Directors Feared Her, Colleagues Adored Her: the Truth about Meryl Streep (Part 1)

She holds the record for the most Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. She is a woman who can transform beyond recognition and inspires millions of viewers around the world. But what was Meryl Streep's life like before fame? Why did she consider herself not beautiful enough for Hollywood? And what kind of tragedy did she have to go through before conquering cinema? You're on the Biographer channel. Get comfortable. We're starting a story about one of the best actresses of our time. Mary Louise Streep was born on June 22nd, 1949, in a small American town called Summit, New Jersey. Her father, Harry Streep, was a pharmaceutical executive, and her mother, Mary, was a former artist. With the birth of children, the future actress had two more brothers, Harry and Dana. She was forced to devote herself to housework and family care. Streep will talk about her mother as a big personality who was confined to the house. And even full of caring for her family, Mary worked as a commercial artist, having a small studio behind the garden. The girl was named after two women of the family. She received the name Mary in honor of her paternal grandmother, and the name Louise in honor of her maternal grandmother. But there is a little story connected with the surname Streep. The actress's long-standing ancestors were Spanish Jews who emigrated to Holland back in the 15th century. According to one legend, the surname Messerschmitt was changed to Streep due to the fact that the ancestors, once in a new country, simply did not know its language. And signed with a dash. The Dutch word streep means line, as in the dividing line. And it happened. There is another theory already related to the Dutch saying Zetterin Streep Onder, which roughly translates as, Let's start over. Anyway, despite her Jewish background, Streep's father was raised in the Episcopal Church, and the actress herself calls her family Presbyterian in spirit and Jewish in blood. Harry worked hard to provide for his family, while Mary nurtured her children's appreciation for beauty. The first acquaintance with acting occurred when the young Meryl was only six years old. She participated in a school production, playing the Virgin Mary. According to the memoirs of the future actress, even then she felt the power of the acting's influence on the audience. Her usually naughty brothers could not take their eyes off her. This moment was the beginning of the future star's interest in acting. Later, her idols would be Carol Lombard, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck. And her films would be modeled on old classic movies. In addition, the girl showed singing abilities. Already a student at Bernard's high school, the young Streep attracted the attention of teachers, who strongly recommended that her parents develop her vocal skills. When the girl turned 12, her parents hired a singing teacher for her. For almost five years, Streep studied with a teacher, and one of the famous teachers in the field, Estelle Liebling, whose students included Beverly Sills. The girl herself was fond of music. One of the most beloved singers of Meryl's youth was Barbara Streisand. It seemed to her that the singer was telling a whole story in each of her songs, and she was the one who inspired the future star, and shaped her vision for performing in general. In each song, and each one was almost its whole little narrative film or something. There was something so dramatic about how she did what she did. There was even a period when Meryl planned to become an opera singer, but fate turned out differently. As a teenager, young Meryl decided to drop out of music school. It began to seem to her that an opera singer was not as interesting as a cheerleader. The opera seemed old-fashioned to her, and the lessons boring. She recalled herself in her youth, saying that she looked like a middle-aged secretary with cat-eye glasses, and a brown neck-length perm, and she was pretty tired of this image. A young woman dyed her hair blonde, read fashion magazines, and decided to radically change her life. That's why she left her vocal classes and joined the cheerleading squad at her school. The actress's biographer, Michael Schulman, regards this episode from her life as her first major acting performance. She studied what boys liked and what girls would accept, and memorized where the two overlapped. She found that she could mimic other people's behavior with faultless precision, he wrote. Moreover, the young woman's smoking habit began to affect her voice. Raised by two seemingly opposite people, Streep has absorbed a wide variety of qualities. So, the creative Meryl wasn't too keen on cooking. That's why the actress mastered culinary art only in adulthood, remembering that she first saw raw potatoes in her classmate's house. Before that, the girl was sure that the mashed potatoes were taken from a bag. Her hard-working father instilled in her diligence and love of order. Later, she will be considered one of the most diligent actresses, having the main principle in her work. Anyone who wants to achieve anything has to work hard. A woman herself is used to giving her best, and does not tolerate people who are irresponsible about their business. What was she like for herself? After graduating from high school, the girl was sent to study at the prestigious Vassar College, which changed her life. One day, drama teacher Clinton Atkinson invited a young student to perform Blanche Dubois' monologue from Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire at a student's evening. The offer was more formal, because no one saw Meryl as an actor. What was their surprise when Streep began her performance? The audience froze, and the young woman showed a real acting level. Since then, she has been constantly invited to various student performances. In one of these productions, Robert Brustein, Dean of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts at Yale University, spotted her. He was also the director of the Yale Theater and, impressed by her performance, invited Streep to join his troupe. Moreover, Brustein recommended her for admission to the Drama School of the University, with a full scholarship. Meryl had been considering herself as a future lawyer for some time. She even decided to go to law school, but she overslept the exam. The young woman regarded this situation as a sign from above and confirmed her desire to pursue a creative path. While studying at Yale, the future actress also gained a practical skill. She worked in summer theaters as a costume designer. Even there, she never stopped surprising her fellow students and teachers with her intense acting. So, in the first year, all students were offered to show the death scene. Most of them played ordinary scenes, such as shooting, poisoning, or hanging. But Streep decided to act the scene of abortion, which left a strong impression on everyone present. Her classmates even coined the term, Streep It Up, meaning an increase in the level of professionalism. Streep was different in many ways. Her willingness to become ugly for roles, to completely lose herself in the character, and her inventiveness born out of her resistance to the method of acting that was very fashionable at the time. Streep, according to Shulman, preferred imagination. She was skeptical about the concept of mining her own pain, believing that misery was irrelevant to artistry, writes Shulman of Streep's Yale years. What her instructors saw as laziness or evasion was a growing intellectual revolt against the orthodoxy of method acting, which had shaped the previous generation of actors. The actress herself wasn't always serious about her choice. Why did I become an actress? Probably because my friends told me that I did it very well in college. That's when I first was in a play. And I knew I liked it, but I really never thought I could make a living at it. Upon graduation, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in drama, and later a Master of Arts degree from the Yale School of Drama. By the time Meryl graduated from university, she had a decent repertoire, over 40 main roles in the most diverse plays. There's Chekhov, Shakespeare, and Shaw. She was a simpering Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and an 80-year-old old woman in a play based on the play by Christopher Durang and Albert Inorado, The Idiot's Karamazov. This diversity of roles allowed her to prepare for a wide variety of projects in the future. After completing good training, a determined young woman faced a choice of where to develop further, and Broadway was the most obvious choice. Therefore, in 1975, Meryl moved to New York. The actress worked hard trying to make herself known on Broadway. In the first year, she appeared in six productions, including the New York Shakespeare Festival. Among them are the performances Henry V, The Taming of the Shrew, starring Raoul Julia, and Measure for Measure, where Streep's partners were Sam Waterston and John Cazale, with whom the actress soon began an affair. Already at the beginning of her career, she conquered the stage. The actress has roles in the musical Happy End, and the performances The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull, based on plays by Anton Chekhov. All three works earned her a nomination for the Drama Desk Award. The actress received an Obie Award for her performance in the off-Broadway play Alice in the Palace, and for her work at the Joseph Papp Theater in the production of 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, she received a nomination for America's highest theater award, the Tony, in addition to high ratings from critics and audiences. But after Streep's film career blossoms, she will take a long break from acting. It seemed that the young woman was successfully moving towards her intended goal, and everyone was delighted with her work. But initially, not everything was so successful with the film industry. When Meryl decided to try her hand at cinema at the age of 26, getting to know this world turned out to be sobering for her. When she went to the casting with an attempt to get a female role in the movie King Kong, 1976, she was ridiculed. Producer Dino De Laurentiis, thinking that she would not understand anything, said in Italian, Why do you bring me this ugly thing? Very sobering, as a young girl. So I said to him, But I understand what you're saying. I'm sorry I'm not beautiful enough to be in King Kong. And even if it did not affect the actress's goal to realize herself in the cinema, it still influenced the choice of genre. Throughout her career, she never looked at horror films again, saying once, I think my son was always a little ashamed in front of his friends that I never starred in a horror movie, and it's impossible to even force me to watch such a movie. Already in 1977, the actress starred in her first feature film, Fred Zinnemann's melodrama Julia. The film was an adaptation of the autobiographical novel Pentimento by Lillian Hellman. The story of the main actresses, Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave, tells about the friendship of two women in the realities of World War II and the struggle of one of her friends against fascism. Streep got a small role, but during editing, many of her scenes were cut. This was especially disheartening given the film's tremendous success. She has received numerous nominations, including three Oscars, two Golden Globes, and four BAFTAs. This year, the actress also appeared in the sports television drama, The Deadliest Season, in which she received one of the minor roles. The supporting wife of the main character, Sharon Miller. The story of professional hockey player Jerry Miller, who is trying to rise in his career using dishonest methods, became the second collaboration between Streep and Michael Moriarty. They had previously met on the stage in The Playboy of Seville in 1971. Moriarty will recall that Meryl was very nervous during the filming of the film. She'd bite her fingers and twirl her hair. Anybody who was putting that kind of effort into a TV movie was a serious player, and she was just getting her feet wet. Despite her insecurities, her small role was an important step into the future. The young actress was noted by both critics and directors. The picture received good reviews when The Deadliest Season first aired on NBC in March 1977. John J. O'Connor of the New York Times lavished praise on the drama. At a time when television is being seriously and widely questioning about its own violent content, The Deadliest Season is an especially noteworthy presentation for a major network, he wrote. Beyond that, this is an exceptionally impressive production. It was a small and seemingly inconspicuous role that gave her a ticket to one of the most high-profile projects of the early period of the actress's work. When producer Herbert Brodkin saw her on stage, he immediately invited Streep and Moriarty to participate in the miniseries Holocaust, dedicated to the life of a German family with Jewish roots named Weiss. The events take place on the eve and during the Second World War. Meryl got the role of the German Inga, who married the artist Carl Weiss. The film, directed by Marvin J. Chomsky, is often considered as the ideological inspiration for subsequent works about the Jewish tragedy of the Nazi period. The point I wanted to show with all of this was that people who seem perfectly normal are capable of committing hideous atrocities. It also popularized the term Holocaust to describe Nazi Germany's attempt to exterminate European Jews and other undesirables. But that's not all. The Holocaust, which was broadcast on West German television after its release, had a huge impact on Germans and their attitudes towards the war. Many of them began to ask questions, even to relatives and the family about their past. The number of requests to study this period increased. According to Der Spiegel magazine, about 20 million people watched at least one episode of the four-episode show in 1979. The effect was instantaneous. Later that year, the West German parliament abolished the statute of limitations for war crimes. This was probably almost the first time a country had passed a law influenced by a TV show. A later edition of Der Spiegel would write that the series managed to do what hundreds of books, plays, films, and TV broadcasts, thousands of documents, and all concentration camp trials in three decades of post-war history had failed to do, to inform Germans about the crimes committed against the Jews in their name in such a way that millions were shaken. Ephraim Zuroff, head of the Jerusalem office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, also shared his opinion on the effect of the series. The story of the Weiss family personalized the Shoah in a way that touched the average viewer and helped Germans internalize the scope and horror of the tragedy that took place in their country, launched by a movement elected democratically. Not surprisingly, the mini-show earned a lot of awards, despite the fact that there were those who considered the story of the Weiss family to be a great simplification of the tragedy. So, in the New York Times, Holocaust survivor and political activist Elie Wiesel wrote that it was untrue, offensive, cheap. As a TV production, the film is an insult to those who perished, and to those who survived. The show was waiting for eight Emmy Awards, including in the category Best Actress in a Limited Series, for Streep. It also received two Golden Globe Awards and a Grammy nomination, and all this with Meryl on the poster. After Meryl's first success, Michael Cimino, according to legend, really wanted to work with the actress. In his war drama, The Deer Hunter, he saw only her in the role of Linda, impressed by her previous work. The actress also admitted, she took part in the project mainly because one of the main roles was played by her lover, John Cazale. There was another reason. I agreed because of the money. Meryl said, I needed them very much and I'm not hiding it. She wasn't interested in the role itself and said, they needed a girl between two guys and I became her. And the image didn't require anything supernatural. In fact, she was playing a character she'd created and perfected back in high school, a giggling, pliant cheerleader who steals boys. Later, the actress will complain that it is her role that is usually associated with her by men of her age. Of all of her characters, Shulman notes, men her age, Bill Clinton among them, always told her that their favorite was Linda, the pliant checkout girl from The Deer Hunter. No wonder she had taken the role with such trepidation. She knew how easily the world could turn a woman into an ingenue. This role brought her dangerously close to Hollywood IT girl territory, but she soon did her best to uproot those seeds. At that time, Cazale was already terminally ill with cancer. Their relationship developed rapidly and tragically. The actress tried to support her beloved in every possible way and yet she worked hard despite her personal tragedy. Meryl learned all the texts by heart and often got into the top 10 from the first take. Cimino also appreciated her performance, praising the actress. Some of the scenes were improvised and the actress adapted perfectly to them. According to the director, Meryl was able to bring more life to her image than was originally written in the script. Critics also appreciated the actress. Her first Oscar and Golden Globe nominations awaited her. Film critic Dan Jardine was delighted with Streep's performance, saying that, "...Streep is the best actress of all time, forever." The film itself was expected to receive nine nominations, five of which it won, including in the Best Film category. Cazale did not live to see the premiere of his latest film. In the last six months of his life, Meryl was torn between working to earn his palliative care, Cazale did not have health insurance, and caring for her lover. "'I was only 29 years old and for the first time I did not know how to help a loved one, my beloved man, and whether something could be changed. I was just crazy about my own powerlessness,' Meryl recalled. After his death, she threw herself into her work to get rid of the feeling of loneliness and loss. "'Her life was like a one-woman repertory theater,' Schulman writes. Uptown, she was Joanna, the mother who leaves her son. Downtown, she was Jill, the wife who humiliates her husband. By night, in Central Park, she was Kate, the shrew to be tamed. There, the director played the main role, Joanna, Jill, and Kate, three women who break the rules, leaving the men around them befuddled, cowed, and furious." In 1979, the actress appeared in Woody Allen's comedy Manhattan, which will be considered one of the best works of his career. There, the director played the main role, the middle-aged intellectual Isaac Davis, whose romantic adventures create a lot of trouble for him. In these personal twists and turns, complicated by a career failure, Meryl plays the role of the main character's ex-wife, to whom he is obliged to pay alimony, and who is writing a book about their dysfunctional breakup. We see a story about the relationship of the most ordinary people and their attempt to go beyond lies, hypocrisy, and outright distrust of each other. The film is about a love polygon, laced with humor and irony. Interestingly, this widescreen black-and-white project has become one of the most disliked by the famous maestro, so much so that after filming, he offered the studio to make any other movie for free, just to persuade them to put the picture on the shelf and forget about it. But they didn't listen to Allen, and fortunately, because after the release of Manhattan, the film became very popular among both viewers and critics. Vincent Camby, reviewing the film for the New York Times, was typical of many in his assessment of Manhattan as a great film and an important milestone in Allen's career, concluding his review with the line, Mr. Allen's progress as one of our major filmmakers is proceeding so rapidly that we who watch him have to pause occasionally to catch our breath. Only a few, such as Pauline Kael of The New Yorker, criticized the portrayal of a relationship, including sexual ones, between Allen's 42-year-old character and a 17-year-old young woman, essentially a teenager. What man in his 40s but Woody Allen could pass off a predilection for teenagers as a quest for true values? She wrote, Such a film would probably be more heavily criticized now. There were also those who found fault with Streep, but as usual, she treated it with humor. They said, oh, this is the best performance by a head of hair. Really good hair. Subsequently, the film was nominated for an Oscar in two categories, as well as Golden Globe and BAFTA awards. It won in the best film and best screenplay categories in the latter. But even despite the regalia and praise, the director still considers the movie to be one of his worst works. To this day, when I think back to Manhattan, I wonder, is that all I was capable of then? I don't understand how they didn't stop giving me money for films after it, says the director. But still, the main success of the decade awaited the actress ahead. Thanks to Robert Benton's drama Kramer vs. Kramer, Meryl earned the status of one of Hollywood's most famous actresses, and American directors were crazy about her. What is so special about the story? The film was an adaptation of Avery Corman's novel of the same name and touched on painful social issues. The main character, Joanna, played by Streep, gets tired of the monotony of family life and the impossibility of self-realization. She leaves her husband, played by Dustin Hoffman, and her young son and disappears from their lives in search of herself. For a year and a half, Ted, Hoffman's character, has been learning to take care of his son on his own, discovering aspects of parenthood that he hadn't known about before. The standard social order in which the child is exclusively handled by the mother is collapsing. Both characters have to rebuild their lives, and they succeed. Father and son create their own family, until Joanna suddenly decides to return to her son's life and a lawsuit begins. Do you love your child? Yes, I do. Very much. And yet you chose to leave him. Yes. At that time, the studio that was developing the picture did not know anything about Meryl Streep. Since The Deer Hunter was still in post-production, her name meant nothing to the West Coast. They considered such box office stars of the time as Ali McGraw, Faye Dunaway, even Jane Fonda. Catherine Ross, who played Elaine in The Graduate, was the most likely contender. But they decided to listen to the young and promising actress anyway. That evening, she entered a hotel room where Dustin Hoffman, her potential co-star, Robert Benton, and producer Stanley R. Jaffe were sitting. Meryl read the script and found her character as she said shortly afterwards to American Film. When Dustin asked her what she thought of her character, she stated, They completely misunderstood the character. The reasons why a woman left her husband and son are insufficiently spelled out and vague, and their common task is to understand why the heroine decided to return for custody. Joanna is not a villain. She reflects the real struggles that women across the country are going through, and viewers should feel some sympathy for her. If they wanted Meryl, they would have to rewrite the script, she said later in an interview. The trio was stunned, at least because they planned to cast Streep not as Joanna, but as a minor one-night stand Phyllis. At least, that's what Meryl thinks. The story the men tell is somewhat different. It was, for all intents and purposes, the worst meeting anybody ever had with anybody, Benton recalled. She said a few things, not much, and she just listened. She was polite and nice, but it was, she was just barely there. Dustin supported Streep's candidacy, but he had his reasons for doing so. John Cazale. I did say to Benton, and he said to me, you know, because Anne once made the comment, there's always a perfect time to cast, sometimes to cast a person. And it was the perfect time. Not only did I know she was a brilliant actress, but it was a moment in her life when, emotionally, she could draw on that pain. Yes. The actor knew that Meryl had lost her lover just a few months ago, and he saw that she was still in a state of mourning. As an actor of Method, he knew that her pain could easily be used for good. An actress who could use a still fresh pain that was itself in the midst of emotional turmoil. He was convinced by Meryl's weakness, not her strength. Benton agreed. There was a fragile quality she had that made us think that this was Joanna, without making her neurotic, he said. Meryl's Joanna wasn't neurotic, but she was vulnerable, frail. Getting Meryl through the studio wasn't easy. Some of the marketing executives at Columbia thought she wasn't pretty enough. They didn't think that she was a movie star. They thought that she was a character actress, Richard Fishoff said. But she had her supporters, including Dustin Hoffman and Robert Benton. To prepare for the role of Joanna, the actress was helped by women's magazines, such as Cosmopolitan and Glamour, which her character could read, and walked in the park near playgrounds. All the magazines had stories about super successful women, working mothers, and at the same time, having a brilliant career. They conveyed that any woman could do both, a cliche that would influence women for many years to come. She saw mothers trying to outdo each other on playgrounds, and thought about what a dilemma it was. How to be a mother, all this gibberish about finding yourself, as she would say later. If she had given birth at the age of 22, she would have had a seven-year-old child by that time, and her character had it. And she looked at all these super women in magazines, and thought she couldn't handle it. The more I thought about it, Meryl told Newsweek after the movie came out, the more I felt the sensual reason for Joanna's leaving, the emotional reasons, the ones that aren't attached to logic. Joanna's daddy took care of her, her college took care of her, then Ted took care of her. Suddenly, she just felt incapable of caring for herself. The confrontation between the main characters was not fake. Hoffman, as an adherent of the method, pretty much tortured the young actress during filming. At that time, both had a difficult period in their lives. Dustin had just gone through a tumultuous divorce from his wife, American actress, Anne Byrne. Meryl mourned the death of her fiancé the day before. The dramatic scenario required an outburst of the deepest emotions, and Streep's partner sometimes overstepped and violated her boundaries, as she later commented on this episode. In one scene, Hoffman punched the actress in the face without rehearsing to inflame her anger. According to Michael Schulman's biography, Her Again, Becoming Meryl Streep, when Benton heard the slap and saw the actress burst into the hallway, he decided that this was the end. We're dead, he thought. The picture's dead. She's going to bring us up with the Screen Actors Guild. Instead, Meryl went on and acted the scene, wrote the biographer. I was properly upset, I thought, and I was getting my stuff together and walked out in the hallway, and he looked at me and he slapped me as hard as he could. Who? Dustin? Dustin. What the? Yeah, and you can see it in the film, there's a big hand mark. I was so kind of shocked, but it set me up for the right feeling for him. In another scene, when a couple was sitting in a restaurant with glasses of wine, Hoffman decided to add spice to the improvisation and threw a glass of wine into the wall. The actress's attempts to bring her own vision to the actions and motivation of her heroine only irritated him. Meryl, why don't you stop carrying the flag for feminism and just act the scene, he once told her. Meryl was shocked and yelled at her colleague after the take saying, next time you do that, I'd appreciate you letting me know. The situation culminated in a scene in the courtroom, where Dustin whispered the name of his late fiance to his partner, trying to cause her deep sadness. Producer Richard Fischhoff admitted that Hoffman did not stop provoking the aspiring actress and igniting a fire under her for several takes. He whispered Cazale's name in her ear, knowing it would only spur her on. Meryl, according to Fischhoff, became completely white, but Meryl didn't just resist, but she played her scene perfectly. As the director will recall, part of the pleasure she must have taken is showing to Dustin she didn't need to be slapped. She could have delivered anything to anybody at any time. And after the end of the trial scene, she furiously left the studio. Hoffman was right, even though it doesn't justify his working methods. By her own admission, the grief was still with her. I didn't get over it, Meryl said two years after the film's release. I don't want to get over it. No matter what you do, the pain is always there in some recess of your mind, and it affects everything that happens afterwards. John's death is still very much with me, but just as a child does, I think you can assimilate the pain and go on without making an obsession of it. There was also harassment of an intimate nature when Hoffman touched his colleague's chest during their first meeting. In a 1979 interview with Time, she said, He came up to me and said, I'm Dustin, burp, Hoffman, and he put his hand on my breast. What an obnoxious pig. He was a predator, I was a child, and this was sexual harassment. As to how it fits into my own pattern, I imagine I'll be figuring that out for years to come. Needless to say, as a result of working together, both actors remained in a very cool relationship. But despite the disrespect, Meryl was able to maintain her dignity and work professionally, constantly maintaining equality in their industry afterwards, regardless of gender. The film reflected a cultural shift in societal thinking during the 1970s, exploring both the father's and mother's perspectives, delving into their motivations and experiences. It touches on the topic of gender roles, the problem of divorce, the rights of women and men, being a response to the new wave of feminism in the United States. With a budget of $8 million, the film earned $106 million and also won a lot of awards. Kramer vs. Kramer has received five Oscar awards from nine nominations, including the Best Film nomination. Streep also won the Best Supporting Actress award. In addition, the film was not bypassed by the Golden Globe and BAFTA, which brought her five awards, including the Golden Globe in the Best Supporting Actress category. During a press conference after the award ceremony, the actress confirmed her position regarding her character, calling herself a feminist. But it meant a lot more to her than it seems at first glance. I feel that the basis of feminism is something that has to do with liberating men and women from prescribed roles. It was a big step forward for her. Her vision of her heroine, so imperfect, but expanding her boundaries and making difficult choices for the sake of self-knowledge. Her faith in her heroine brought her first Oscar and universal recognition. Someone asked her afterwards, how does it feel? Incomparable, she said. I'm trying to hear your questions above my heartbeat. In order to catch her breath, she hid in the ladies' room. And in a fit of excitement, she forgot the statuette in the bathroom. At this point, the most important thing was no longer the statuette. In the 80s, the actress was actively filming, initially focusing on dramatic roles. She works hard both on television and on the big screen, getting starring roles. Despite the difference in stories, the leading themes in the actress's work are upholding human dignity, women's independence, and the right to live as she sees fit. Her heroines are consonant with the feminist trends of that time, multifaceted and humane. Including in their most nefarious qualities. Our job now, ladies, is to put our heads down and to hold our hands out and work like mad for all of our girls. To put their stories and their dreams on the screen where they're important. After the success and the Oscar Merrill has become very popular in Hollywood, the first character in the 80s was Sarah Woodruff in Carol Rye's melodrama, The French Lieutenant's Woman, where her partner was actor Jeremy Irons. The plot of the film was based on the novel of the same name by John Fowles. He is an English gentleman. She is an outcast from society after an unsuccessful love affair with a French officer who abandoned the heroine. The main characters meet by chance, both related to other people, but feelings flare up between them that they cannot contain. Until one day, Sarah disappears. Rice was initially reluctant to take on the project. He didn't see how Victorian history could be integrated into the modern realities of Hollywood. Streep also became a problem because many were indignant. How does an American actress treat a classic British play? They decided to make an improvisation to write a story into a story. And in the end, Merrill and Jeremy played not only Sarah and Charles, but also the actors who supposedly portrayed them on stage. It turned out to be a multi-layered narrative. The film earned the actress her first BAFTA nomination, her second Golden Globe, and her third Oscar nomination. She also received the prestigious 4 out of 5 rating from Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian in the 2015 Career Review. But despite all the reverence of the film, Merrill herself was unhappy with her performance. I didn't feel I was living it, Streep said on The Graham Norton Show. You always want to do something better after the fact. I'm giving myself an out, but part of it was, 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. Three new projects with the actress were soon released. Robert Benton's psychological thriller Still of the Night, the TV movie Alice at the Palace, and Alan Pakula's drama Sophie's Choice. And let the story about the investigation of the murder of a psychiatrist, in which Streep and Roy Scheider play in tandem, received a lot of praise. But the real success awaited the actress in Pakula's heartbreaking drama. Here, Merrill portrays a Polish woman named Sophie, who has experienced real hell in a concentration camp, lost her parents and husband, and is forced to choose. At first, it seems that the whole point of Sophie's Choice between men, but as the film progresses, it turns out that she was forced to make the most important and tragic choice earlier. And this story radically changes for us both the meaning of the plot and the interpretation of the heroine's actions. Why you inhabit the living. Who knows why Streep wanted the role so much that she begged the director to give it to her. But the feeling didn't let her down. The picture paid off in the box office with dignity and received a lot of laudatory reviews. And for playing this role, the actress received a second Oscar statuette and a third Golden Globe. The success was continued by the next film, the biopic Silkwood, in which Merrill got the role of activist Karen Silkwood. This was a real life woman who died under unexplained circumstances while fighting against violations at the Kerr-McGee plant where Karen worked. She found out that the corporation's management was hiding radiation leaks that were poisoning employees, was a trade union activist and investigated the actual order of things at the plant. But on the way to a meeting with the New York Times, there was a suspicious car accident. The main plot was based on this story. Director Mike Nichols did not try to make a martyr out of the heroin or embellish the events, but tried to convey the realism of Silkwood's struggle as much as possible, even if it was not equal. As Streep observed in a 1983 interview, she wasn't Joan of Arc at all. She was unsavory in some ways, and yet she did some very good things. Her character is undergoing a metamorphosis from an irresponsible woman living in an unconventional relationship to a human capable of fighting for a just cause. Mike spoke of the film as being about people being asleep in their lives and waking up. How did I get here? And that's exactly how I felt, Streep told American Film. I think the movie is about human nature more than about any issue, said Streep. It was the heroin who attracted the actress to take on the role. I was attracted to the character no matter what in my real life. In order to effectively play a part or make my imagination go, I have to be presented with a certain challenge and a character with problems. What I liked about Karen was that she wasn't Joan of Arc at all. She was unsavory in some ways, and yet she did some very good things. While working on the film, the actress became very friendly with Cher, who played a supporting role. The singer recalled that she was very worried about the opportunity to work with an accomplished actress. But during the meeting, Meryl quickly found a common language with Cher. The first day on location, Meryl just came up, threw her arms around me and said, I'm so glad you're here, the musician said in a 1984 interview with People. She's all communication and warmth and friendship with a great sense of humor. The movie paid off and received many favorable reviews. Vincent Camby of the New York Times called the film a precisely visualized, highly emotional melodrama that's going to raise a lot of hackles and a very moving work. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times rated the film four stars and commented, It's a little amazing that established movie stars like Streep, Russell and Cher could disappear so completely into the everyday lives of these characters. Meryl was once again nominated for an Oscar in the Best Actress category and a Golden Globe in the Best Actress in a Drama category. Soon, the actress appeared in the romantic drama with Robert De Niro, Falling in Love, directed by Ulu Grossbard. And in 1985, she transformed into Danish baroness in Sidney Pollack's Drama Out of Africa. The biographical melodrama was based on the autobiographical book by Danish writer Karen Blixen and her life, focusing on her failed marriage and affair with traveler and hunter Dennis Finch-Hatton. The story of Streep's heroine is the story of a strong woman who with dignity endures a forced marriage, infidelity, serious illness, trials of her own business, the death of a loved one and the loss of love. A woman who nevertheless forgave her husband's betrayal and did not lose her thirst for life even after losing what was so dear to her. For the first and last time, for the sake of the role, the actress went to the trick. Meryl's more famous colleagues such as Audrey Hepburn also wanted the role of Karen and Pollack didn't think Streep was sexy enough for her. Therefore, the actress went on a cunning little plan to win over the director during the audition. She went to a convenience store, bought a very cute little dress from a local boutique and used paper towels to lift her breasts in a bra. It worked. The role was hers. The filming was very unusual as it took place in Africa, which brought with it a number of difficulties and dangers. So, lions were specially brought to work and one day it almost cost the actress her life. In one of the scenes, the animal simply forgot to tie by the paw. Therefore, the fear on the actress's face was real. In addition, Meryl had to transport her entire family for half a year. It was there that the actress's son had to finish the second half of the first grade. Nevertheless, the actress will remember that it was fantastic. The relatives didn't support Streep. Partially, it was justified. My father said, you're going to take these children to Africa? What an irresponsible thing to do. I told him it was going to be a great adventure. Three weeks later, a sore appeared on my five-year-old son and nobody knew what it was. It turned out to be some horrible worm. Years later, we found out the doctors thought he might have had AIDS. But that wasn't all. While working on the film, there was a drought in the country and the film crew had to consider the option of moving. In addition, many people contracted malaria and filming wild animals created problems. Due to the fact that it was impossible to interact with them, the team had to spend hours sleeping outdoors for the right cut. Floodlights were used for night filming and everything that could fly and everything that could crawl flew at them. During one of the cut, the actress suddenly felt that some kind of animal got into her collar. Meryl was afraid that this something would bite her. But despite this, she calmly played a scene. After that, she told the makeup artist J. Roy Helen that she has something under her blouse. He smacked me and then we brought it out, lifted it up and it was this bug as big as my hand and it didn't bite me so I shouldn't have killed it. But the risks paid off. The picture brought in a decent income, earning $227 million with a budget of $31 million. And was also a huge success. There were 11 Oscar nominations including 7 wins, including Best Film and Best Director. Among them was an Oscar nomination in the Best Actress category for Meryl. Streep's nomination for Best Actress was her 6th nomination and although she did not win, the Oscar went to Geraldine Page for The Trip to Bountiful. Her role in this film is still considered one of the best. In addition, the film received 6 Golden Globe nominations. Of which it won 3, including for Best Film. Streep was also nominated in the Best Actress Drama category. Sidney Pollack in a 2004 interview said about working with the actress, She's a great actress because of her intuitiveness, her powers of observation, and her sense of being in touch with herself quickly. All that, along with talent. She has a vast imagination. She has incredible intuitive powers. She understands instantly things about human behavior that people who aren't observant don't understand and people who are narcissistic don't understand. You have to be paying attention to the outside world and most people are not. Most people are wondering how they're doing. They're looking in your eyes, thinking, I wonder what she thinks of me. You're not going to learn about human behavior like that. She's in the world, interested in the world. She lives a full life and she's experienced what she needs to experience. Motherhood, love, frustration. From that time on, the actress will always be very hooked when she is asked about the strong-minded women she has played. No one has ever asked an actor, you're playing a strong-minded man. We assume that men are strong-minded or have opinions, but a strong-minded woman is a different animal. Over the next two years, the actress tried her hand at comedy in the film Heartburn, sharing the lead role with Jack Nicholson. In the next project, Nicholson was her partner again. Starring in the historical drama Ironweed, dedicated to the Great Depression, and although the film was received coolly, it earned two Oscar nominations, including in the Best Actress category for Meryl, as well as a Golden Globe nomination. The actress for the drama, A Cry in the Dark, won the first and only Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. The story of the mysterious abduction and murder of a little girl, Azaria Chamberlain, was written and directed by Fred Schepisi, who took as a basis the real tragedy of the 1980s in Australia. Then, during the Chamberlain family's camping trip, their two-month-old daughter mysteriously disappeared, and during the investigation, Azaria's parents, Lindy and Michael, were accused of her murder and tried to prove their innocence in the incident. Lindy, to whom the film is mainly dedicated, is played by Meryl. Schepisi tried to make the film as detached as possible and more like a documentary without subjective assessments. The main idea is to what extent and the press on the people can become disastrous. The reports and speeches were taken from court documents word for word, so the film leaves no room for interpretation. At the time of working on the film, Lindy Chamberlain herself was in prison and tried to justify herself as best she could. Despite the fact that the producers bought the rights to film the story, it still brought difficulties. There were enormous legal considerations over every line I said, because Lindy Chamberlain was pressing the government to be exonerated, along with all the other challenges of making a movie, to have lawyers sitting there. There was no doubt in my mind that she was innocent. And yet the film gave a very important message to the real heroine of this terrible story. It gave Lindy a voice in relation to the Australian public and a statement about herself to the whole world. After the release of the picture, the case was reviewed again and with the appearance of new evidence, Lindy was finally acquitted. Merrill also received another Oscar nomination, already the eighth, and a Golden Globe. The actress devoted the next couple of years to comedies. In 1989, Susan Seidelman's not very successful black comedy, She-Devil was released, which although it brought the actress another Golden Globe nomination, failed at the box office. There was also Mike Nichols' tragic comedy postcards from The Edge, in which Streep played the role of substance addicted actress Suzanne Vail. The script was written by Star Wars star Carrie Fisher, based on her semi-autobiographical novel. Carrie's mother was actress Debbie Reynolds, and the main conflict of the picture was based on the relationship between mother and daughter, and was probably based on a real star family. The actress's shooting partner was Shirley MacLaine, who played her mother, a famous singer with alcohol addiction, who influenced the main character with her brilliance and eccentricity. The film essentially tells about Suzanne's struggle with her inner demons, and the search for herself against the background of childhood and parental traumas. The mother blames her daughter for not meeting her expectations, and for her own career failures. The daughter drowns her mental pain in various kinds of medications. At the same time, the director was able to save lightness, wit, and humor in the film. All this, combined with a complex deep theme, brought another Oscar and Golden Globe nomination. Streep's star is shining in full. After the release of Postcards from the Edge, she was planning to create a film Thelma and Louise. With her friend Goldie Hawn, but due to her own pregnancy, Streep was unable to participate in the project, and the development of the picture went to Ridley Scott. But who was the father of the famous actress's child? Little is known about her affairs, and given the circumstances of Meryl's meeting with her future husband, there is a possibility that there were no suitable candidates on the horizon between Cazale's death and her meeting with sculptor Don Gummer. After the tragedy with John, she couldn't come to her senses for a long time. Everything was aggravated by a personal conflict. By the time he met Meryl, Cazale was married and about to divorce his wife, but he didn't have time. After his death, the actor's wife kicked her out of their apartment, and Meryl simply had nowhere to live. The actress's brother helped her, and insisted that she move into the apartment of his friend, who was away by that time. Streep and Gummer didn't cross paths for a while. Don spent a lot of time traveling, but when he met Meryl, he couldn't let her go, and he persuaded her not to move. They became friends. They spent evening after evening talking about life and couldn't get enough of it. Don wasn't even courting Meryl. He was taking care of her, and after a while, he proposed to her, and the actress agreed. Donald was sent to me from heaven. He is the most precious gift life has ever given me, she says with conviction. Four children were born in this marriage. Henry Hank, Wolf Gummer, born 1979, Mary Willa Mamie Gummer, born 1983, Jane Gummer, born 1986, and Louisa Jacobson Gummer, born 1991. Meryl confessed that she built a large family on purpose, because she is very afraid of loneliness. She believed the secret to a successful marriage, which lasted nearly 40 years, was goodwill, some flexibility, and the ability to shut up sometimes. To live in a marriage, you have to be ready for compromises and be able to shut your mouth in time, the actress said. The first half of the 90s was marked by a slight decline in the career of the actress, but not for long, because there were iconic roles, work with Clint Eastwood, and new nominations ahead. We will talk about this in the second part.