| EXTENSIVE BIOGRAPHY | CHAPTER 07 | CHANGING GENRES |
With the end of the 80's, Meryl was able to look back on a decade filled with success and awards,
but turning 40 meant also to be no longer on the studios top list. Many career of great actresses
have immediately ended or at least got reduced when they got older, talents such as Sissy Spacek
and Deb-
ra Winger almost totally disappeared from the screen. And unfortunately, Streep hit some
rough spots with the roles she chose. She joined Susan Seidelman and played the attractive Mary
Fisher, a million-selling author of soft-porn novels for lonely housewifes. Living in a pink palace
at the sea, her life totally changes when she gets to know the wife of her current lover. Roseanne
Barr plays the frustrated | |
Meryl tries comedy in "She-Devil" and with on-screen mother Shirley MacLaine in "Postcards from the Edge" |
wife who loses her unfaithful husband and swears revenge on her husband and
his mistress. The plot promised an entertaining comedy, but both Streep and Barr seemed to be
wrongly assigned in their one-dimensional parts. What Meryl needed was a good script - and it was
offered to her by Nike Nichols and Carrie Fisher, who began working on a film version of Fisher's
autobiographical "Postcards from the Edge". The novel, basing on the relationship between Fisher and
her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds. Shirley MacLaine was cast as Doris Mann, the dominant mother
to Streep's character Suzanne Vale, a young actress that suffers from the attention her mother needs,
and the many drugs Suzanne has taken from an early age on. With both comic and dramatic moments,
"Postcards from the Edge" also gave Meryl the chance to prove another talent. She sang performed
two songs in the film, one of them, "I'm Checking Out", was nominated for an Oscar, as well as
Meryl's performance.
Meryl went on to star in another comedy, directed and perfromed by Albert
Brooks. "Defending Your Life" centers on the question what happens in the afterlife, when Brook's
character dies in a car accident and finds his-self in Judgement City, a place between earth and
heaven where attorneys and courts judge wheter you can enter heaven or go back to earth. Streep's
character, another inhabitant of Judge-ment City has few to do in this film.
Maybe this light comedy was the best place for Streep to | |
As a ghost in Brook's "Defending your Life", with Willis in "Death Becomes Her" |
stay, as she was pregnant with her fourth child (she gave birth to daughter Louisa in 1991). While critics were disappointed with the film, Streep gave the genre a
last chance and Bruce Willis and another actress whose amount of roles got halved since she hit her
40s, Goldie Hawn in "Death Becomes Her", a film whose based on the problems Meryl had to deal with
since for some years now, "coming of age in Hollywood". Robert Zemeckis, director of such blockbusters
as the "Back to the Future" series and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" knew how to represent the story
with his singularly
talent for Special Effects. As Meryl's character Madeline Ashton drinks a potion that promises eternal youth, only to be killed by her husband when she returns, the once famous
star has to deal with the fact she is dead, only keepen alive by the potion's magic. A situation
that reunites her with her old friend an enemy, played by Goldie Hawn. The strenously shooting however
was a challenge for Meryl as | |
Streep played again opposite Irons in "The House of the Spirits", based on Isabell Allende's novel |
she has never done a film that is dominated by Special Effects before,
a master achievement by the films visual effects team, that won an Oscar for their work in 1993,
Meryl was recognized with a Golden Globe nomination.
Surprisingly, also "The House of the Spirits" was shunned by the critics, although
it was based on Isabel Allende's best selling novel. As it tells the story of four generations of
the Trueba clan, their rise and fall, "The House of the Spirits" featured an all-star cast, including
Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Vanessa Redgrave, Winona Ryder and
Antonio Banderas. While a flop in the USA, at least it was highly successful in Europe, where it
was filmed.
