The actor Meryl Streep would love to be more like: “I’d really love to resemble her”
Who comes to mind when you think of a current Hollywood icon? Maybe it’s Leonardo DiCaprio or Tom Cruise, or someone more recent like Margot Robbie. Well, they’d all be valid answers, but can anyone top Meryl Streep?
With 21 Oscar nominations to her name, Streep is the reigning queen of Hollywood, having started out back in the late 1970s where she rose to instant acclaim (is there any surprise?). The actor can shapeshift like nobody’s business, and during her time she has embodied everyone from grieving mothers to Margaret Thatcher, which is quite the contrast.
Streep cites actors like Robert De Niro as inspirations, having witnessed his performance in Taxi Driver and deciding that maybe cinema wasn’t a bad idea after all. She’d trained in theatre and planned on sticking to the stage, but she was called to the big screen, quickly proving that it’s here that she flourishes best.
Practically every actor who has emerged since Streep has been influenced by her incredible screen presence and consistency, but that doesn’t mean that Streep doesn’t still admire actors who have come after her, even taking influence from them. There’s one star whom the actor once claimed she would “love to resemble,” which is a crazy thing for someone as iconic as Streep to say. Yet, she’s not immune to admiring the work of others just because she’s already considered the cream of the crop.
Cate Blanchett is one of Streep’s favourite stars, and she once heaped praise on her by saying, “She’s an actress that is not only gifted and talented. Cate Blanchett is above all a brave actress. One has to be brave, for example, to play in A Streetcar Named Desire in Broadway,” adding, “I really admire her enormously, and I’d really love to resemble her.”
If I was Blanchett, I’d be over the moon. Imagine the most Oscar-nominated actor in cinema history expressing a desire to be more like you. That must feel better than winning an Oscar.
Streep really loved Blanchett’s performance, once telling The Herald Sun, “That performance was as naked, as raw and extraordinary and astonishing and surprising and scary as anything I’ve ever seen, and it didn’t have anything to do with what clothes she took off, you know what I mean? She took the layers of a person and just peeled them away. I thought I’d seen that play, I thought I knew all the lines by heart, because I’ve seen it so many times, but I’d never seen the play until I saw that performance.”
Blanchett is certainly up there in Streep’s league, although she’s still got some catching up to do in terms of Oscar nominations – she has had eight thus far, winning two. The pair even worked together back in 2021 on the film Don’t Look Up, which saw them appear alongside an ensemble of other big stars, like DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. It was a polarising film, but more importantly to consider, who was more excited to work with their hero? Streep or Blanchett?
