While Streep, 67, who has racked up a record 19 Academy Award acting nominations, receives such praise with grace, when she says she is merely happy to be acting she is not simply being modest. “On a certain level you don’t have any choice—you’re unhappy if you’re not doing it, so you’re compelled in a certain way. And if you’re lucky you can keep working,” she says. “But everybody has troughs and dismal times—every single person…Those anxieties help explain why Streep is pleased to be as prolific as at any time in her nearly 40-year film career.
[…]
Streep eventually realized that, despite having a lovely voice, she wasn’t good enough to be a professional diva. And though she sang plenty, Streep left her dreams of singing opera behind. Until Florence Foster Jenkins. “Yeah, there were moments when you’d say, ‘Sing worse,’ ” Streep says to Frears. “You were quite close,” Frears responds, referring to Jenkins’s idiosyncratic intonation.
As Streep pauses in appreciation, I’m reminded of a moment late in the film. Stripped of her wildly outlandish attire, Jenkins delivers a line that resounds like a credo: “They may say I can’t sing, but they can never say I didn’t sing.” This may be true for Streep, who like Jenkins is striving with all her heart, though she holds herself to a higher standard: her own.
“At the end, I sort of thought, Well, that was good,” Streep says, nodding. “I thought I’d done well, sounded good.” She pauses and adds with a laugh: “I also thought I looked good. Someone should have told me!”
~ Alex Bhattacharji, Meryl Streep: A League of Her Own
Notes:
- See official trailer on Youtube for “Florence Foster Jenkins“, Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant Movie
- Photo: Brigitte Lacombe
Live & Learn 