Cannes – “This morning I’m a little tired because I went to bed at 3 talking about the film Quentin Dupieux, we had a big argument and I still have to sober up a bit.” Flat shoes, black shirt and trousers, Meryl Streep he indulges in a long rendezvous with the Cannes Film Festival audience in the festival’s packed Debussy Hall.
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On the opening night of the festival she danced on the Montée de Marche to the tune of Abba, she was moved by the words of praise from Juliette Binoche (“you changed the way we look at women”), he made the gesture of leaving when the standing ovation in the Palais of the Cannes festival seemed to never end. The day after her, the record-breaking actress, thanks to the Palme d’Or for her career achievement to be placed alongside the three Oscars (one of which – her first for Kramer vs. Kramer – forgotten at the restaurant “I left it under the table, but someone found it and gave it back to me”), to the three Emmys and a very long list of other awards, he indulges in a long chat that spans fifty years of cinema .
In Cannes with nine bodyguards, but twelve were needed
Thirty-five years ago she was awarded here in Cannes for her performance in A cry of the night, but she remembers nothing of that evening: “When I came to Cannes for the first time they told me: ‘You will need nine bodyguards and I said I don’t have them and I don’t think I need them. How wrong I was, instead I needed twelve because in the old days all the barriers were not there and the audience was everywhere. I haven’t recovered since then, I returned to the hotel shaking. I was scared, I’m not a rock star.”
‘The Hunter’ returns to cinemas in a restored version – trailer
The hunter and the boys went to Vietnam
One of his first films was The hunter, it was 1978. She played the woman simultaneously loved by De Niro and Walken, a relatively small role at the beginning and end of the film, but one that always seems to be there. “Those were the times when there was only one woman in the movies so we remember her and her hair – explained Meryl Streep – I was a girl from a small town in New Jersey and I knew a lot of guys who went to Vietnam and not they have never returned, even my boyfriend at the time went as a doctor and came back decorated. That film had a great effect on her feelings because it was about the adventure in Vietnam. Cimino told me ‘I don’t know what this girl in the supermarket is saying’ and I could imagine it. Directors didn’t always allow me to give voice to my characters but sometimes they did.”
For Kramer v. Kramer I wrote the court filing
Another case was that of Kramer vs. Kramer, in which the mother’s final statement before the judge was handwritten by the actress herself. She said: “For anyone under 60, the film is about a divorce and is based on a novel which was a revenge book. The author wrote it because he was very angry, it was the beginning of the women’s movement and not everyone was happy, it is a vitriolic story against these women who were abandoning the role of mother. In fact, in the novel it is not clear why she leaves, I don’t think the writer was interested in the question, he was all caught up in the father’s dilemma: how can he make the child grow up and work? When we shot the film with her coming back after 18 months and asking for custody, with the director Robert Benton we wondered why she left, we had a big discussion, then everyone locked themselves in the dressing room and wrote the statement, Dustin Hoffman, the director and me from my character’s point of view. Then we read it to the others and voted, mine won.”
Meryl Streep: “My Florence, a passionate child”
When I sang ‘It’s lonely at the top’ at school because I was broke
In his long career he has had various opportunities to sing, from musicals Into the woods Of Rob Marshall to Oh mama! but also the out of tune singer of Florence Of Stephen Frears: “I love music, singing is a direct connection to the heart. The best teacher I had at theater school, where the acting teachers changed every year so I didn’t have a real method, was the singing teacher. She told us ‘at the end everyone will stand up in front of the class and you will sing something that means to you and you will have to make us cry’. She was right in the end we all sang, me It’s lonely at the topOf Randy Newmanironically because I was out of money and our hearts opened.”
‘Only murders in the building 3’, Meryl Streep is amazing between songs and accents
I hate accent coaches shaking their heads in their headphones
Streep has a reputation for being very good at accents. “If I had wanted to play women from New Jersey all my life I wouldn’t be in this room today – he said – Every actor finds his own path, I have many friends who totally rely on their dialogue coaches but I have used them very rarely. Because seeing this person with headphones on his head shaking his head while he hears me speak in an Australian or Northern Irish accent is terrible for me, I feel the disapproval. I have a good ear, when telephone operators still existed and I would call someone from India then my children would tell me I had an Indian accent. Experimenting with different accents broadens your acting possibilities and I’m interested in people who aren’t like me, or rather in characters who are apparently very distant, but who deep down look like me. Because ultimately we are all the same.”
Today women are stars and producers, I have produced four children
Meryl Streep she is very committed to equal pay in Hollywood and with Time’s Up, the collective born after the MeToo wave. “The situation today has changed a lot – she reflected – the stars are mainly women today, even if there is still Tom Cruise. It’s very different than when I started, agreements were established in films where there was always a male star and we were certainly considered less. Today there are beautiful roles for women and many women are producers, I think of Reese (Witherspoon, ed) Nicole (Kidman), Nathalie (Portman) each have their own production company. I also had a production company but with children, I had four children and today I have five grandchildren and I didn’t want phone calls after 7, but I admire them and their commitment.”
That time Redford washed my hair
Among the love stories that Meryl Streep has filmed is The bridges of Madison County and naturally My Africa. She tells an anecdote of huge insects running on her back during the scene but above all explains the behind the scenes of the very romantic “and also very sexy” sequence of Redford washing her hair. “We start this scene but it wasn’t working, Bob was washing my hair with his fingertips, it wasn’t intense it wasn’t sexy. Let’s call J. Roy Helland to the set (make up artist and makeup artist who is historically behind all of his looks, ed) and he shows Bob how to do it, basically giving him hair washing lessons. After five takes I was completely in love with him. How many times do we see sequences of characters making love but how many times do we see a man washing a woman’s hair? We were filming in a river with hippos, the most dangerous animals in Africa, chasing us but I didn’t want that sequence to ever end.”
