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
How you first meet the public is how the industry sees you. You can't argue with them. That's their perception.
I say to myself, 'I don't know how to act - and why does anybody want to look at me on-screen anymore?' ... Lots of actors feel that way. What gives you strength is also your weakness - your raging insecurity.
When they called my name, I had this feeling I could hear half of America going, 'Oh no. Come on... Her, again?' You know. But, whatever.
I always feel like I can't do it, that I can't go through with a movie. But then I do go through with it after all.
People will say to me, 'You've played so many strong women' and I'll say, 'Have you ever said to a man, 'You've played so many strong men?' No! Because the expectation is [men] are varied. Why can't we have that expectation about women?
The work itself is the reward, and if I choose challenging work, it'll pay me back with interest. At least I'll be interested, even if nobody else is.
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.
My own sense of well-being and purpose in the world. That comes from studying the world feelingly, with empathy in my work. It comes from staying alert and alive and involved in the lives of the people that I love and the people in the wider world who need my help.
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.
The thing that you have to fight the most when you lose is you feel like the biggest failure in the world.
I don't know why I don't watch a lot of movies; I can barely keep up with the things my friends are in. There isn't enough time in life.
We are the choices we have made.
My feeling about fears is, if you voice your fears, they may come true. I'm superstitious enough to believe that.
That's my way in the very beginning - how to enter it [a role]. Very quickly in the process, I don't think about voice being separate from the way you hold your head or the way you sit or the way you put on lipstick. It's all a piece of a person, and it's all driven by conviction.