The scathing reason Meryl Streep doesn’t think she’ll ever work with Martin Scorsese: “I don’t know if I’ll live that long”
Being a living legend comes with certain perks of the job, and for Meryl Streep, it’s the ability to become increasingly selective over which projects she deems worthy of her illustrious talents.
Of course, nobody has those privileges at the beginning of their career, and the easiest way to make it happen was for Streep to prove to the world – not to mention the people in charge – that she was one of the best in the business. Lo and behold, she was, and her legacy has gone from strength to strength ever since.
There aren’t many filmmakers at any level of the industry who’d turn down the opportunity to work with Streep, and on the other side of that coin, there are countless directors Streep has always had her eye on without the stars ever aligning. Martin Scorsese is near the top of the list, but there’s a catch.
While it might be surprising to many that they’ve never worked together despite rising through the ranks at the same time on the opposite side of the camera – never mind Streep collaborating with many of Scorsese’s most trusted lieutenants like Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Harvey Keitel – they’ve constantly been kept apart by fate and circumstance.
It’s a match made in heaven for cinephiles everywhere, but the three-time Academy Award winner and 21-time nominee isn’t willing to take that plunge unless the material lives up to her exacting standards. When asked by The Talks if there was anyone she was desperate to work with but hadn’t as of yet, there was only one name at the forefront of her mind.
“Yes, I would like Martin Scorsese to be interested in a female character once in a while,” she responded. “But I don’t know if I’ll live that long.” Consider that a shot fired from Streep, even if it’s a broadly sweeping generalisation that doesn’t really hold up under the greatest levels of scrutiny.
While the majority of Scorsese’s filmography is undoubtedly dominated by male protagonists and compelling female leads haven’t been a common occurrence relative to the length and breadth of his filmography, saying he’s never had any interest in female characters is a stretch.
Lily Gladstone, Jodie Foster, Cathy Moriarty, Winona Ryder, and Sharon Stone all earned Oscar nominations for their performances in Scorsese flicks, and nobody ends up being shortlisted by the Academy for embodying a one-dimensional, one-note, or unimportant figure who exists solely to provide window dressing for the men.
Ellen Burstyn hand-picked Scorsese to helm Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and she won the trophy for ‘Best Actress’ in a decidedly female-centric narrative, with the thinly-veiled accusations levelled towards him by Streep something the filmmaker has addressed publicly in the past.
“That’s a question I’ve had for so many years,” he once admitted. “Am I supposed to? If the story doesn’t call for it, then it’s a waste of everybody’s time. If the story calls for a female character lead, why not?” Not the most eloquent of responses, but it’s unfair to suggest that Scorsese has never cared about having well-written women in prominent roles. Then again, Streep’s words aren’t entirely without merit when the last woman to be billed first in the credits of a Scorsese picture was Liza Minnelli in New York, New York, which was released in 1977.
