Apparently, even Meryl Streep’s “it” has homework.
In Sophie’s Choice, Meryl Streep speaks English with a Polish accent. In The Iron Lady, she takes on Margaret Thatcher’s voice. She makes becoming another person on screen look easy. The work behind it tells a different—and useful—story.
On February 26, 2012, Meryl Streep won the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. The award honored the whole performance: how her character spoke, moved, thought and felt on screen.
Almost 30 years earlier, on April 11, 1983, she had won the same award for Sophie’s Choice. She played Sophie Zawistowska, a fictional Polish survivor of Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration and death camp. The film’s subject needs care and respect. The character’s voice helps show the deep pain of what she suffered.
The American Film Institute says Streep spent months studying Polish. She kept Sophie’s accent on and off camera during filming. That work helps explain why the performance looks easy. Apparently, the homework did not disappear just because someone called “cut.”
For The Iron Lady, Streep told Terry Gross that she listened to public recordings of Thatcher at different stages of her life. In the February 2012 Fresh Air interview, she described listening to which words Thatcher stressed, how she formed sentences, and how she breathed. The recordings helped Streep find her way into the role.
She linked the voice with how the person stood, moved and expressed her beliefs. She also used breathing skills learned through singing. Her account shows a clear process: listen, watch, and bring the details together into a character. The accent was part of that work, rather than a party trick on its own.
Our take: some people have a remarkable gift. What makes this story useful to the rest of us is the work she gives that gift. Listen closely. Try again. Notice one more detail. Apparently, even brilliance has a homework folder—and “not yet” is a perfectly reasonable first rehearsal.
The date above is the day Streep won her Academy Award for The Iron Lady. This look back includes photos from different stages of her career. Each photo’s date appears in its caption.
Read the main source: Meryl Streep’s Fresh Air interview — February 6, 2012 ↗
The conversation
Comments are free. Be kind, stay on topic, and protect other people’s privacy.
Your next chapter starts with showing up.
Sign in / join for free ↗Join for free with ChatGPT. You may be able to use Google or Apple when signing in to your OpenAI account.No comments yet. Someone has to break the ice.