Meryl Streep Speaks

Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.
Meryl Streep

All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene.
Meryl Streep

All that attention to the perfect lighting, the perfect this, the perfect that, I find terribly annoying.
Meryl Streep

America doesn't reward people of my age, either in day-to-day life or for their performances.
Meryl Streep

Chris Cooper is one of my favorite actors in the world. I've seen him in most everything he's done.
Meryl Streep

Enough people write about me every day without even interviewing me.
Meryl Streep

Every single decision I make about what material I do, what I'm putting out in the world, is because of my children.
Meryl Streep

Everything we say signifies; everything counts, that we put out into the world. It impacts on kids, it impacts on the zeitgeist of the time.
Meryl Streep

Expensive clothes are a waste of money.
Meryl Streep

For me, clothes are kind of character; I don't follow fashion or understand trends.
Meryl Streep

Having been let out of the barn once, I know I wouldn't be happy if I were home all the time.
Meryl Streep

How you first meet the public is how the industry sees you. You can't argue with them. That's their perception.
Meryl Streep

I always feel like I can't do it, that I can't go through with a movie. But then I do go through with it after all.
Meryl Streep

I believe in imagination. I did Kramer vs. Kramer before I had children. But the mother I would be was already inside me.
Meryl Streep

I can't stand most things that I see.
Meryl Streep

I couldn't care less about fashion. If I had taken any clothes home, they would have remained in my closet for the rest of their existence.
Meryl Streep

I didn't have any confidence in my beauty when I was young. I felt like a character actress, and I still do.
Meryl Streep

I don't know why I don't watch a lot of movies; I can barely keep up with the things my friends are in. There isn't enough time in life.
Meryl Streep

I don't like to be gone all weekend and at night too. Because for 20 years, I've had children who are in school.
Meryl Streep

I get a trickling few scripts that I'm lucky enough that some of them are great. I don't get loads of scripts.
Meryl Streep

I had this sort of idolatry for certain actors who preceded me, people who inspired me, so I'm honored to be that way for young actors.
Meryl Streep

I have a holistic need to work and to have huge ties of love in my life. I can't imagine eschewing one for the other.
Meryl Streep

I have a very busy life, and not many people who have a career and four kids go out a lot to the movies.
Meryl Streep

I have a very good life - I'm lucky enough not to be deprived.
Meryl Streep

I have four to five months, tops, per year to give to my acting work.
Meryl Streep

I need to go where people are serious about acting.
Meryl Streep

I think the most liberating thing I did early on was to free myself from any concern with my looks as they pertained to my work.
Meryl Streep

I think your self emerges more clearly over time.
Meryl Streep

I want to feel my life while I'm in it.
Meryl Streep

I'm a pain in the ass to all of the costume designers with whom I work because I have very strong feelings about the subject.
Meryl Streep

I'm all over the place.
Meryl Streep

I'm curious about other people. That's the essence of my acting. I'm interested in what it would be like to be you.
Meryl Streep

I'm never so sure as I was in my mid-20s.
Meryl Streep

I'm older. There's some sort of seniority. As a matter of fact, the seniority ebbs as you get older.
Meryl Streep

I'm thrilled when I get nominated. I don't count how many and I don't remember how many I've had. I just know it's a lot.
Meryl Streep

If I am not confident that I can portray the character perfectly on screen, I won't even try.
Meryl Streep

Instant gratification is not soon enough.
Meryl Streep

Integrate what you believe in every single area of your life. Take your heart to work and ask the most and best of everybody else, too.
Meryl Streep

Interestingly, young people don't come to you for advice. Especially the ones who are related to you.
Meryl Streep

It is well that the earth is round that we do not see too far ahead.
Meryl Streep

It's bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children's health than the pediatrician.
Meryl Streep

Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.
Meryl Streep

My family really does come first. It always did and always will.
Meryl Streep

My feeling about fears is, if you voice your fears, they may come true. I'm superstitious enough to believe that.
Meryl Streep

My job is usually to express emotion as freely as possible.
Meryl Streep

Obsession is an attractive thing. People who are really, really interested and good at one thing and smart are attractive, if they're men.
Meryl Streep

People say, When you have children, everything changes. But maybe things are awakened that were already there.
Meryl Streep

Personality is immediately apparent, from birth, and I don't think it really changes.
Meryl Streep

Show business has been really, really good to me because I can work and take a lot of time off, and I'm extremely undisciplined person.
Meryl Streep

Some people are filled by compassion and a desire to do good, and some simply don't think anything's going to make a difference.
Meryl Streep

Sometimes with my children, I remember exactly how I felt as the child in this situation, not just how it feels to be me.
Meryl Streep

The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.
Meryl Streep

The interesting thing about being a mother is that everyone wants pets, but no one but me cleans the kitty litter.
Meryl Streep

The more you are in this business, the more humbled by it you become.
Meryl Streep

The progression of roles you take strings together a portrait of an actor, but it's a completely random process.
Meryl Streep

The reason I chose the movies that I did was based on where they were being filmed.
Meryl Streep

The work is the most fun; it seems illicit how much fun it is.
Meryl Streep

The work will stand, no matter what.
Meryl Streep

There are improbable things suspended in space, like the earth.
Meryl Streep

There are wonderfully talented actresses. It's a really rich field. There isn't as rich a field of material.
Meryl Streep

There's no road map on how to raise a family: it's always an enormous negotiation.
Meryl Streep

We are who we're going to be when we're very old, and when we're very old we are who we were when we were 8.
Meryl Streep

You can't get spoiled if you do your own ironing.
Meryl Streep

You just have to keep on doing what you do. It's the lesson I get from my husband; he just says, Keep going. Start by starting.
Meryl Streep

You win an Oscar, it can double the audience that you had before.
Meryl Streep