On October 19, 1999, the Feminist Majority Foundation raised money for its efforts to focus attention on human rights abuses against women in Afghanistan at an event held at the W New York Hotel. “Shroud of Silence”, a documentary written and produced by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, was shown, and speakers included Eleanor Smeal, the organization’s president, Meryl Streep, Marlo Thomas and Bonnie Fuller, the editor in chief of Glamour magazine, with a musical performance by Melissa Etheridge. In her remarks on stage, Meryl Streep spoke about leadership.

I have been asked to talk about women and leadership. I feel uniquely unqualified to speak on this topic, in the present company, for many reasons, chief among them: I am not a leader; I’ve just played leaders on TV. I really can’t get anyone to do what I say, at home or at work. But I do have this fantasy job where I can, say, own a coffee plantation and order literally hundreds of people to do my bidding, or I can pretend to be Karen Silkwood and lead an insurrection in a power plant. Or I can, as I did in the next film, stand on the stage of Carnegie Hall, count to eight and bring Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman in on the Bach Double Violin Concerto, which we all then play to perfection. But, of course, when they call “cut,” Mr. Stern goes back to actually running Carnegie Hall, Mr. Perlman really goes back to being one of the greatest violinists in the world, and I go back to not being a conductor. I go home and ask very nicely if everyone would please scrape, dump and load their dishes into the dishwasher before they go upstairs! And I am a voice crying out in the wilderness. I am a virtual leader, and an actual mother, a very specific schizophrenia I’m sure I share with many in this room.

I am an actor, and an actor is a figment. I have distinguished myself by expressing other people’s pain, joy, weakness and triumph in a process that remains pretty mysterious to me when I do it. I’m famous for being Somebody Else. And so, I feel unworthy. In searching, desperately, for the thing we all have in common, I realized this: We all choose. This is where acting and life are the same. I do choose who, and how, and with whom to play. What I will and will not do. Acting is a series of choices. And so is life. Once, when I was playing the leader of an expedition down a 200-mile stretch of Class 5 white water, I took a lot of credit for bravery. But the real queasy moments came in the marketing meeting, when I made big enemies because I wouldn’t approve the use of my big face on the poster pointing a pistol at America. The N.R.A., rich as it is, doesn’t have the money or the clout to get glamorous actors of such renown to pose for their ads. But we do their flogging for free every time we point the gun at the camera for an ad campaign. My eldest daughter has been determined to lead since she was born. Most of the time the rest of us roll over and let her, but when she was 6, we were on a hike down a steep, rocky path. “I’ll be the leader,” she screamed, and ran on ahead.
“No!” I told her. “This time I have to go first because it’s dangerous.”
“But I want to be the leader!”
“No. I have to go in front of you, so if you fall, I can catch you.”
“But I want to go first!”
“You don’t even know where we’re going. Why do you have to get there first?” “Mom,” she said calmly, “you be the leader, I’ll be the winner.”

And that’s the way we’ve worked it out at our house.