Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia
Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia
MERYL STREEP: Thank you. I want to change my name to
"T-Bone."
(Laughter.)
T-Bone Streep.
(Laughter.)
I think it sounds good. Oh, gosh. I — I'm going to
forget what I wanted to say because I'm, like,
overwrought. Darn, what was my first part?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You love Nora.
MERYL STREEP: Yeah, I love Nora.
(Laughter.)
I really I am grateful to Nora and to everybody at Sony.
And Stanley, of course, and everybody in the cast and
crew.
(Applause.)
I just want to say that I've, in my long career, played
so many extraordinary women that basically I'm getting
mistaken for one.
(Laughter.)
And — no, really, I have — I'm very clear about the
fact that I'm the vessel for other people's stories and
other women's lives. And this year I got to play not
only one of the most beloved women in America, Julia
Child, but I also — I also got to secretly pay homage to
my own personal, not-so-famous-hero — that's my
mother — who shared — who was of the same generation as
Julia, who shared her verve. A lot of the people in this
room knew my mother and knew that she had a real joy in
living. And she just had no patience for gloom and doom.
I'm not like that.
(Laughter.)
I come to Golden Globes weekend, and I am really honestly
conflicted how to have my happy movie self in the face of
everything that I'm aware of in the real world. And I
want to say that that's when I have my mother's voice
coming to me, saying, "Partners in Health. Shoot some
money to Partners in Health. Put the dress on. Put on a
smile. And be damn grateful that you can" — "you have
the dollars to help and the next day and the next day and
the next day." And I am really grateful. I am really
grateful. So thank you. (Applause.) Thank you, Mother. Thank you, Don. Thank you, Elena.
Thank you, kids.?
Barkley Court Reporters in Back Stage Speech
Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia
MS. STREEP: Hello.
Q. I just wanted to ask you, you're famous
for your accents, and something that's always
occurred to me, whether it was watching this movie
or so many of your others, how do you perfect it?
Are you looking in the mirror, or are you in the
shower? When do you hammer it home?
MS. STREEP: I don't think about it that
way. I mean, usually I sort of have an idea inside
me that I understand how this person speaks, and
then I corroborate that from listening to — if it
is someone from another country, I listen to tapes
of people speaking, or I go downtown and sit in a
cafe in New York. Polyglot America. You can hear
everybody. I love listening in in restaurants.
Q. You can still be anonymous and listen in?
MS. STREEP: Oh, yeah.
Q. You had amazing success with "Mamma Mia!,"
and Broadway loves you. Any idea of possibly
coming to Broadway and being on the stage any time
soon?
MS. STREEP: I don't have a plan for that,
but I would like to. I always said that when my
children grew up and went to college that I could
maybe think about doing that, and that happened
this year. So I am looking.
Q. I am Ted from E! up front, right in front
of you. Thank you for your words, your benevolent
words. I appreciate that.
I want to ask you about Julia Child — and
congratulations on your role, awesome.
Forgive me if this has already been
addressed, but was it ever researched about how
Julia Child felt about her work being repurposed
like that? Because in the film it seemed like she
was edgy about it, but it never really got
answered.
MS. STREEP: Well, yes. In the film we
referred to accurately that she, in her 90s, was
not amused by the fact that Julie Powell was
writing a blog about cooking her way through
Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Julia
Child was disgruntled because she felt this person
was not being serious about cuisine.
Julia was a sunny personality, but she
really took this quite seriously. She tried to
establish a master's degree in gastronomy in Boston
University, and she wanted it to be considered a
serious point of study.
Q. So it was the approach, it wasn't the fact
that the work was being reformatted, per se?
MS. STREEP: I think it was the fact —
well, she wasn't reformatting Julia's own work.
Julie Powell wasn't changing the recipes. She was
just cooking her way through it.
But I think she was offended by the
language. She's a lady of a certain age and
certain time where you can't say, "Fuck, fuck,
fuck, fuck" all the time, and she was not used to
it, and I think it upset here.
Q. Did you cook before, or did this film
really inspire you to take up a new hobby?
MS. STREEP: I have four children, and I
cook constantly and have for many years, but not
well.
So it is an inspiration to sort of dive
back in and also, you know, a smaller group and not
so many diverse palates in the room. One of my
children only ate white food for many years, and it
was really hard to accommodate that.
It is more fun now that it is just me and
my husband.
Q. So one of the most fascinating things
about covering you is you are one of the most
accomplished actors in the world today with all the
awards and all the movies that you do, but you
somehow are out of the limelight. You don't have
paparazzi lurking out of trash bins and you and
your husband fighting it out.
In the Critics' Choice he was in the gold
fair game or something.
Can you, as such a famous personality like
you, choose to lead a life that doesn't have all
this craziness around you?
MS. STREEP: I think it was easier for me
when I was coming up. There was no such thing as
the 24/7 news cycle.
I think for younger actresses the scrutiny
is very, very hard. The blogsphere, where people
comment on their weight and their appearance,
endlessly tearing people down. That always
happened, but it sort of happened in apartments and
restaurants, and you didn't hear everybody's
opinion of you.
But now I think it is kind of a relentless
drag on people, and it interferes with your ability
to be a good actress if you're constantly
self-aware of yourself as a person.
To me it is valuable to think about how I
am coming off all the time if I'm trying to create
a character. Because that's the thing I like to —
that's a process I love, and it is just sort of
falling in love, you know, surrendering to another
person, in this case, a character.
Q. At this stage of your life, what do awards
mean to you?
MS. STREEP: Well, it means a great deal
to have the admiration of the people in my
community, my film community. It is a little
family.
I don't live in the glare of the
spotlight. I come, you know, from my little
outside life and come into this room where
everybody that I've ever worked with is, people I
love. People I would love to work with, people I
admire. People whose work I've followed forever.
It is like a little homecoming. It is
sort of great to be able to come to these award
shows. That means a lot to me.
The award itself is from the Hollywood
Foreign Press, who have seen me for 30 years in
movies, and they are still not sick of me. That
means something to me, it really does. Because it
is hard to remain new.
So I am very proud to get this award,
especially for this movie, because I loved this
movie. I loved the script.
I think it is a good signal to the
business, to the financial end in our business that
movies that on the page would seem like a
middle-aged woman is cooking, it just seems so
boring, and yet it has its audience. It was a big
hit, and that's good news.
Q. Ms. Streep, being such a celebrated
actress, there's a lot of people who look up to
you, especially a lot of young people. What advice
do you have for young people who want to break into
acting and one day be just like you?
MS. STREEP: I always say to my daughters,
"You don't have to do anything you don't want to
do, and don't read things about yourself. Don't
read the blogs."
It is really hard not to Google yourself
and get into the horrible vortex, but it is much,
much better for your mental health and everything
else. You try to lessen the self-awareness and the
self-consciousness.
Q. How do you stop yourself from being over
the top in your roles?
MS. STREEP: I never stop myself from
that. That's my chance.
Q. Congratulations. Thank you for a
beautiful acceptance speech.
I am trying to picture you with your mom
when you were little when your mom was cooking. Is
there any —
MS. STREEP: My mother hated cooking. My
mother had one cookbook, it was the Peg Bracken I
Hate to Cook Book. There was a woman smoking a
cigarette on the cover, going "Huh." My mother
didn't smoke, but she said, "If it's not done in 45
minutes, it's not dinner."
Yeah, we had a lot of frozen food.
When I was 10, I remember going to a kid's
house, and her mother — she and her mother were in
the kitchen doing something with tennis balls. I
said, "What are you doing?"
They said, "Peeling potatoes."
I said, "That's not potatoes. Potatoes
come in a box." I actually didn't know that.
But my mother knew how to have a good
time, she really did, and she really lit up the
room when she entered it.
Q. Congratulations. A lot of actresses sort
of complain, "When you hit 40 in Hollywood, it is
really tough." Have you found it to be difficult,
hard to get those really strong roles, or they come
few and far between?
MS. STREEP: Boy, I don't know. I am
trying to hold all the offers back, darling. Not
really.
It is — I haven't ever felt that I
haven't had a chance. I haven't really felt that
yet. Maybe that's coming next year. Maybe this is
all — who knows.
But I am really enjoying it as it comes.
I think that the business has changed. I think it
really has changed a great deal for women.
When I did "The Bridges of Madison
County," I was 45. There was a big fight with the
studio because they said I was too old, and my
costar, Clint, was 65, which I thought was really
old. Now he seems like he was a kid to me now.
But I think Sandra Bullock is 45 now, and
it is a little bit better. The perception of her
is different than ten years ago it was for me. So
it is getting better, definitely. Thank you.
