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USA today - February 4, 1997
When Bette Midler,
generally considered the best actress of her generation, was the
same age as Meryl Streep - 47 - she was "washed up", as
they used to say. She had made All About Eve"five
years earlier and was only a half-dozen years shy of What
Ever Happenend to Baby Jane?
Streep, considered
by many to be this generationīs best actress, still is playing
love interests and sexually charged women such a Lee, the would-be
cosmetician of Marvinīs Room.
"I really understand
Lee," says Streep, looking younger than the middle-age
character who must deal with her estranged cancer-stricken sister
and her hostile son. "Trying to control her son and making
just about every wrong move there is. So filled with outward
determination and hope, and inside being so self-loathing and
visiting that on her kid," Streep says. "The last thing
you want is the worst part of you to be continued in your
children. And thatīs exactly what she does. She turns him into
someone who hates himself."
Marvinīs Room,
which is being released nationally after early engagements in
several major cities, is the kind of raw, emotional film - such a
Sophieīs Choice and Kramer vs Kramer - that
made her a star.
Written by Scott
McPherson, who had AIDS when he wrote the script and has since
died, MarvinīsRoom resonates with issues of mortality,
family ties, prioritizing life goals and reconciling with roots.
"The movie is hitting a chord. Maybe itīs all the aging
boomers reconciling," Streep says. "Maybe itīs the
mortality of our parents and coming to that age where you just
have to either forgive or trash it out in some way with your
family."
Streep doesnīt
look much different than she did in 1978 in her breakthrough role
as Linda, the working-class, small-town girl in The Deer
Hunter. Her skin is pale and soft and unlined. The Lee of Marvinīs
Room looks haggard and life-battered, as if Streep willed
herself to look older.
Lee resonates
strongly among the roles she has brought to life, Streep says.
"I love them," she says of the many women whose spirits
have inhabited her. And which of them maintain a special place in
her heart? "I really love Helen, the character of Ironweed,
says Streep, her face softening. "Sophie lives in my body.
And Francesca in Bridges of Madison Country. And Postcards
(from the Edge). And Heartburn - I loved playing that.
But immediately I think of Helen in Ironweed".
Streep, known to
pick her roles carefully, responds to the visceral reaction she
feels when reading a script. "Itīs a feeling of my hert,
really, literally racing. That is something that I understand.
This situation that this person I am reading is in, and now Iīm
in it. And it is nothing that I have purposely tried to do, but
now Iīm in it." - "And then I call my agent and say, 'Yes,
Iīll do it'," Streep laughs.
In her next role,
for ABCīs ... First Do No Harm on Feb. 16, she plays a
mother battling the medical establishment over the treatment of
her epileptic child.
A quote from
Dustin Hoffman - that acting with Meryl Streep is like being in
the ring "and she delivers punch for punch" - is read
aloud to Streep. She laughs. "He always talks in pugilistic
terms about working with me. Like heīs girding himself for
battle with the Gorgon or something." Streep, who won a
supporting actress Oscar playing opposite Hoffman in Kramer
vs Kramer, calls the actor "relentless - though I might
add, some really wonderful people are relentless in the pursuit
of what they want."
And what about
Robert De Niro, her most frequent co-star (Deer Hunter,
Falling in Love and Marvinīs Room)?
"Oh...,"
she moans, wondering how to respond. "Iīve known him for 20
years, and my feelings about him as an actor are mixed up with my
feelings about him as a friend. Heīs the most loyal person in
the world. His talent is just gorgeous. And every time I work
with him, I learn something. Even in my old age, just this last
time, I learned working with him."
Special moments of
actor-to-actor chemistry she has experienced?
"Oh! Thatīs
a lot of people," Streep says immediately. "Thatīs
Diane (Keaton, who plays Streepīs sister, Bessie, in Marvinīs
Room) ... She is physically incapable of actorishness or
falsity or any kind of punching up the line for the laughs. Sheīs
just real. Because sheīs really on a very high order of artist."
Leonardo DiCaprio,
who plays her tough-sensitive son in Marvinīs Room,
impressed her. "Leonardoīs the real thing. A fabulous
little genius," she says.
Contemporaries of
Streep such as Hoffman, De Niro, Robert Duvall and Gene Hackamn
have commented on an attitudinal shift among younger actors, who
will come up to them asking how to 'make it'. Has Streep noticed
a generational difference?
"Oh, yes,"
she says and nods. "And I donīt think itīs just b****
either. Glen (Close) and I have talked about this. I think it has
to do with coming up in the theater. The ethos of 'the playīs
the thing' ... weīre all in this together. Not 'maybe I can get
a series out of this if Iīm reviewed well on Broadway'. Thatīs
not the way we thought. Young actors think a career is something
that means business. We thought of a career as life work, and you
look at the body of work."
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