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THE PERILS OF MERYL
Magazine / Source: Entertainment Weekly, October 1994 |
With "The River Wild" (and "The Bridges of Madison County"
upcoming), America's toniest actress plunges headlong into the movie mainstream
There's something wrong with this picture: Meryl Streep is
navigating a raft through Montana's seething Kootenai River, the
spray drenching her gray sweatshirt, the 16-foot vessel lurching as
she digs her oars in with a concentration that's no act. The noble
cheekbones, the imperial nose, the translucent skin, it's all there.
But her hands are callused and bloody, her hair stringy and
sun-bleached, and strangest of all, as she careens through the
rapids, this most aristocratic of actresses seems to be having the
time of her life.
(''Rafting is a fluid art,'' Streep says, intending no pun. ''You
don't know what's going to happen. You can't fight it, you have to
stay cool. It was thrilling to come out...intact.''
Intact qualifies as a joyous word because her role as former
white-water guide Gail in The River Wild had Streep in command of a
rubber raft for most of the 15-week shoot-taking on Class V rapids
(Class VI are considered unnavigable), dangling her craft at the edge
of a waterfall, flying almost blind when the camera obscured her
view, and performing some stunts up to 12 times to be sure director
Curtis Hanson (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle) got the goods.
''I was scared all the time,'' says the 45-year-old two-time Oscar
winner. ''Curtis loved showing that it was me doing things. Most of it
that you see is me.''
Streep was said to be dangling her craft at the edge of a
waterfall when she took the lead in The River Wild. It was as if
someone had dared the master thespian with a gift for accents to make
a tense action thriller that put the heroine's survival skills to the
test. Yet she emerged from filming with more than her 5-foot-6-inch
form intact: Suddenly Streep has her brilliant career back.
It's been a while. Best known for flawless dramatic performances
in her early films Kramer vs. Kramer (her first Oscar win), Sophie's
Choice (her second), The French Lieutenant's Woman, and Out of
Africa, Streep has more recently taken her lumps as a comedic actor
in She-Devil, Postcards From the Edge, and Death Becomes Her. For her
virtuoso role in last April's The House of the Spirits, adapted from
Isabel Allende's novel, she got to age several decades on camera; the
film landed without a sound. But weeks later, as The River Wild hit
Hollywood screening rooms, the buzz on Streep began to build.
Universal changed its release from summer to fall, apparently not
wanting to match Meryl's muscles with those of Arnold or Harrison
Ford. Still, her stock seems to have risen on bets that The River
Wild might score with the public. By August, Streep's new direction
had brought her full circle: She had the lead-and a new accent to
learn, Iowa by way of Italy-in the highly anticipated and
deep-in-the-mainstream The Bridges of Madison County. She'll star
opposite her director, Clint Eastwood. Her payday will be between $4
million and $5 million-and word is she'll also get a percentage of
the gross.
Streep's tackling The River Wild-which pits Gail's family (David
Strathairn plays her architect husband; Jurassic Park's Joe Mazzello
is their son) against some dubious characters (John C. Reilly and a
devilish Kevin Bacon)- didn't particularly surprise Robert Redford,
her Out of Africa costar. ''She has a very refined face,'' he observes.
''But there's also a wild side to her that may have something to do
with her doing the movie. People judge her by the roles she's played
or the face she puts on for a magazine cover. You put two or three
things together and assume the other 10. Actually she is quite
tough.''
Her attitude toward her chosen task bears that out. ''Bodybuilders
may do it just to see if they can, to take it to that limit, and
that's what I wanted to do on this film,'' says Streep of her River
adventure. ''I wanted to tax myself in that way, see how strong I
could get, how scared I could get, and how much I could overcome it.''
The process began in March 1993, four months before shooting
began. She'd get up at 5 a.m. so she could finish her workout before
her family (her husband of 16 years, sculptor Don Gummer, 46, and
their children, Henry, 14, Mamie, 11, Grace, 8, and Louisa, 3) got
going. "I had to get stronger, so I embarked on this impossible
regimen only movie stars and athletes can keep up. I did yoga, weight
training, and aerobic training (for three hours a day). I built
strength in my upper body. Women don't have (prominent) rhomboid
muscles, so you have to build here," she says, running her fingers
down her spine.
A crash course in the ways of white water would come in June on
Oregon's Rogue River, where part of the film was later shot, but in
the meantime, Streep also had to master rowing the single scull,
since the film opens with a sequence on the Charles River in Boston.
"Sculling involves a great deal of finesse, not strength, and the
boats are very tippy," she explains. "I didn't want them fishing me
out of the river every five minutes."
She worked with a sculling coach on a little lake at the Salisbury
School not far from her rural Connecticut home. Later, for her
introduction to rafting, guide Arlene Burns took her on what was
supposed to be a three-day trip on the Rogue. "We did it in a day,"
Streep recalls, laughing at the memory. "I liked it. I called up
Curtis and said, 'I don't think I really have to train for this
part.' I did have an instinct for it, but my eyes were bigger than my
stomach."
Streep laughs again when she remembers thinking it would be
"pleasant" to spend four months on chilly rivers in Montana and
Oregon. Actually, she says, it was pleasant-even when it was
frightening. "I would have a perfectly scary day and go to bed and
then I couldn't wait to get up and go again."
"She battled with confidence," says Burns, who also worked with
the film's river crew. "Through a lot of people telling her, 'Oh,
this is so dangerous,' she started losing track of her aptitude in
reading the water, to feel what's ahead and understand what you need
to do to get there. A lot of people have been paddling for years and
don't get it as well as she got it."
Early on, Streep fell into the Kootenai River and was fished out
downstream by a kayaker. "And then I had those rubber legs. White-hot
fear in your lower extremities. I can still remember that
boom-boom-boom feeling in my rib cage."
What made it worse was knowing she was in charge. "I was scared
for the other people in the boat, because really I was powering it.
It was my boat. It was my fault if things didn't work."
Except, that is, when she was a guinea pig. Hanson and crew were
determined to get the camera close enough to convey a white-knuckle
ride, so they expended considerable effort to film on the water.
While the crew experimented, the $28 million budget shot up to about
$44 million, says one studio source. They set up a floating barge
Streep's raft could tow. They hooked a camera to the front of the
raft, which weighed down its nose. And they tried to get close-ups
with a camera mounted on the back of a raft ahead of Streep's. "But
they could never keep focus," says the star.
Hanson also brought in a camera-rigged helicopter that a pilot
flew down into the canyon to get superior shots as the raft hurtled
downstream. Burns was sent in place of Streep for the test.
"Literally with all (her) might she was rowing to keep the helicopter
wash from throwing them into the canyon," Streep recalls. "Kevin went
up to Curtis and said, 'No f---ing way.' I was glad it was him saying
it for once, not me."
Just as Streep began riding the rapids in June 1993, gossip
columnist Liz Smith wrote that the actress had chosen The River Wild
as an action vehicle to pump up her sagging box office appeal.
Streep, who claims she's too old to worry about creating a new image,
is irked by Smith's presumption. "It wasn't true, but there is no way
I can respond to it without seeming defensive," she says. "If you
look at the parts for women my age, no, I'm not going to turn that
one down. I didn't pick it because I thought it would be popular."
Why then? "I don't want to discourage anyone from seeing the movie
who thinks it's just an action-adventure, but it really has a lot of
other things going on, and that's what drew my attention."
The River Wild puts Gail, her husband, and their son on a vacation
meant to mend their unraveling family-both mother and son have just
about given up on Strathairn's inattentive Tom, and Bacon's mystery
man offers an inviting counterpoint. "Like The Fugitive, this is an
action picture that's character- driven," Streep observes. "It's not
black and white. The bad guys, they're not Dolph Lundgren, they're
attractive. And the good guys-you don't really love this warring
couple in the beginning. They have their problems."
The actress and her character share similarities-both are 40ish
mothers, evidently disciplined-but Streep doesn't work from the
outside in. "I'm not very self-analytical," she says. "I get into a
character then I find out, 'Oh, that's why (I) wanted to do this.'
It's cultivated unconsciousness."
"She's past the analyzing of the character," says Redford. "Her
training and her experience have taken her to a point where she can
be effortless with a lot of things other people have to work really
hard at."
At the end of the production, when the other actors were gone,
Hanson needed to film some additional close-ups of his star. He set
up a raft on some rocks on the shore. With nothing around to help her
get back into character, he watched as her face subtly, and
instantly, became Gail's. "I said, 'How do you do that?'" says
Hanson. "She laughed. 'Curtis, I don't know. I've never known.'"
Streep isn't the kind of actress who takes her work home with her.
How else could she find her role as a guilt-ridden Holocaust survivor
in Sophie's Choice her most enjoyable work experience? "She doesn't
dream about her roles or start sobbing at the table. She's a very
sane person," says Carrie Fisher, who got to be a close friend while
Streep filmed Fisher's Postcards From the Edge. "Work is work and
family is family. And family is her priority."
Nor was becoming a public figure what Streep bargained for when
she started performing in her high school's musicals (in
Bernardsville, N.J.) and later became a star at Vassar College and
the Yale School of Drama. Over the years, she has given relatively
few interviews and learned to contain what Fisher calls a naturally
talkative streak. Asked if she's made her peace with being a
celebrity, Streep says she's had no choice. Then, thinking again, she
admits that no, she hasn't. "I'm going to go down fighting," she
says.
People who might interfere with her focus can get the bum's rush.
A camera crew shooting publicity material for The River Wild was
banished from the location when it started filming her performance
after being warned not to. On another occasion, while watching an
intimate campfire scene, a reporter was tapped on the shoulder and
asked to leave.
"When you're being watched unnaturally you feel it, if you're a
sensitive person. Who knows what this delicate thing is that actors
are making? So if that's diva behavior, sorry," says the actress, who
adds, "I don't have handlers. I do have a longtime makeup man and
hairdresser who performs the scourge role in my on-set life and keeps
people away."
Living above the Serengeti plain while filming Out of Africa a
decade ago prompted Streep and her young family to abandon Manhattan
for rural Connecticut, and though she recently tried living in Los
Angeles, it's back east, in the country, where she feels at home.
True, her telephone company still uses rotary dialing and her
satellite dish (there is no cable) was struck by lightning 12 times
last year, but "every time it's out," she says, "I'm beside myself
with joy."
The quiet life has always agreed with her. Mary Louise Streep grew
up in suburban Summit, N.J., in the '50s, the daughter of a
pharmaceutical- company executive and a commercial artist. "When I
was in high school and I was in a car with a boy and he was driving
real, real fast, there was never an ounce of enjoyment of the
thrill," she says, shaking her head. "Part of it is that I've always
felt older. I've always felt about 40 (and) I did have this moment
when I turned 40 that I felt like my clothes finally fit and I didn't
have to be anything other than myself."
As her oldest kids enter their teen years, Streep claims to want
to work less. "I have so many children that it's very hard to pay
attention to them and work," she sighs. "Now I have difficulty tuning
in the professional side. The other side is louder and more
insistent."
Early next year, following The Bridges of Madison County, she'll
star with Liam Neeson in Before and After, based on Rosellen Brown's
wrenching best- selling novel about a couple (she a doctor, he a
sculptor) who struggle to keep their family together after a son is
charged with murder. After that, her plans are indefinite, and she
leaves her working pace to fate. "You're limited by the number of
scripts you're appropriate for in a year. There are not 27, there are
not 7. Sometimes there are none," says Streep, who finds the idea of
forming her own production company "too fraught with politics, a lot
of people, one-upmanship.
"Most of the women in movies are sex objects," she continues,
"what my father calls 'scantily clad,' and they are there to be
dumped, humped, maimed, or killed-a victim or an appendage. I always
say to my kids, 'Read, read-why don't you read?' All the conflicted,
interesting characters are in literature."
And Meryl Streep movies.
