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STREEP CRED
Magazine / Source: The Daily Record, August 2006 |
WHO'D have guessed that this autumn, the hottest, busiest, sassiest woman in Hollywood would be a 57-year-old mother of four?
Not Meryl Streep. But at a time when young, wrinkle-free, bikini-flashing starlets hoped to rule the roost, the No.1 box office draw has turned out to be a woman old enough to be their mum.
Which just goes to show that Meryl can still surprise us after almost three decades in the spotlight.
First, she warmed up by ruling an ant colony with a rod of iron in Ant Bully.
Now, she's moving onto bigger things as a chilly chic nightmare boss in The Devil Wears Prada, which is released next month.
Meryl stars as Miranda the head-turning editor of fashion's top magazine, Runway.
In it, she hires Anne Hathaway's frumpy character as her assistant and transforms her cosy, humdrum existence into a high-fashion hell among couture shoes and designer suits.
However, when asked if she gave advice to Anne in real life, the movie's Queen Mother laughs heartily at the very idea of being anybody's acting guru.
Meryl - whose children age from 15 to 27 - joked: "Young people don't come to you for advice - especially the ones related to you."
Her elder children have acted themselves - under the names Henry Gummer and Mamie Gummer.
Their proud mum said: "They're both wonderfully and uniquely talented.
"As long as acting nurtures them and doesn't kill their spirit, I'm thrilled for them to act."
The devoted mum was famous for taking her children with her when she filmed on location when they were young.
Even today, she refuses to work during school breaks.
From close quarters, they saw their mum shape some of her most memorable roles - and battle directors to get her views across.
Meryl said: "They grew up hearing me whine about the demands of the profession. After all, who can a mother whine to if not her own children? But they love acting."
Her motherly influence also extends outside her family.
Meryl's other film, due out later this year, is The Prairie Home Companion, a comedy loosely based on the famous long-running US radio show of the same name.
Her screen daughter is troubled wild child Lindsay Lohan, taking on her first adult role.
The red-haired tearaway was hugely impressed by Meryl's calm, cool approach to acting, saying: "I'd love to be in Meryl's position. I want people to know me for the work I'm doing, not for this party-girl image."
In turn, Meryl hopes Lindsay will find her place once again as a rising star - in spite of the teen's late nights and sloppy timekeeping on another picture recently seeing her branded by a studio boss as "unprofessional". Meryl said: "She turned 19 on our movie and three of my children are older than she is. I feel for people who grow up in the spotlight and their family stuff is dragged out in front of everybody to use as entertainment.
"It doesn't bring out the best in any of us to enjoy someone's tough times. But she's amazingly talented and that will sustain.
"She can do whatever she wants - she just has to be smart."
Meryl has managed to maintain a long marriage to sculptor Don Gummer and raise four children in between receiving two Academy Awards and 13 nominations.
Ever modest, she said: "Show business has been really, really good to me because I can work and take a lot of time off - and I'm an extremely undisciplined person.
"In many ways, I'm the opposite of the character I play in The Devil Wears Prada."
It's widely rumoured that Miranda, a ruthless fashionista, is partly based on Vogue boss Anna Wintour, a woman so notoriously spine-chilling that she's known in the business as "Nuclear" Wintour.
But Meryl claims she based her character on powerful men she knows, not Anna.
She said: "I've known a few Mirandas, but they've all been men.
"I'm not saying women are automatically nicer than men. It may just be that not many women have been in true positions of power."
Meryl does know what it's like to have assistants at her beck and call, but says she wouldn't dream of sending out one of her own secretaries on impossible tasks, such as getting a copy of an unpublished Harry Potter book.
Being a Streep secretary must carry some clout, but Meryl admits her former employees have been successful young women in their own right.
She said: "As far as my assistants are concerned, I've always had people so over-qualified for the jobs and tasks I set them, I've had the most wonderful people. I'm very lucky.
"One of them, Emily Sklar, is now a literary agent, and I'm very proud. But I don't claim any credit."
The other difference between Meryl and her scary character is Meryl is no fashion slave, and is quite happy in high-street gear. When she does hit the heights of fashion, she claims that the results are not always pretty.
In 1996 she attended the Oscars in a beautiful Donna Karan dress. Before the ceremony, the gown got wrinkled, so Meryl steamed it in her hotel shower room.
She recalled: "It came out beautifully - but was fully a foot longer than it had been. I had to hold it with both fists all night."
However for The Devil Wears Prada, it took hundreds of man hours and millions of dollars to style her character.
There's priceless Chanel bags, Calvin Klein suits, Dolce & Gabbana dresses and, of course, Prada.
Luckily for the movie's budget, most of the clothes came on loan.
Meryl said: "People were very, very generous in the fashion business. I had 60-plus costumes and each one of them had to be coordinated with the shoes, the belt, the earrings, the jacket."
Looking perfect from head to toe also required a head-turning coiffure and Meryl's Cruella De Vil mop shows a crisp decisive style of its own.
She explained: "That was a decision of Roy Helland, my hairdresser and collaborator of many years.
"We knew we wanted to make a definite kind of look, a woman that doesn't look like anybody else in New York."
Off-duty, Meryl is beautiful in a more understated way.
But it still surprises that she managed to walk around Glasgow unnoticed when she visited her son, Henry when he was a student at Glasgow University. While her son lived in humble halls of residence, his mum booked in to posh One Devonshire Gardens.
But that was her only concession to high living, as she happily wandered around the West End of Glasgow, enjoying the double-takes when people clocked her.
Among her top tips for tourists are the art galleries and friendly locals.
She admits she didn't get to grips with haggis but, patting her hips, claims: "I did try deep-fried Mars Bars. Can't you tell?"
Meryl broke into movies in a tiny role in 1977's Julia, followed by the high-profile TV miniseries Holocaust a year later. Since then she's been up for a record 13 Oscars.
Success had its price - some said Meryl was too talented to be true, an actress who hid behind accents. But in the end, she seems to have won over even her harshest critics.
Her first Oscar nomination was for 1978's The Deer Hunter. She won best Supporting Actress for Kramer vs Kramer (1979) and Best Actress for Sophie's Choice (1982).
Among her other nominated turns are Silkwood (1983), Out of Africa (1985), Postcards From the Edge (1991), The Bridges of Madison County (1996) and Adaptation (2003).
Now, as others moan there are no good roles for actresses - Meryl insists things have changed and that women over 40 can claim their place on the big screen.
She said: "It used to be you went from young thing to old lady. The older they are, the more villainous the characters are - that says something about our society, too."
However, she joked that her dragonlady fashion editor may be the closest we get to seeing the real Meryl Streep on screen.
She said: "My daughter leaned over to me when we were watching the movie and said, 'Mom - its the real you!'"
