There has always been an air of regal bearing and gravitas to the work of Meryl Streep. Her performances in films such as Kramer Vs Kramer, Out Of Africa, Evil Angels, and The Devil Wears Prada radiate an aura of self-assurance and intensity that extends beyond her extraordinary command of her craft. Those qualities must certainly have made her an ideal choice to play former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. In the biopic, Streep attempts to capture the spirit of perhaps the most formidable and intimidating of all the strong-willed women she has channelled over the years.
In person, however, the 62-year-old actress is far more congenial and good-natured than her more familiar screen personae would suggest. She laughs loudly and often, frequently finishing sentences with a hardy chuckle. Despite her lighthearted manner, Streep still has a commanding presence, with a piercing and persuasive intelligence. This is a woman of great substance and sensitivity.
Streep often plays great women, such as the late American chef Julia Child (in 2009’s Julie & Julia), believing the real thrust to her performances comes from a wish to overcome lingering insecurities, even though critics may cite her acting technique.
“I’m sure my desire to perform comes from
my childhood. I often felt neglected and misunderstood, and I was always trying to show people who I was really like,” Streep muses. “I was insecure about myself and my appearance. And then in my acting, I wanted to get past all that and find the truth in the women I was playing.
“I try to become part of [the characters] and imagine I’m like them in different ways. My main goal is to find their essence and impart … their soul and basic humanity. I want to try to get past the appearance of the character, and create moments where people can see who they really are deep down.”
PLAYING THE IRON LADY
Streep will no doubt figure prominently in the forthcoming awards races, and could well add to the Oscars that she won for Sophie’s Choice (1982) and Kramer Vs. Kramer (1979), particularly as she has already won the best actress award from the New York Critics Circle for her performance in The Iron Lady. The awards rest at the home she shares with long-time husband, artist Don Gummer, 65. Jim Broadbent co-stars in the film as Thatcher’s husband, Denis, while Anthony Head plays foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe.
Given that Margaret Thatcher is such a polarising historical figure, it may well take all of Streep’s talent to paint a sympathetic portrait of a leader whose conservative policies are admired by the right and vilified by the left. No one would contest the view, however, that she was one of the most dynamic and powerful politicians of the past half-century. She helped engineer the defeat of both the Argentine junta during the Falklands War, and later that of Britain’s labour unions. She acquired the nickname ‘Iron Lady’ during the late ’70s when her fiery rhetoric led her to the first of three terms as prime minister, from 1979 to 1990. But Streep is less interested in her politics than the woman herself.
“It’s not the politics that allows you to understand a woman like Lady Thatcher; it’s much more the other way around,” Streep argues. “You want to be able to have a sense of her personality and conviction, which enabled her to become such a powerful leader … I can only hope that I bring to the role as much zeal, fervour and attention to detail as the real Lady Thatcher.”
BACK in the GAME
Streep’s brilliant career can essentially be divided into three phases. The first, in the ’80s, saw her establish herself as Hollywood’s greatest actress, with her mastery of accents ranging from a Polish refugee (Sophie’s Choice) to a Danish author (Out Of Africa) to a suspected Australian child-killer (Lindy Chamberlain in Evil Angels). She turned down the volume on her career in the ’90s, but continued to play leading roles in successful films such as Postcards From The Edge and Death Becomes Her.
After she starred in The Bridges Of Madison County with Clint Eastwood in 1995, we barely heard from Streep until she earned an Oscar nomination in 2003 for her work in The Hours. Still, it wasn’t until the box office hits The Devil Wears Prada and Mamma Mia! came along that she found herself enjoying her work with renewed fervour into her fifties.
The New Jersey-born star agrees that she has been on a roll of late. “I seem to have [had] more [choices] in the past five years than I had in the previous five years. I really don’t know why that is. Part of it, I think, has to do with the fact that there are more women executives making decisions in Hollywood … It’s also maybe that attitudes are changing and studios are seeing that you can make money with films that don’t just cater to teenagers.
“I’ve been unemployed more than I’ve been working because of the nature of what we do. [Actors] just have a lot of down time. I just take it as every day is a miracle, and I’m really glad that I’m still working and enjoying the process of being involved in film.” She adds, “My children are also grown up now, so they don’t need mummy to look after them anymore.”
FAMILY FIRST
As much as she loves making movies and obsessing over a part (“I drive myself crazy,” she admits), Streep has always put her family ahead of her Hollywood ambitions. She lived with them on a sprawling, tree-lined countryside property in the state of Connecticut for over 20 years before moving to a loft apartment in Tribeca, Manhattan, in 2006.
“I’ve always loved and dedicated myself to my children. Acting might be my passion, but my kids have always been my greatest joy in life,” insists Streep. “When they were very young, I decided not to get involved in huge projects that required me to live away from … my family for six or seven months at
a time. I felt that I had accomplished a lot of my goals as an actress and that I would try living a more balanced life and only do smaller kinds of projects.
“I’m more than comfortable with that decision and I have no regrets. I’m only sorry that I didn’t find better movies, or that some of the lighter or smaller films I made didn’t receive that much recognition.”
For years, Streep suffered from the enormous tension she put herself under when she would throw herself into her work. Her stardom eclipsed even her wildest ambitions. “I wasn’t even sure I liked acting that much or thought it was a very serious profession. I thought it was sort of silly and vain — even though acting was the most fun thing that I’ve ever done and it remains being that. Ergo, it can’t be good for me,” says Streep, who attended the Yale School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut.
“[In the ’90s], I enjoyed life much more because I didn’t feel so much stress. It’s in my nature to worry about my work – much more than I worry about my daily life. So the process of constantly reading scripts, going to meetings with producers and studio executives, and trying to find the best films – all that placed a huge amount of pressure on me and sometimes it would make me very miserable …
“I was also getting tired of putting myself through the same emotional grind every time I would get ready for a part. I had had enough and I wanted to get away from that kind of life. So it wasn’t a difficult step for me to pull back and enjoy a very happy family life with a great, warm and supportive husband and four wonderful children. The supposed glory that came from my work meant very little compared to the joy
I received from being at home with my family.”
BEHIND THE MASK
One aspect of her fame that has always troubled Streep is the very stern image the public tends to have of her because of her early performances (not that playing tough-talking Margaret Thatcher will do much to alter that impression). This myth is immediately shattered upon meeting her, where she could easily pass for your next door neighbour.
“I’m not a cold and serious woman. I’m much more fluid and volatile than people think from watching me act in movies. And I know more than anyone else that I can take on this incredibly serious look, and that just freezes people. But I have the same set of inner conflicts and self-doubts as everyone else has, and my dream is to find roles that transmit some of my more contradictory sides. It bothers me that people have this image of me as an ice queen. I hate that perception … I’ve always thought of myself as a fairly happy person who somehow found herself driven to play serious women.”
When I mention the character of Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada – the role that jump-started her career renaissance – Streep winces.
“The challenge for me was not dissimilar to something that I did very, very early in my career,
like in [1979’s] Kramer Vs Kramer. My character, Joanna, was a woman that the audience judged very quickly: bitch. You’ve got to try to find the humanity in there. What’s the side that’s hidden? That was the challenge of playing Miranda in Prada; not to make her black and white. And to kind of peel off the
layers and maybe see what’s underneath.”
Her co-star in the latter film, Anne Hathaway, recalled that Streep often appeared distant during the making of the 2006 comedy-drama.
“That’s true. People have asked me, ‘Oh, wasn’t it so much fun to play Miranda?’, to revel in her wickedness. But, no, it was not fun to be this person.
I didn’t stay in character when they yelled cut,
but I just felt it wouldn’t help the dynamic of the set if I immediately went over and started joking with Emily [Blunt, who played an assistant] and Anne and Stanley [Tucci, who played a gay fashion stylist].”
REAL SELF
“I’m ridiculously normal when I’m not working, and sometimes I wonder why I need to leave that state of being, as much as I seem to be doing lately,” laughs Streep. “I’ve always thought of myself as a wife and mother first … my acting is more this wonderful obsession of mine that I feed from time to time.
“But my real self is much more connected to
the woman who invites her neighbour over for
tea and a nice chat, or talking to my children about how their lives are evolving.”
Did playing Julia Child inspire culinary ambitions? “When my children were young and I was working, I had someone do the cooking for me. I don’t have a cook now … I just do it myself. Some nights I like cooking, some nights I don’t. I’ve started meals and then … thrown it in the sink. I have done that and said, ‘That’s it, we’re getting pizza’. [Laughs.]”
There are some roles, it seems, even the great Meryl Streep wasn’t born to play.
