most recently, Ms. Streep starred in the box
office smash Mamma Mia, a film adaptation of the hit Broadway
musical based on the songs of ABBA. She will next appear in Nora
Ephron’s Julie & Julia as the famed master chef, Julia
Child and will lend her voice to Wes Anderson’s animated
Fantastic Mr. Fox based on the novel by Roald Dahl.
Meryl Streep has given us some of wit and wisdom concerning her
life and her career. Concerning stage or screen presence, she
states, ‘It's a lesson I learned in drama school: the
teacher asks, how do you be the queen? And everybody says, 'Oh
it's about posture and authority.' And they said, no, it's about
how the air in the room shifts when you walk in. And that's
everyone else's work.’ Without doubt, Meryl Streep shifts
the air in a room. When she enters, you know she is it. And
although her work is profound and relevant to the culture of our
times, she is often, self deprecrating, when she states,
‘Let's face it, we were all once 3-year-olds who stood in
the middle of the living room and everybody thought we were so
adorable. Only some of us grow up and get paid for
it.’
Breaking boundaries as a female artist in what is perhaps the
most sexist work climate of all in the United States, the
entertainment industry, Meryl Streep, broke in to Hollywood with
the battle of not only being a beautiful grace to behold on
screen, but also, as a being of depth and intelligence. Of this
challenge, she mentions, ‘It's hard to negotiate the
present landscape with a brain and a female body.’ And she
continues, concerning the political climate of our times,
‘It would be nice to have a woman President. I think half
the Senate should be women, half of Parliament, half the ruling
mullahs…’
Ms. Streep made her film debut in 1977’s Julia opposite
Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave. In her second screen role, she
starred opposite Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken in The
Deer Hunter which earned Streep her first Academy Award®
nomination. The following year, she won an Academy Award® for
her role opposite Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer. She then
received her third Academy Award® nomination for The French
Lieutenant’s Woman and later went on to win the Oscar for
Best Actress for her role in Sophie’s Choice, where she
starred alongside Peter MacNicol and Kevin Kline.
Yet her success didn’t come over night, as she
retells,’ When I was 20 I busked to afford accommodation.
One night I hadn't earned enough, I actually slept in the open in
Green Park (in London). The view was of the Ritz Hotel and I
vowed I'd stay there one day (at the Ritz), and I have.’
Such is one small example of the fierce determination and lofty
goals of Meryl Streep that she has envisioned high above her, yet
achieved.
Other early film credits include Oscar-nominated performances in
Mike Nichols’ Silkwood, Sydney Pollack’s Out of
Africa, and Fred Schepisi's A Cry in the Dark, which also won her
the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival, The New York
Film Critics Circle, and an AFI award. She also appeared in Mike
Nichols' Heartburn and Woody Allen’s Manhattan. In 2003,
Meryl Streep’s work in The Hours won her SAG and Golden
Globe nominations. That same year, her performance in Spike
Jonze’s Adaptation won her a Golden Globe for Supporting
Actress and BAFTA and Oscar nominations.
Ms. Streep’s other recent works include The Manchurian
Candidate, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events,
Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion and The Devil
Wears Prada, which earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best
Actress as well as Academy Award, SAG and BAFTA
nominations.
While many young actors of our day are too occupied with telling
their story, with talking of themselves, or with the attitude,
‘it’s all about me,’ talent today can learn
some wise lessons from the true masters of the craft of acting,
such as from the wisdom of Meryl Streep. Concerning speaking vs.
listening, she states, ‘Listening is everything. Listening
is the whole deal. That's what I think. And I mean that in terms
of before you work, after you work, in between work, with your
children, with your husband, with your friends, with your mother,
with your father. It's everything. And it's where you learn
everything.’
In theater, Meryl Streep appeared in the 1976 Broadway
double-bill of ‘27 Wagons Full of Cotton’ and ’
Memory of Two Mondays,’ the former which won her the Outer
Critics Circle Award, the Theater World Award and a Tony
nomination. Other theater credits include ‘Secret
Service;’ ‘The Cherry Orchard;’ the New York
Shakespeare Festival productions of ‘Henry V’ and
‘Measure for Measure’ opposite Sam Waterston; the
Brecht / Weill musical ‘Happy End;’ ‘Alice at
the Palace’ which won her an Obie, Central Park Productions
of ‘The Taming of the Shrew;’ ‘The
Seagull,’ and most recently in the Tony Kushner adaptation
of ‘Mother Courage.’
In television, Meryl Streep won Emmy ® Awards for the eight
part mini-series ‘Holocaust,’ and for the Mike
Nichols directed HBO movie Angels in America, which also won her
Golden Globe and SAG Awards. In 2004, Ms. Streep was honored with
an AFI Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2008 was honored by the
Film Society of Lincoln Center.
Meryl Streep’s appearance in a film alone is usually the
barometer for that film's greatness. Her mastery of her craft is
timelessly precious, without flaw, and of value beyond words,
with a range of emotionality and magnitude of depth that is
rarely seen on screen. And her powerful work as an actor is not
lessening, it is merely growing stronger. We can only look more
forward to the beauty and power of the future work that this
magnificent artist has to give the world, yet to come.