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MERYL'S OSCAR PITCH
Magazine / Source: The West Australian, October 2004 |
Meryl Streep is known for playing strong, forceful characters. Yet she comes across as a regular mum, or a girlfriend it would be fun to accompany for a night on the town. In fact, when we meet at the Venice Film Festival to discuss her latest role as a ball-busting politician in The Manchurian Candidate, she is hung-over.
"I'm paying for it. I'm sooo tired," she moans.
But Streep is a trouper. Ten days later, she was up on the podium at the Emmys accepting a prize for her portrayal of multiple characters - including a bearded rabbi - in the HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning AIDS play, Angels in America.
"There are some days when I myself think I'm overrated but not today," jokes the actress, who is not skinny, hasn't had botox, but still remains beautiful at 55.
While on the subject of awards, the Oscars are coming up next year and Streep is sure to be nominated for her portrayal of the manipulative mother - played icily in the original 1962 movie by the Oscar-nominated Angela Lansbury - especially since the focus is more on her role, rather than on the two men who star with her.
Liev Schreiber nonetheless excels as her son, the brainwashed candidate being pushed into political office, played by Laurence Harvey in the original. Likewise, Denzel Washington is earnest in Frank Sinatra's role of the army officer who remembers what really happened when his platoon was captured and subjected to psychological conditioning, the setting updated from the Korean War to 1991 Kuwait.
If Washington is nominated for an Oscar, he will take it in his stride as before. "I think when Training Day came around, it was my turn," he says. Many believe he should have won for Malcolm X but Al Pacino won for Scent of a Woman instead.
"Al Pacino had been nominated eight times. How can Al Pacino be nominated eight times and not win? Was that his greatest performance? I don't think so. Was Training Day my best performance in a leading role? I don't think so either. But I think that sometimes they give it to you for your work over the years."
The critical acclaim is gladly received for a movie that was always going to be compared with the classic original. Both stars tackled the remake in their own way.
"I don't feel we remade it. We re-imagined it," says Washington, who still hasn't seen John Frankenheimer's original. "I wanted it to be fresh to me and not get bogged down in comparisons. Now if Frank sang, then I would have been intimidated. I'm a pretty decent actor but I can't sing," he laughs.
Streep avoided watching the original film until filming finished. "I knew it was such an acclaimed performance and I'm such a copycat," she says. "I'd be in reaction to that performance and I didn't want to do that."
She calls her role in The Manchurian Candidate "the role of a lifetime" as she plays a woman in power - and let's face it, there haven't been many of them. Her Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw has been compared with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and US Senator Hilary Clinton.
"I'd never known a role like this. You have to go back to Angela Lansbury to get something even approaching it and then further back to the 40s when the great film villainesses were on screen. It's irresistible," she says with glee.
The jewellery, the posture and the shoes are of vital importance for women in positions of power, she says. "No dangling earrings, no, no, no, no, no. They make you look too crazy. It's disturbing enough that there's a woman leader but if her earrings are moving, oh my God, the state is unstable.
"Never wear black and no sharp jewellery, no interesting pendant - forget it. You know it's all pearls, double rows of pearls, a round pin, soft colours. It's a uniform which says, 'Don't get distracted, just listen to what I have to say' because the women have to be so much more careful."
During the publicity for The Manchurian Candidate, Streep, Washington and director Jonathan Demme have played down the political nature of the film. It was for that reason, explains Demme, that the film was released in the US in the summer rather than at election time. He calls the film a psychological thriller and compares the way he made it with his award-winning The Silence of the Lambs.
"Jonathan is a man who understands a thriller, layering the characterisation so deep so I have something to do," Streep says. "In a regular thriller there's nothing to do. You're a thing that they move from plot point to plot point.
"But he was interested in psychology. So when people read this film as being political, just go see it a second or third time and see how deep it goes, into the darkest places."
Many thanks to Kenny for submitting this article
