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MERYL'S CHOICE
Magazine / Source: The Sunday Post, Darryl Smith, 2004 |
She may still have Hollywood at her feet but Meryl Streep’s most important role is that of
Mom, discovers Darryl Smith.
MERYL STREEP was kind of
banking on the good parts
drying up by now. The Oscar
winning actress (twice over)
was expecting that the movie roles would
disappear at the first sign of a face
wrinkle and planned to finish her career
on the stage.
Now, at 55, Meryl is still hankering after
a life treading the boards.
The latest obstacle put in her way was
the re-make of the ’60s classic, The
Manchurian Candidate.
Meryl takes on the role previously played
by Angela Lansbury, as the domineering
mother of a vice-presidential candidate
who will stop at nothing to get her boy on
the ticket.
Stealing every scene in the same way
that she wins the votes of the senators
she hectors, Meryl is tipped for yet another
Oscar nomination.
If so, it will be her 14th, a record for any
actor at the Academy Awards.
And does she still dream of Broadway?
“I do, but the movies keep pulling me
back,” she says with the enthusiasm of
someone starting out on her career rather
than extending it. “I love making movies
because it allows me to be home at night.
I have one child who’s still young, thirteen,
and I like to be home at night and on the
weekends.
“So the stage career may have to wait a
little longer!”
It’s fair to say that Meryl isn’t the only
woman past her 39th birthday to have a
movie career these days. What was once
the graveyard age for an actress has now
become the cut-off point for sifting out the
real talent.
Put simply, the eye candy sinks while
the talented survive. It was never a
contest to see which category Meryl would
fall into.
She also attributes her latter day
success and that of contemporaries
such as Glenn Close and Diane Keaton
to a rare thing in Hollywood — female
studio bosses.
“In my case the biggest reason that I’m
working is that there are two women at the
heads of studios where I’ve worked in the
last few years.
“One is Amy Pascal who runs Sony
Pictures, and she gave the OK for me to
be in Adaptation. That was really a part
written for a 35-year-old but Spike Jonze,
the director, said he wanted me and she
said fine.
“Another studio head would have said,
‘Eugh! Why? Let’s get somebody sixteen
years younger,’ but Amy was great with it.
And Sherry Lansing runs Paramount, and
she has kept me in work in The Hours,
and The Manchurian Candidate and my
next film, Lemony Snicket (in which she
stars alongside Jim Carrey and Jude Law).
“I think, overall, things are changing —
but every time you say that they change
back to the bad old days! But I do think
that the emergence of cable channels in
America, HBO and Showtime, has had
an effect.
“Films that are deliberately taken on
to television may not have a theatrical
release but they reach a great many people
— and some of the most exciting work for
women is now happening in those venues
on television.
“There are many more independent
pictures, and they are giving opportunities
to older women but it’s still a problem for
male studio heads to be interested in stories
that remind them of their first wives!”
Born in New Jersey in 1949, Meryl’s
early performing ambitions leaned towards
the opera. A cheerleader and homecoming
queen at high school, she became
interested in acting while a college student
and upon graduation she enrolled at the
Yale School of Drama.
Toying with a career in law, she plumped
instead for Hollywood and the move paid
off with her first film role, Julia, in 1977.
Her performance marked her out as a
talent to be nurtured and she built on
those reviews the following year with her
first Oscar nomination for her role in The
Deer Hunter.
She went on to win the Academy Award
a year after that for her performance in
the heart-wrenching Kramer vs. Kramer
alongside Dustin Hoffman and then again,
three years later, for Sophie’s Choice in
which she portrayed an inmate mother in a
Nazi death camp.
“I keep them very high up on a shelf,”
she says matter-of-factly of her twin
trophies. “Actually, one’s begun to
discolour horribly. I’m sure I should take it
down and polish it up, but I haven’t. All
that glitters is probably spray-on brass!”
Meryl became a mother herself at the
same time as the filming of Sophie’s
Choice, the first of four children with
husband Don Gummer. The couple
celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary
last year. So, despite outstanding
performances in Silkwood, Out Of Africa,
Cry In The Dark and Postcards From The
Edge, all of which earned her Oscar
nominations, the most important role for
Meryl has always been that of mother to
her son, Henry, and three daughters,
Mary Willa, Grace and Louisa.
“If you have children you’re poised
between hope and despair all the time,
hoping for the best and worried that
something is going to come out of the
blue. These are the things you can’t
control, but you do as much as you can.
“I have three that are now over
eighteen, one who’s thirteen and it hasn’t
eased up, the worry and all the things that
I hope for them.
“My son has just graduated from
Glasgow University. I chose to think that
had nothing to do with getting away
from me!
“He picked up a few phrases while he
was there but none that are repeatable!
He had a great time and we came and
visited him.
“The people of Glasgow were very cool,
they took me for who I was and didn’t
have a problem with it. There’s a lot of
art there, which was great and I also tried
a deep-fried Mars bar, which was nice,”
she laughs.
The Manchurian Candidate is timely,
given the recent presidential elections.
Denzel Washington investigates mind
manipulation — which the US military is
keen to dismiss as Gulf War Syndrome.
But the deeper political point doesn’t
lie too far beneath the surface and
similarities between the chief villain,
Manchurian Global, a multi-national
corporation with a strong financial interest
in national defence and the real-life
Halliburton, the US conglomerate with
close ties to George Bush’s administration,
is not lost on anyone with half an interest
in US affairs.
“I think when things are really true and
relevant, they’re relevant to every time and
place,” says Meryl.
“To me one of the biggest themes in
the film is the way money and finance
influence foreign policy. That’s something
that, in America, our founding fathers
worried about. Dwight Eisenhower
famously worried about the militaryindustrial
complex unduly influencing
governments.
“So it’s something that’s been around a
long time and every so often gets more
pressing and more urgent.”
Notoriously forthright with her own
political opinions, Meryl doesn’t pull
the politician’s trick of failing to answer
the question when quizzed on whether
she ever considered turning her part as
a ruthless US senator in the film
into a real-life run for office at this
year’s election.
“No,” she says with a withering stare.
“My political views didn’t really line up
perfectly with my character Eleanor
Shaw’s, but I thought of it as a great
opportunity to play someone, and to
understand someone, who wasn’t like me.
“I also thought that she presented a
unique opportunity, because she was the
full embodiment of everybody’s fear of
women in power.
“It’s so interesting to compare the
reaction in Britain and America. In Britain
everyone used to think it was Maggie
Thatcher while everyone at home thinks
it’s Hillary Clinton, because they are
two of the most formidable women in
political life.
“People have their fears, but those
two women couldn’t be more dissimilar
from each other or from this character
that I play, so I think we’re touching on
something very deep about Mommy and
the fear of her taking over, or something.
But it’s all a great opportunity.”
As a parting shot I offer that, at 55,
Meryl still looks great and wonder whether
she had any advice for those who struggle
to hold back the onset of years.
“Bless you, but you’re sitting far enough
away,” she jokes. “I remember what
Catherine Deneuve always said: ‘After a
certain age you can have your face or you
can have your ass, it’s one or the other’.
I’ve chosen my face, and I’ll sit on the rest
of it . . . My laurels, I mean!”
As well she might.
Article was submitted to Simply Streep by the author, Darryl Smith. Thanks a lot!
