The movie that made Meryl Streep break her golden rule: “I changed my mind”
There are few actors out there who compare to Meryl Streep. She is able to call herself the most nominated star in Oscar history, with 21 to her name and three wins, as well as many classic pieces of cinema firmly under her belt. She can seemingly do it all, from tragic romantic leads to villainous bosses and lighthearted characters with a tendency to break out into song.
Streep started her career in the 1970s, and she hasn’t ever shown any signs of slowing down. Earning acclaim every decade with a wide variety of roles, the actor has proved that there doesn’t have to be a sell-by date for women in Hollywood. However, the industry does have a long history of sexism, and even for the most successful and legendary female stars, like Streep, it can be hard to find appropriate roles.
As Streep has gotten older, she has found the industry more tricky to navigate, realising that with age typically comes offers for the kinds of roles she’d never be asked to play before. In an interview with Movies.ie, the actor revealed, “When I turned 40, I was offered three witches in one year and I realised this was the way my career was going to go: they don’t know what to do with women past a certain age.”
It’s absurd that a woman only has to turn 40 to be considered ‘too old’ for Hollywood, suddenly relegated to roles that rarely paint them as desirable. How many rom-coms can you think of with both romantic leads over the age of 40? The answer is very few. When Streep started to be met with an influx of offers for witches when she was hardly middle-aged, she came face to face with Hollywood’s alarming casting problems, deeply rooted in sexism and ageism. “So I turned them down and I have said ‘no’ to playing witches ever since,” she added.
However, there was a moment in Streep’s career when she went against her vow to never play witches, resulting in an Oscar-nominated performance. In 2014, she starred in the Rob Marshall film Into the Woods alongside the likes of Emily Blunt, Anna Kendrick, James Corden, and Johnny Depp, playing a witch who curses a local couple who wish for a baby.
The actor explained, “However, I changed my mind when this role came along because this witch is quite different. First of all, she transforms. Her whole reason for being is to reverse a curse that has been placed on her; she sets in motion all sorts of devices and causes a dramatic upheaval in everybody’s lives. I believe fairy tales have evolved as cautionary tales. They were told to scare children away from the dangers they would encounter in their lives and to encourage young women to marry rich men. Everybody is encouraged to find a Prince and live happily ever after and sometimes it doesn’t work that way.”
Streep was a huge fan of how the movie approached the fairy tale genre, and as a result, she gladly accepted the part. “This is where the Into the Woods fairy tale becomes reality and it gets really exciting, random, weird and almost like real life. For an actor, they are great fun.” The star has actively tried to go against sexist and ageist tropes in Hollywood, and with Into the Woods, she subverted a classic stereotype to great success.
