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INTERVIEW WITH USA WEEKEND
Magazine / Source: USA Weekend, December 2002 |
The Ken Burns Interview: "Some say she is the greatest actress of a generation. Others say of all time. But one thing is certain: She's an American icon."
If we valued actors the way we do presidents, there would hardly be enough room on Mount Rushmore for Meryl Streep. Radiant and self-possessed in her sixth decade, she has the love of life of Teddy Roosevelt, the enigmatic qualities of Thomas Jefferson, the commanding presence of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln's almost mystical ability to get to the heart of things.
Like these great Americans, Streep has been dedicated to and mastered her life's work. She has cemented her reputation by selecting roles that are uncompromising in their artistic merit, earning a remarkable 12 Oscar nominations. She has won twice, for supporting actress ("Kramer vs. Kramer") and lead actress ("Sophie's Choice"). Her work ethic alone is legendary, from learning to speak Polish for "Sophie's Choice" to playing violin five hours a day to prepare for "Music of the Heart." Most significantly, Streep's control of her own destiny ensures she can fulfill her offscreen roles as mother of four children, ages 11 to 22, and (for 24 years) wife of sculptor Donald Gummer. Like all great Americans, she has a quality of curiosity and yearning that helps give meaning and support to our own journeys.
"Art is food," Streep likes to say. This month, moviegoers will have their appetites satisfied by two worthy showcases for the actress: "Adaptation" hits screens in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto next Friday, then nationwide Jan. 10. And she'll star with Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore in the film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Hours," opening in New York and L.A. on Dec. 27, then nationwide in January.
Recently in New York, I had an extended conversation with Streep. Over a cup of coffee, she discussed her acting, her family and the critical choices that have defined her career. She breezed in from a packed street without a whiff of pretense. She likes to laugh -- and laughs often.
In terms of style, your two new movies are night and day. Yet, at their heart, they are about yearning. So often the characters you portray seem to be extremely complicated women who are trying to figure out how to get more out of life. Is that true?
Streep: That accurately describes me! (Laughs.) I want to feel my life while I'm in it, and I'm curious about other people. That's the essence of my acting. I'm interested in what it would be like to be you. And maybe not even people, but animals or aliens -- whatever that thing is that leaps out of us into that imaginary being and connects us. Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.
How does a role find you? Does a bell go off?
Streep: Usually, I simply respond to good writing -- a thoughtful architecture of words. I can do my work more freely if I feel safe in a "basket" somebody else, like a writer, has woven for me.
Are you able to transform life experiences into your work? Streep: No. If I go and pull something up that's part of my own personal pain, I'm not in charge of where it takes me. And it doesn't take me necessarily to the place where the film needs to go. The scene in Sophie's Choice where my character has to decide between her children is a good example. At that point in my life, I only had one child. I read the scene once, and I never read it again. I didn't want to think about it. I had memorized it because it was, like, engraved on my heart. When we shot it, I didn't want to do it again. I didn't want to be there. And we got it done. I didn't need to think about "What if I had to leave my son?" I don't want to think about that at all!
All of these roles, I assume, are like your children: They're a part of you; they never leave you. Does it get loud inside?
Streep: There are certain things in the script that will evoke a past part, or some corner of a remembered building or someone's gesture. It's like while I'm reading and feel some kind of improvisational response that comes from I don't know where. People write books about acting, but I don't think they've ever pierced this mystery. Because it is something, and I think the secret of it does have something to do with our shared DNA -- that everyone in Europe went through Charlemagne ...
... the kinship of the soul that we have. You're saying your performances are not based on your personal experience, but something you evoke from within to bring the "moment" to that role?
Streep: Yes. Because I believe in imagination. I did Kramer vs. Kramer before I had children. But the mother I would be was already inside me. People say, "When you have children, everything changes." But maybe things are awakened that were already there. I think actors can awaken things that are in all of us: our evil, our cruelty, our grace. Actors can call these things up more easily than other people.
Your roles are permanently etched in our consciousness. Yet you've escaped being appropriated by the whole media star system. How have you pulled that off?
Streep: I didn't want to be for sale. I didn't want to put me, my family and the things that really matter to me out on the marketplace. I've always been aware of that, of how it happens to other people. I didn't want to have that life, that "famous" thing.
And so you've stayed away from Hollywood?
Streep: Well, I lived in Los Angeles for five years, and I found it oppressive. I had to wash my hair to take my kids to school. It drove me crazy.
Why do people need to act? Why do we need to invent? To lie?
Streep: Wow. Every time I think it's a silly way to spend my life, I see a performance by another actor and think, "I couldn't live if I didn't have this in my life." I really think that. Or a piece of music. We need art. We really need art. Maybe we need to feel we count, like our existence matters. Acting can do that; it can make you feel more alive and proud to be a human being. Even seeing the worst of humanity.
Where was that born? Was there an "Aha!" moment when you knew you could act?
Streep: I was wild about my grandmother. When I was 8 years old, I took her eyebrow pencil and drew on where I thought all the lines should be on my face when I was older. I put a sweater on because I wanted to feel like what it would be to be my grandmother. And my mother took pictures. I still have them. I look just like I do now. (Big laugh.) But we are who we're going to be when we're very old, and when we're very old we are who we were when we were 8.
Are you comfortable with the mythic status of your life's work? You are considered the greatest actress of your generation, if not of all time.
Streep: Oh, I'm not comfortable at all! (Laughs.) It is often an interruption to my work with other actors -- on the first day, or the second day. But then we go to the bar and everything gets straightened out.
Do you let the good stuff in? Do you get satisfaction from awards or from someone stopping you on the street?
Streep: As long as I'm not with my children, because they regard it as a gross interruption of their day. But it does make me feel good when someone says, "That was so wonderful, and I'll remember it all my life."
Will you always act?
Streep: Oh, I always think I'm going to give up. You get the cold feet. You think, "Why would anyone want to see me again in a movie? And I don't know how to act anyway, so why am I doing this? I don't have to do this." It is something I confront at the beginning of everything. I have to start out with nothing each time.
And reinvent the wheel.
Streep: And reinvent the wheel. It's very hard. It's very, very hard.
But this means you won't stop acting?
Streep: Well, I'll try ...
