Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streepis an American actress. Cited in the media as the "best actress of her generation", Streep is particularly known for her versatility in her roles, transformation into the characters she plays, and her accent adaptation. She made her professional stage debut in The Playboy of Seville in 1971, and went on to receive a 1976 Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play for A Memory of Two Mondays/27 Wagons Full of Cotton. She made...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth22 June 1949
CitySummit, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
I don't really talk about my process very much, because I feel like if I give something away, it might not come back.
It's sort of my fun to sing along with records and imitate people who are on the telephone that have different ways of speaking.
Life is all about making choices and I'm very happy with mine. I have had a wonderful time raising four children and I've also been lucky to have the support of a wonderful husband.
I love acting, of course, but being with my husband and my children always brought me the greatest joy and happiness in life.
The best thing about acting is when you're playing a scene and you actually become your character and lose yourself in that moment. That's when you know you've been succeeded at what you've worked very hard to accomplish in your profession. Those are the truly thrilling moments.
And it interferes with your ability to be a good actress if you're constantly aware of yourself as a person. To me, it isn't valuable to think about how I'm coming off all the time if I'm trying to create a character, because that's a process that I love. It's like falling in love and surrendering to another person or a character.
I didn't go to Catholic school but I had a tough teacher, a tough math teacher.I remember everything that guy taught me. I really do.
Fear focuses the mind.
I separated myself in Prada because I didn't want to have fun. They were all having a lot of fun - Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci - and they were a little coterie of laughs.
You didn't have to work to keep your fear up, your energy up, or your anxiety. It is all kind of built into the process.
When my children were very young and I was working I had someone cooking for me. I don't have a cook now, I haven't had one for a number of years and I do it myself. But when they were all little it was hard to pay attention to everyone's homework at the end of the day and make dinner.
I would never say don't do acting [to my kids], because I think it is a glorious profession and I am so thankful for everything it has let me express.
I am not always happy. I am happy in front of the press. I can be extremely grumpy, ask my husband.
Sometime really good writing does you a disservice as an actor. Because you can get lazy. It's doing a lot of the work for you. I guess that's good. But at the same time with material that's not so good, you have to be more inventive, because no thought has been applied to it.