Life Lessons from Meryl Streep
Welcome to Life Lessons. This week, we honor two milestones: the 15th anniversary of The Devil Wears Prada, and the 72nd birthday of our Queen Mother, Meryl Streep. To celebrate, take a look back at some highlights from our December 1988, December 1998, and January 2003 interviews with the birthday girl. Sit down, relax—you just might learn a thing or two.
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“K’ain Ayin Hara—that’s my feeling about fears. It’s Yiddish for ‘it shouldn’t happen’—if you voice your fears they may become true. I’m superstitious enough to believe that.”
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“I do think men can be more easily diverted from what really does matter, from what’s going to be important to them when they look back. They’re able to take a compensatory glory in the world when their name is written large in other ways. Mothers don’t have that. Something is ceded on both sides, and I think women understand this and what their role is, probably out of necessity.”
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“I have a pathological hatred of the telephone.”
Meryl Streep photographed by Brigitte Lacombe for Interview, January 2003.
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“Living in different places, you come to realize that people are the same. Girls all want to be pretty; mothers love their children; every guy wants to have the biggest piece of pie, the power. But where it’s got out of control is here. We do whatever we want, and whatever we don’t want to think about will just somehow go away.”
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“Fiction is something you can lie down and wrap yourself up in. In reality, you’re alone on the mountaintop in the wind and the storm, and you don’t know if you’re going to be blown away.”
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“Of course I thought I could be Virginia Woolf—I have the built-in nose”
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“All of these environmental issues are considered very boring. They don’t capture anyone’s attention, because they’re just so long-term, really long and drawn out, not like an emergency Caesarean section, where we go get the baby out and everything is fine. You have to change your whole way of living.”
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“If you have a brain, you are obliged to use it.”
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“I think of [change] more as an evolution, in which your fundamental self remains the same. Being the mother of four, I’ve seen that personality is immediately apparent, from birth, and I don’t think it really changes. Your way through the world does change—your way of making decisions and deciding whether or not to put up with the stuff you’ve put up with for years. Rather than changing, I think your self emerges more clearly over time—and you become less arrogant.”
Meryl Streep photographed by Herb Ritts for Interview, December 1998.
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“Now that I have these children, I’m just crazed about the world’s making it to the next century, so I read all these things about global warming, thermal inversions—you know, no-nonsense. I’m trying to find a place where I can contribute. I felt so helpless at a certain point, and I talked to so many people who felt the same way. I don’t want to think about these things. I would rather just retreat and make movies. But I have a daughter who will be 16 in the year 2000. And I remember what I was like at 16—how incredibly vast and exciting the choices were. My parents, I think, had a lot to do with making me feel that way. I just don’t know if I’ll be able to impart the same enthusiasm to my daughter—to all my kids—unless I really feel that I’ve done something to make the world better for them. So I’ve picked pesticides, and that’s my thing.”
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“My attitude is, Why not try this? So I go from thing to thing like any actor does, with my little bag, my dopp kit. I think of my career as a palette, a mess of colors, and I’ve used them all before. But they’re recombinant–and that’s what enables you to make a new person each time.”
Meryl Streep photographed by Brigitte Lacombe for Interview, December 1988.
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“There are so many actors whose work inspires me every day and who I feel humbled by. It’s only the people in your profession or in the sports world who need to say, ‘This is the number one pick for this year.’ I think if we could get the sports analogy out of the movies we’d all be better off.”
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“I think acting’s a beautiful profession that’s full of heartbreak, and you have to be ready for that. If you can’t do anything else, go for it.”
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