Chronology: 1999
Attending the Academy Award on her 11th nomination, this year for “One True Thing”. She is seen backstage with Robert De Niro at VH1’s Concert of the Century. On film, she plays real-life teacher Roberta Guaspari in Wes Craven’s “Music of the Heart”.
Meryl Streep’s last film of the 1990s was “Music of the Heart”, the real-life story of a music teacher in the Bronx who teaches children from poor income backgrounds to play the violin. Wes Craven, the masterful creator of “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Scream” struck a chord with the sentimental story – ““I’d been a teacher. I’d been divorced. I’d lived in New York and loved New York,” he told an interviewer in 2014, and Streep was a last-minute replacement for the lead after Madonna dropped out – a bittersweet irony after Madonna replaced her original spot in the film adaptation of “Evita”. Nevertheless, the casting left Meryl with only two months to learn the violin, which she practiced with New York Philharmonic violinist Sandy Park for six hours every day.
„Music of the Heart“, in the grand tradition of most of Streep’s mid-to-late 90s films, was met with positive reviews, awards buzz, and almost zero feedback from the box office. Streep scored another trio of nominations for the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Academy Award. After „Music of the Heart“, Streep “retired” from film acting for the next three years, for personal reasons.
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