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Meryl Streep dazzles Shanghai audiences with tales
(eastday.com)
Updated: 2004-06-16 10:06
Award-winning actress Meryl Streep dazzles audiences in Shanghai with tales
of her unique career.
Meryl
Streep | A black gauze shirt dotted with tiny
purple flowers, light grayish sunglasses plus a pair of antique amethyst
earrings -- as the brightest star at the Shanghai International Film Festival,
which closed on Sunday, the gracefully adorned American actress Meryl Streep
glittered in China for the first time with unadorned smiles and lyrical words.
After receiving American Film Institute's 32nd Life Achievement Award on June
10, Streep flew to Shanghai on Saturday with her husband and three daughters.
She met audiences before the screening of her movie "The Hours," awarded the
best film prize to Iranian film "Tradition of Lover Killing" on the closing
ceremony and enjoyed a pleasant family trip to the nearby canal town of Xitang
in Zhejiang Province.
"A friend of mine who was born in Shanghai told me it is 'Paris of the East.'
on the way from the airport, I looked through the car window and saw so many
beautiful buildings,'' she says. ``Each individual in these buildings has
stories and each woman has something amazing in her mind that could teach us
something. I'm curious about people that are different from me.'' Among
Hollywood's dazzling diamond stars, Streep looks just like the purple crystal
she wears -- natural, mature and charismatic.
``Thank goodness there are always women who like to be on the cover of
magazines, so I don't have to do that,'' she chuckles. ``I've just never been
comfortable in the Hollywood world perhaps because I'm a middle-class girl from
New Jersey. I don't like parties and glamour. In my DNA, it's not me. I can
pretend, act and get through certain evenings. But it's not what I enjoy. I
enjoy my family, my dogs, my lake and hiking in mountains.'' Streep was born in
1949 in Summit, New Jersey, to pharmaceutical company executive Harry Streep and
commercial artist Mary Streep.
As a seven-year-old, she says she ``looked like a 40-year-old. I acted like one,
too. The kids thought I was one of their teachers.'' ``People think old is a bad
thing, but to me it's good,'' she says. ``I was not beautiful. But I was a
funny-looking child and a shower to stand in the middle of the room acting. I
never felt like a child. The way I looked at the world was not naive. When I got
to 40, I thought now I'm who I am.'' Streep notes that she gained confidence in
herself while attending a university that was just for women.
``How we looked was not important, instead how we thought was more
important,'' she recalls. ``How we argued, learned, discovered, laughed and
joked mattered. I felt being a human being, not a woman or child and felt the
quality of my character.'' An anecdote for getting the role in ``Out of Africa''
proves her genuine charisma. ``At first the producers thought I was not sexy
enough to play this Denmark writer,'' she says.
``So I went to them in a low-cut dress. But at last they told me it's not the
dress but the quality of my mind that won the role.'' Streep's career is
enviously perfect. She is a recipient of two Oscars, five Golden Globes, an Emmy
and dozens of nominations for the industry's most prestigious accolades. ``For
success, luck is most important,'' she concludes. ``Luck presents opportunities
while talent gets you into the door.
Stamina, energy and love of the world are also crucial.'' Streep is a curious
woman who loves to learn. In ``Sophie's Choice,'' she learned Polish so that she
could shape her mouth and create a real-life character who immigrates from
Poland to America. While preparing for her role in ``The Music of Heart,'' she
spent two months learning the violin.
``It was very hard, but I did very well. I practiced the violin for six hours
a day, and I could play Bach's concerto,'' she says, her voice brimming with
pride. ``It's encouraging to be able to learn and challenge new things. I want
to learn Chinese since there are so many jokes they talk about that I cannot
understand.'' In addition to her life in the limelight, Streep is the wife of a
loving husband and mother of four children.
Like any mother in the world, she has sacrificed opportunities for her
family. This gifted woman says she would never try a career in directing because
the time-consuming job is not suitable for her family's size. ``The children are
the most important thing in my life, and I removed other options for them,''
says this mother of a son and three daughters.
``I was trained to be a theater actress, but I haven't done a play for 12
years -- plays are staged at nights and on weekends, when my children are at
home. For movies, I went during the day when they were at school. I work for
four months and have three or four months' off. It's a good profession to have a
family. My children are proud of me but only the oldest one has seen my films.''
Unlike other movie stars, Streep prefers New York to Los Angeles. Her family
moved to New York two days before September 11 terrorist attack in 2001. ``We
did not see our children for 24 hours that day because the tunnel and bridge
closed so that they could not leave Manhattan,'' she recalls.
``It was a terrible day, but it made my children love New York and be proud
of the city. It's difficult to live in Los Angeles if you are in my business,
which is everywhere and suffocating. There's a lot of attention to how you look,
how young you are, how beautiful you are, how rich you are and which car you
drive. I didn't like it much. ``I love New York, a fabulous, global city of all
kinds of people,'' she adds.
``My children go to a school, which is like a global village with Cambodian,
Russian, Thailand, Philippines and Chinese. Los Angeles did not present them the
opportunities. I was grateful to bring my girls to Shanghai to let them see the
rest of the world and experience other people.'' Li Xiaojun, Streep's
interpreter during her Chinese trip, says the actress is very different from
other stars. ``She is a woman worthy of respect. She is kind of a person not
only to her family but also to everyone.
She cares about details and everyone. I've learned a lot from her from this
trip,'' Li adds. Streep reveals that she will make a movie with Chinese opera
director Chen Shizhen in July about a true story of the life of a Chinese
student who studies at an American university. ``China has grand literature, and
all the stories are going to be emerging and be talked about,'' she says.
``In New York the headlines for Cannes Film Festival were `Asian West'.'' It
has been a long time ago since Streep first landed on the Academy Award stage
for ``Kramer Vs Kramer'' in 1979. But this Life Achievement Award winner still
remembered the very feeling that night. ``That movie was one of the first that
made me from an unknown actress to a movie star,'' she recalls. ``I really fell
apart and thought it could not be happening to me.
I was in the lady's room at the Academy Awards with many, many famous stars,
where I forgot my statue. As a young actress it was overwhelming and I thought
those people were bigger, more important than me. Now I've lived in this world
and find many stars are ironic and unhappy. ``The awards and ceremonies are the
things I'm not good at. I'm good at acting a character in the film world. I love
doing that and never feel tiring,'' says Streep, her purple crystal earrings
modestly twinkling from her ears and a genial smile spreading across her face.
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