The one movie Meryl Streep has never been comfortable with: “I didn’t feel I was living it”
Any conversation about the greatest actors to ever grace the silver screen is incomplete without the presence of Meryl Streep. The actor is rightly considered one of the greatest to have ever trod the boards. She has many roles; her incredible accents and ability to not only play real people but inhabit fantasies have landed her at the pinnacle of the profession.
In fact, ask anyone who has had a brief dalliance with the movie industry to pick a favourite actor, then Streep might well be one of the most celebrated. But that doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll buy into her own hype as a near-flawless performer who can always be relied on to deliver a knockout turn in any project she lends her name to.
While Streep is usually criticised for receiving the chance to play the best roles first by other actors, this one move is a reminder of just how much respect the actor has in Hollywood. It’s a sense of respect duly earned across an array of performances and game-changing movies like The Deer Hunter, Sophie’s Choice, Death Becomes Her, Mamma Mia!, The Devil Wears Prada and Kramer vs Kramer. But it wasn’t those classic movies that Streep was referencing.
In fact, Streep revealed on The Graham Norton Show that one performance in particular sticks in her memory, even if she did end up securing a now-standard Academy Award nomination for her efforts. Karel Reisz’s 1981 drama The French Lieutenant’s Woman – based on John Fowles’ 1969 novel of the same name – follows two romantic affairs set across two time periods with the same stars playing the key roles in both.
Streep and Jeremy Irons play Sarah Woodruff – the titular character known as “the French lieutenant’s woman” and a German palaeontologist, respectively – in a Victorian period drama, as well as actors Mike and Anna in the modern-day narrative who occupy the lead roles in a filmed adaptation of the original story. Despite its widespread acclaim culminating in five Oscar nominations and Streep’s Golden Globe win for ‘Best Actress’, she wasn’t particularly pleased with how things turned out.
As she confessed to Norton, despite just her sixth feature film appearance netting her a third Oscar nod, Streep noted that the dual-pronged storytelling device left her dissatisfied with how things turned out: “I’m giving myself an out, but part of it was,” she said.
Adding: “The structure of it was sort of artificial because I was the actress playing ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’. At the same time I was an American actress playing a British woman. I didn’t feel I was living it. You always want to do something better after the fact.”
Of course, securing a Bafta Award in the ‘Best Actress’ category to go along with her Golden Globe victory and Oscar nod indicates that her peers were in staunch disagreement over the merits of Streep’s dual role in a widely-acclaimed movie, but it just goes to show that even a talent of her calibre isn’t always convinced that they’ve delivered the best possible version of what was on the page.
Having gone on to be nominated for a further 19 Oscars in the decades since, including a second ‘Best Actress’ statue the following year for her next big screen outing in Sophie’s Choice, Streep has cemented herself as one of the finest to ever step onto a film set. That being said, her thoughts on The French Lieutenant’s Woman make it clear that she doesn’t see herself as infallible despite the astonishingly consistent success she’s enjoyed over the course of a lengthy and distinguished career, even if there’s inevitably going to be some who disagree with her assessment that her efforts were somewhat lacking.
