Latest Meryl Streep Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I'm in show business. I believe in illusion and delusions and in holding aloft the bubble of a dream of some sort because, really, there are lots of reasons to look at the chasm. But art and music, these ineffables, they're just - they're the consolations of what human beings can create and make, and delight is accessible, you know, should you care to find it.

  Meryl Streep

  Dream, Art, Believe

  Source: www.npr.org

• I do know that we have delusions about ourselves in what we sound like.

  Meryl Streep

  Sound, Delusion, Knows

  Source: www.npr.org

• There is some liberation in the freedom of being totally alone and really going for it.

  Meryl Streep

  Going For It, Liberation

  Source: www.npr.org

• I think we all think we sound really good in the shower, where there's that nice reverb.

  Meryl Streep

  Nice, Thinking, Sound

  Source: www.npr.org

• Probably we should let Hillary [Clinton] play the role she was destined to play all by herself first.

  Meryl Streep

  Play, Roles, Firsts

  Source: www.vulture.com

• You're perfectly balanced because then you effervesce seemingly effortlessly. And it's a thing a person can't manufacture. You either have that or you don't. You have charm or you don't.

  Meryl Streep

  Charm, Balanced, Persons

  "Hugh Grant Has Watched a Film He's in More Times Than Any Other Movie - and Additional Delightful Revelations From His and Meryl Streep's AMA". Interview with Karen Brill, www.vulture.com. August 11, 2016.

• Jumpsuits for men are always so difficult when you get to that one area.

  Meryl Streep

  Men, Difficult, Jumpsuits

  "Hugh Grant Has Watched a Film He's in More Times Than Any Other Movie - and Additional Delightful Revelations From His and Meryl Streep's AMA". Interview with Karen Brill, www.vulture.com. August 11, 2016.

• I would say, don't smoke. I'm kidding, but yeah, I did smoke in college and as a young actor and it's stupid.

  Meryl Streep

  Stupid, College, Actors

  Source: www.vulture.com

• I love Goodfellows and I love Nick Palleggi, but no, it's The Godfather, 1 and 2.

  Meryl Streep

  "Hugh Grant Has Watched a Film He's in More Times Than Any Other Movie - and Additional Delightful Revelations From His and Meryl Streep's AMA". Interview with Karen Brill, www.vulture.com. August 11, 2016.

• Well my favorite is really really sharp, extra sharp, aged cheddar cheese.

  Meryl Streep

  Cheese, My Favorite, Cheddar

  Reddit AMA, www.reddit.com. August 11, 2016.

• And it took to "The Devil Wears Prada" to play someone tough, who had to make hard decisions, who was running an organization, and sometimes that takes making tough decisions for a certain kind of man to empathize. That's the word - empathize. Feel the story through her. And that's the first time anybody has ever said that they felt that way.

  Meryl Streep

  Running, Men, Play

  "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 6, 2012.

• Well, it has to do with very deep things, because it might be that imagining yourself as a girl is a diminishment. But it is something that when I made "The Devil Wears Prada" it was the first time in my life, 30 years of making movies, that a man came up and said I know how you felt. I know how you felt. I have a job like that. People understand.

  Meryl Streep

  Girl, Jobs, Men

  "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 6, 2012.

• I've grown up well, partly because there weren't great girls' literature - Nancy Drew, maybe - but there weren't things. So there was Huck Finn and "Spin And Marty." The boys characters were interesting and you lived through them when you're watching it.

  Meryl Streep

  Girl, Character, Boys

  "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 6, 2012.

• You know, you're not aware of it, but you're following the action of the film through the body of the protagonist, you know? You feel what he feels when he jumps, when he leaps, when he wins, when he loses. And I think I just took it for granted that, you know, we can all do that, but it became obvious to me that men don't live through the female characters.

  Meryl Streep

  Character, Winning, Men

  "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 6, 2012.

• Well, she's so alive, Julia Child. And Margaret is so - is so designed. She's so intent upon making her point. That's the most important thing, is that she win the argument, and there is nothing that stands in the way of that train, you know. But Julia's just alive in front of you. That's part of why people loved her. They lived it with her. They breathed it with her. And the mistakes were all part of it.

  Meryl Streep

  Children, Mistake, Winning

  "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 6, 2012.

• What led me to that was I have never - I mean, I watch movies and I don't care who is the protagonist. I feel what that guy is feeling. You know, if it's Tom Cruise leaping over a building - I want to make it, you know? And I'm going to - yes, I made it. And yeah, so I get that.

  Meryl Streep

  Mean, Guy, Feelings

  "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 6, 2012.

• Well, I got better after this, and my entire family really did appreciate it. Usually, they're resentful of movies that I go off and make, but this one had a bonus attached. But yeah, she had no breath.

  Meryl Streep

  Appreciate, Bonus, Yeah

  "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 6, 2012.

• We don't like to talk about that in America, but there are classes in America. And she [Julia Child] was of a class of women who were wealthy, privately educated, went to Smith, moved in that sort of circle. She was conscripted into the OSS, which is the early CIA, which was all filled with Yalies and Princeton and Harvard people and a few women who were typing mostly but also had something to do.

  Meryl Streep

  Children, Class, Circles

  "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 6, 2012.

• When I was in - at Vassar, and I came from a public high school in New Jersey, there was - that class still existed. I think it's pretty much gone, but there was a way of talking that the private school girls had that was different than the way I talked from New Jersey.

  Meryl Streep

  Girl, School, Thinking

  "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 6, 2012.

• But for me, it [singing] was a way to get out the feeling of the song, and also to get out the feelings that, you know, roil in high school, to express something that I had no other way of expressing.

  Meryl Streep

  Song, School, Feelings

• She [Barbra Streisand] was just - we can't know what we mean to each other. You know, artists, you can't know - you can't know that, but she was really important.

  Meryl Streep

  Mean, Artist, Important

• In other characters, it's driven by insecurity, or it's driven by fear, or - there's always a driver. And all the physical manifestations, you need your way in.

  Meryl Streep

  Character, Insecurity, Needs

  "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 6, 2012.

• So yeah, when I was a kid, when I was 16, 17, I'd come home from high school, and my dad collected all of Barbra Streisand's records. And she was very young then. I think she probably had three records out, and she was 21, and we had them all. And I knew every single song, every breath, every elision, every swell. And I sang along to it.

  Meryl Streep

  Song, Dad, Home

  "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 6, 2012.

• Yeah, I did need a lot of breath [to play Margaret Thatcher]. I needed much more breath than I have, after all of my expensive drama school training. I couldn't keep up with her.

  Meryl Streep

  Drama, School, Play

• So it's not a thing that's a struggle. It's work, but it's not a struggle. It's fun. And she had a very particular way of emphasizing points and making her point, and that had to do with bringing out a word that you didn't normally think was the most important word in the sentence.

  Meryl Streep

  Fun, Struggle, Thinking

  "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. February 6, 2012.