The most elaborate biography of Meryl Streep, the one written in 2016 by Michael Schulman, the journalist who covers the entertainment industry for The New Yorker, has a misleading, or at least playful, title. It is called Always Her, not to say that the actress is eternal, but because of a quote from a speech by Streep herself when she won the Oscar for The Iron Lady. There she mixed majesty with self-criticism and put herself in the role of the people – poor Glenn Close – who were watching her go up to the stage again, to collect her third Oscar, in her 17th nomination. She is now 21 .
Her again! Is there no other? No, there isn't, Schulman says in a book that Peninsula has just republished, and in which the biographer focuses on Streep before fame, her childhood in a middle-class family in New Jersey, her studies at Vassar and Yale, when she finds her calling and the tragic relationship she had with actor John Cazale (Fredo, in The Godfather), who died of cancer when they had been together for two years. Six months after that, she met the man who remains her partner and father of her four children, the sculptor Don Gummer, and received the first of her Oscar nominations, precisely for the film she made with Cazale, The Night of the Hunter. . The juiciest revelations of the biography come around the filming of Kramer vs. Kramer, when a deified Dustin Hoffman, immersed in the Method, slaps a Meryl Streep who has never believed that it is necessary to recycle one's own pain to be credible, on screen. or on stage.
The Princess of Asturias award already marks Meryl Streep as a rarity. Most of the previous winners are architects, painters, sculptors, opera singers. Can you think of other performers who play in this league, who have transcended their profession and are considered universal artists?
At this point in her career, Meryl is more of a global institution than a movie star, but I can think of other performers who have this stature: George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington. But this does not mean that she sought to transcend her craft. She is, first and foremost, a performer, and one who works very hard. She doesn't see the consequences of fame as a reward. She loves her work and wants to continue acting as long as she can.
What is your own relationship with Meryl Streep? Why did you decide to write her biography?
I interviewed her briefly for The New Yorker in 2009, and of course I loved her work. I have also seen her in the theater, in Bertold Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, a titanic performance in Central Park. But what interested me to write a book about her, curiously, were her speeches at the award ceremonies. In the era of The Devil Wears Prada and The Iron Lady, she perfected the art of delivering grandiose, self-deprecating speeches that made fun of the fact that she was considered the “Greatest Actress Living.” There was a point where I started memorizing them, and her speech when she won the Oscar for The Iron Lady ended up giving the book her title in English: Her Again. I started thinking: who was Meryl Streep before she was the undisputed queen of acting? How did she learn her craft and how did she achieve her fame? So the book is a portrait of Meryl as a young woman in the seventies, still finding her place in life and in show business. Although, of course, not all of her performances are perfect or well chosen. Some have me thinking: eh?
His first film role, in Julia, with Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Fonda, was a bad experience. She later lost the role of the blonde in King Kong to Jessica Lange because she was not considered pretty enough. At that time she believed that she belonged to the world of theater, not film and certainly not stardom.
She never saw herself as a movie star - a profession that requires perfect looks and sex appeal, which is not how she saw herself. Her beauty is more idiosyncratic, especially her long and slightly crooked nose, and she liked to play difficult, independent women. In contrast, Jessica Lange projected a soft and accommodating femininity. Early in her career, Meryl was perfectly satisfied doing theater in New York. She entered movies almost by accident, and the performance that made her a star was in Kramer vs. Kramer, a film in which she played a difficult, independent woman.
Could someone have a career like yours today, since the films that launched it, adult cinema, are barely made anymore?
The road is now more difficult, with Marvel, Star Wars and other franchises dominating Hollywood. Can someone like Scarlett Johansson or Florence Pugh establish themselves as dramatic heavyweights while trapped in the Marvel Universe? Meryl emerged in the '70s, a golden era for intelligent, adult, edgy films, and that helped her naturalness shine. Although it is also true that there are many actresses following in her wake now: Cate Blanchett, Viola Davis, Michelle Williams, Jessica Chastain, Elisabeth Moss and Penélope Cruz, to name a few.
What surprised you about pre-fame Meryl?
I was surprised by how much the feminist movement of the 1970s influenced her. And I was also shocked by the story of her relationship with John Cazale, the actor best known for playing Fredo in The Godfather. They met in 1976, doing a Shakespeare play, and she was at her bedside when he died of cancer just two years later. It was a beautiful and tragic love story, which also occurred at the exact moment when her career was exploding. Of the eighty people I interviewed for the book, I especially enjoyed the memories of her classmates at the Yale School of Drama, who couldn't believe her talent. She was almost annoyingly perfect.
In high school, she became a popular girl practically by force of will. Would you say that's how she's behaved for the rest of her career?
In high school in New Jersey, teenage Meryl wanted to fit in with the popular crowd and attract boys, so she dyed her hair and became a cheerleader. In some ways she was her first role, but she was also a limited vision of what a woman could be, and once she got to college, to Vassar, her mind opened to more interesting possibilities. . She still has that willpower, but she didn't apply it to being pretty and popular.
Streep gained notoriety with her great dramatic roles but younger fans often fall in love with Comedian Meryl or Meryl Camp. Which one is her favorite?
I love Meryl Camp! Death Suits You So Good is my favorite, a dark comedy in which she plays an unbearable and vain actress who drinks a potion of eternal youth. It's a wickedly funny performance where he was laughing at her own image. It was a surprising choice for her in 1992, and not everyone liked it then. But the film has become a cult classic, deservedly so.
If you had to teach a college course on Meryl Streep, what five titles would you include on your resume and why? What five films explain her career?
That sounds like a fun job. My two favorite interpretations are Kramer vs. Kramer and The Devil Wears Prada, which seem very different, but in both of them he managed to turn the villain of the story into the heroine. So I'd include those two, plus Sophie's Choice, Death Becomes You So Good, and maybe The Orchid Thief. But that would leave out Silkwood and Julie and Julia. Now I'm undecided!
Is there any performer who could now achieve that combined level of fame, respect and success? Why does the media sometimes insist on looking for the “new Meryl Streep”?
You could argue that there are Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman or even Natalie Portman, who have led careers full of interesting and risky roles. But no one has reached this level, where her name is synonymous with enormous talent and people use her as a standard to measure others. What I know is that Meryl Streep would roll her eyes at what I've said and at the idea of crowning someone "the new Meryl Streep." She's never been very impressed with herself. When Donald Trump called her “overrated,” she agreed.
