In drama school, Meryl considered acting a silly, frivolous profession, all ego gratification. Shouldn’t she be doing something worthwhile with her life, like saving the planet? Obviously, Meryl’s thinking changed. She once attended a dinner for artists in Washington, DC, where Alexander Haig, a career Republican serving under Presidents Reagan, Nixon, and Ford, delivered a message that surprised her. “What a strange choice for a speaker, I thought, and he was really more than half in the bag and sort of reeling a little bit,” Meryl said during a 1988 press conference to promote A Cry in the Dark. “And he said, you know, ‘Nobody remembers the armies that anybody held or the bridges built or the railroads built. People are remembered for their artists and we have to support the arts.’”
By then, Meryl and Haig, the “unlikely mouthpiece,” were in full agreement. She was proud to be an actor and didn’t take her success for granted. She chose movie roles responsibly, intertwining activism and art to dignify stories about women who are misunderstood and in need of some compassion. While honoring Emma Thompson at the 2014 National Board of Review awards, Meryl appeared to draw subtextual parallels to herself. “Emma considers, carefully, what the fuck she is putting into the culture,” she stated. “Emma thinks: Is this helpful? Not: Will it build my brand? Not: Will it give me billions? Not: Does this express me? Me! Me! My unique and fabulous self, into all eternity in every universe for all time? Will I get a sequel out of it, or a boat? Or, a perfume contract?”
Ironically, Meryl made a fortune expressing herself as the rare character actor who attained leading lady status into her seventies. She’s come a long way since playing Robert De Niro’s Deer Hunter girlfriend—or Dustin Hoffman’s slap victim on Kramer vs. Kramer. More than forty years and twenty-one Oscar nominations later, Meryl has transcended both. Even De Niro, a mere footnote in her epic résumé, is today just another subject laying flowers at the feet of the queen.
Meryl, ever self-deprecating, might insist she makes an awkward movie star, yet nothing could be further from the truth. Always destined for bigger things, she’s had that razzle-dazzle stretching back to Bernards High School. Character actors simply don’t break Academy Award records unless they are movie stars. And a movie star has to want it. Meryl so clearly did. She worked hard and she fought hard, navigating the bumpy River Wild rapids of her career to reach The Devil Wears Prada and The Post. Along the way, she and Don raised four well-adjusted children away from the spotlight while keeping one of Hollywood’s longest-running marriages intact.
When Meryl studied at Yale, an instructor asked the class for their thoughts on how to play a king. “And everybody said, ‘Oh you are assertive,’ and people would say, ‘Oh you speak in a slightly deeper voice.’ And the teacher said, ‘Wrong. The way to be king is to have everybody in the room quiet when you come in.’ The atmosphere changes. It’s all up to everybody else to make you king. I thought that was really powerful information,” she recalled a decade ago. It was a story she liked to tell—not to mention a revealing insight into how she managed to graduate from stressed-out student to Queen Meryl, American royalty.
“She kicks against all the people she loves—because she wants them to be better—but at the same time she’s 100 percent loyal,” observes David Hare. “You can say she’s like Katharine Hepburn, because she’s done everything on her own terms. But you have to take on the fact that she’s also a far, far more gifted actor. She also has done something truly admirable. [She’s] knowingly used her power to get things made. Plenty wouldn’t have happened without her, nor would Silkwood, nor would A Cry in the Dark. Part of what audiences respond to in her performances is what she is as a person. An unallotted force for good.”
Human rights. Climate change. The freedom of the press. The Time’s Up movement in response to #MeToo. Name a noble cause—there’s a pretty good chance Meryl supports it. She is an undeniable leader in the anti-Trump Resistance but wary of being its public face.
“I don’t want to be that,” she said in December 2017, nearly one year after her galvanizing Globes speech and the Women’s March, when protesters were spotted brandishing signs that read “What Meryl Said” and “Meryl Streep for President.”
“I’m a really private person, and like a lot of people in show business, I’m actually shy so it’s hard for me to do all this stuff,” she demurred.
Meryl was guarding her privacy. A dissident as famous and controversial as she risks everything to stand up to a Manchurian candidate who instigates acolytes to commit violence against political opponents. In these messy, uncertain times, she continued protesting through pop culture. Following Kay Graham and the Pentagon Papers, Meryl joined Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat, a thriller based on a real-life journalistic investigation that linked the Panama Papers to international politicos using offshore bank accounts to dodge taxes.
Look, she’s a serious woman. But, like any cultural phenomenon, Meryl skirts the line between highbrow class and lowbrow camp. She is an Internet meme whose priceless reactions on camera at televised events, ranging from the Oscars’ Moonlight mix-up to a US Open tennis match, dart across social media with warp speed. It’s not like she needs a celebrity Instagram account to remain relevant, though it would be absolutely delightful if she posted whimsical slice-of-life photos à la Candice Bergen. (Come on, Meryl, show us your aspirational kitchen!) To compensate, numerous fan Instas have popped up, none more absurdly funny than Taste of Streep, which photoshops images of Miranda Priestly peering out of a cannoli and Mary Fisher atop a pink donut, among other hilarity.
Onstage, the all-male Streep Tease revue sold out shows in Los Angeles, with the cast performing monologues such as Prada’s cerulean smackdown. Mindy Kaling, creator of TV’s The Mindy Project, wrote an episode wherein she and her castmates dressed as Meryl movie characters like Karen Blixen, Sister Aloysius, and (ha!) Lindy Chamberlain.
Of Meryl’s fans, called Streepers, “I’m a little alarmed,” she has said. “I’m grateful that I’ve had a sort of renaissance of interest in my career. It’s wonderful, it really is. Celebrity has become a very odd thing in our culture. I don’t have a Twitter account but apparently I have five. But they’re not me. I’m not on Facebook, but yes, apparently, I am. They’re a little scary to me, but everyone needs a hobby.”
It’s my cue to quote Miranda! For all the fans:
That’s all.