Chronology: 1998
As the oldest spinster sister in Pat O’Connor’s “Dancing at Lughnasa”. With director Carl Franklin and co-star Renee Zellweger at the Los Angeles premiere of “One True Thing”. Receiving her star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The year 1998 brought two very different feature films. For the screen adaptation of Brian Friel’s play “Dancing at Lughnasa”, Streep put on a heavy Irish accent and dancing shoes. The story of five spinster sisters in rural Ireland, Streep was immediately drawn to the script: “It was so elegantly written and the characters were woven beautifully,” she says. “It was so subtle – everything was under the text, everything was subtext. But there was a character missing and that was this landscape – which I didn’t really see until I saw the film for myself,” she told The Irish Times upon its release. Despite good reviews, the film was little-seen in the United States.
In “One True Thing”, she played an all-american housewife and mother who is diagnosed with cancer. Her daughter, a savvy businesswoman played by Renée Zellweger, puts her career on hold to take care of her mother. The film was based on the book by Anna Quindlen, a fellow Benard graduate, who wrote about her own experience of caring for her mother. “I didn’t have to excavate very far when I was writing „One True Thing,” she told the New York Times in 1994. “You don’t forget the way cancer smells, and sounds, and looks, and progresses.” A frailer daughter might have been derailed, but, says Quindlen, “it railed me. When I went back to school, I was a grown-up.” While the film received mixed reviews for its Lifetime movie-of-the-week feel, Meryl Streep was lauded by critics and received another round of Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Academy Award nominations as Lead Actress.
www.simplystreep.com
