Meryl Streep was “scared shitless” making one of her most forgettable movies
Actors love to talk about how they spend their entire careers feeling like they can’t afford to take anything for granted. They say it can all go away at any moment, so there is always an inherent fear trailing every project, and that is hard to believe for stars like Meryl Streep.
After all, Streep is widely considered the greatest actor of her generation and has been working solidly for the last five decades.
However, Streep once admitted to one of her young co-stars that she still felt those nerves in the pit of her stomach, even after 25 years of experience. Amazingly, she didn’t reserve the feeling only for the most prestigious films. Instead, on Prime, a 2005 romcom that few Streep fans could even name, she claimed she felt “scared shitless” during rehearsals.
This revelation that Streep is still a nervous wreck before embarking on every job came courtesy of Bryan Greenberg, who was a young leading man on the rise in the mid-2000s. Prime was only his third movie, but as an integral cast member of the teen show One Tree Hill and the lead in teen movie The Perfect Score, he was already a Hollywood heartthrob.
Therefore, when Greenberg was cast as the 23-year-old love interest of 37-year-old career woman Uma Thurman in Prime, he believed his ascent to the top of Hollywood was well underway. “I was just naive,” he admitted to The New York Post in 2024, “And then I got Prime, and I was so confident because I did like seven screen tests to win that role. When I got there, I was like, ‘Yeah, I deserve to be here. This is it. I made it’, you know?”
Greenberg’s belief that this Hollywood thing would be a cakewalk continued into rehearsals, which is when he first met the woman playing his mother in the film: Meryl Streep. He should have been intimidated, or at least realised his fortunate position. Instead, when she asked him, “Bryan, how are you feeling about this? Are you nervous?” he replied with an arrogant, “Good. Ready to go. Super ready'”.
In truth, Greenberg’s primary reaction to the query wasn’t to look within himself; it was to wonder why Streep, of all people, had even asked the question. “Why, are you nervous?” he asked the iconic Sophie’s Choice and Out of Africa star, to which she nodded, “Oh, I’m scared shitless”.
Suddenly, Greenberg understood the important lesson that she was trying to illuminate for him, in her own low-key, honest way. “I was like, ‘Oh, so it never ends. So, you never make it. You’re just always scared,” he explained. It became painfully clear right then that he hadn’t been given a golden ticket to Hollywood superstardom, one that would allow him plain sailing for the rest of his career.
Instead, he realised, “I’m just going to be on this hamster wheel. There’s no pinnacle”.
Streep’s words ultimately proved prophetic for Greenberg, who didn’t end up with an A-list career, despite his strong start in the industry. After a series of movies in the ’00s like Bride Wars and Friends with Benefits, as well as a couple of short-lived but acclaimed HBO series like Unscripted and How to Make it in America, he settled into life as a working film and television actor with no more illusions about how difficult it is to maintain a career in Hollywood.
“I was very lucky to learn it from someone like her so early on,” Greenberg admitted about the sage piece of wisdom he received from Streep, musing, “You never get there. It truly is a journey”.
