Meryl Streep Quotes & Sayings

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 once read that in any good marriage, one partner is the gardener and the other is the garden. We take it in turns to be either. — Meryl Streep

The work will stand, no matter what. — Meryl Streep

Sometime really good writing does you a disservice as an actor. Because you can get lazy. It's doing a lot of the work for you. I guess that's good. But at the same time with material that's not so good, you have to be more inventive, because no thought has been applied to it. — Meryl Streep

We're viewed as equals - but we're still not there yet. [ ... ] The challenge for our girls, I think, is dealing with that resistance. How can we lift and defuse it, how do we make it so our equality is not so threatening? Our girls are going to have to contend with that. I contend with it right now in every realm I operate in. — Meryl Streep

When criticism comes your way as an actor they are not criticizing your writing or your painting or your piece, they are criticizing you! It is hard to put that away in a place where you are not hurt. — Meryl Streep

That's my way in the very beginning - how to enter it [a role]. Very quickly in the process, I don't think about voice being separate from the way you hold your head or the way you sit or the way you put on lipstick. It's all a piece of a person, and it's all driven by conviction. — Meryl Streep

You have to embrace getting older. Life is precious, and when you've lost a lot of people, you realize that each day is a gift. — 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

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

All an actor has, I think, is their heart, really, ... that's the place you go for your inspiration. If my heart wasn't filled with them, where would I get stuff? What would I have to express? — Meryl Streep

It's so much easier to be happy. It's so much easier to choose to love the things that you have, instead of always yearning for what you're missing, or what it is that you're imagining you're missing. It is so much more peaceful. — Meryl Streep

I'm all over the place. — Meryl Streep

When I was younger I spent way too much time thinking about me being too fat. So stupid. — Meryl Streep

I never look a gift horse in the mouth. And I've been really, really lucky. My career has been given to me by the people I've worked with. The actors, the directors, the cinematographers, the writers, all of whom gave me the opportunity to work in the way that I have and I'm really grateful. — Meryl Streep

Having wrinkles is at once strange and exciting. — Meryl Streep

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

For young women, I would say don't worry so much about your weight. Girls spend way too much time thinking about that, and there are better things. For young men, and women, too, what makes you different or weird-that's your strength. Everyone tries to look a cookie-cutter kind of way, and actually the people who look different are the ones who get picked up. I used to hate my nose. Now I don't. It's OK. — Meryl Streep

If you have a brain, you are obliged to use it. — Meryl Streep

I just take every day is a miracle and I'm really glad that I'm still working and that people are not sick of me, even though even I'm sick of me a little bit. — 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've thought a lot about the power of empathy. In my work, it's the current that connects me and my actual pulse to a fictional character in a made up story, it allows me to feel, pretend feelings and sorrows and imagined pain. — Meryl Streep

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

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

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

One must be brave if one is to take the wheel. — Meryl Streep

It's sort of my fun to sing along with records and imitate people who are on the telephone that have different ways of speaking. — 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

If everybody that had two cars had a Prius instead of an SUV, we wouldn't be in the Middle East right now. — Meryl Streep

I have a theory that movies operate on the level of dreams, where you dream yourself. — 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

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

And it interferes with your ability to be a good actress if you're constantly aware of yourself as a person. To me, it isn't valuable to think about how I'm coming off all the time if I'm trying to create a character, because that's a process that I love. It's like falling in love and surrendering to another person or a character. — Meryl Streep

Everyone tries to look a cookie-cutter kind of way, and actually the people who look different are the ones who get picked up. — Meryl Streep

Listening is everything. Listening is the whole deal. That's what I think. And I mean that in terms of before you work, after you work, in between work, with your children, with your husband, with your friends, with your mother, with your father. It's everything. And it's where you learn everything. — 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

I don't have time to read a lot. And when I do, I read things that have just the facts. — Meryl Streep

The minute you start caring about what other people think, is the minute you stop being yourself. — Meryl Streep

I would never say don't do acting [to my kids], because I think it is a glorious profession and I am so thankful for everything it has let me express. — Meryl Streep

Everyone is interesting. Everyone has something unexpected to offer and the job of acting is to pull it out of each other. — Meryl Streep

Women are better at acting then men. Why? Because we have to be. If successfully convincing someone bigger than you are of something he doesn't want to know is a survival skill, this is how women have survived through the millennia. — Meryl Streep

I had a number of great teachers and the ones that really were the strongest influences on me were women. They were really, really smart and interesting women. — Meryl Streep

I don't think we can say that all working women will get divorced - it's so dangerous to make these things emblematic of anything - but having said that, every person who has a big, important job and tries to have a family, has to make decisions every single minute. — Meryl Streep

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

Margaret Thatcher was a pioneer, willingly or unwillingly, for the role of women in politics, — Meryl Streep

That is the simple secret. Always take your heart to work. — Meryl Streep

I like who I am now. Other people may not. I'm comfortable. I feel freer now. I don't want growing older to matter to me. — Meryl Streep

The key to every actor is deep, deep insecurity. — Meryl Streep

I don't have very much interest in trends and fashions. I don't follow the fashion shows and stuff like that into my real life. But I'm very, very interested in how people put themselves together, how women and men announce themselves to the world, through what they put on their bodies. Whether we choose Birkenstocks or whether we choose Burberry - it all signifies something and it's really interesting to me. — Meryl Streep

You can have a perfectly horrible day where you doubt your talent ... Or that you're boring and they're going to find out that you don't know what you're doing. — Meryl Streep

Acting is being susceptible to what is around you, and it's letting it all come in. Acting is a clearing away of everything except what you want and need - and it's wonderful in that way. And when it's right, you're lost in the moment. — Meryl Streep

The fairy tale that really scared me was Bluebeard. That's the one where he just kills one after another of these woman, these wives, that he lures up to the castle. I just think about fairy tales as stories women told their children to warn them? To keep them safe, to make sure they married up, all the things that would have safeguarded them in the olden days. — 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

There are some days when I, myself , think I'm overrated — Meryl Streep

I feel like I run a business although I haven't one. It's planning, planning, and planning. — Meryl Streep

The greatest gift given to man by God - is the ability to empathize. — Meryl Streep

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

My mother was someone that walked into a room and lit it up. She made friends easily and she communicated her enthusiasms with great joy. I always wanted to be more like my mother than I am. I loved and admired her very deeply. — Meryl Streep

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

Guard your good mood. — 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

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

What makes you different or weird, that's your strength. — Meryl Streep

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

If you make the tough decisions, people will hate you today. But they will thank you for generations. — Meryl Streep

Wrinkled, wrinkled little star ... hope they never see the scars. — Meryl Streep

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

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

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

One of the most important keys to acting is curiosity. I am curious to the point of being nosy. What that means is you want to devour lives. You're eager to put on their shoes and wear their clothes and have them become a part of you. All people contain mystery, and when you act, you want to plumb that mystery until everything is known to you — Meryl Streep

People will say to me, 'You've played so many strong women' and I'll say, 'Have you ever said to a man, 'You've played so many strong men?' No! Because the expectation is [men] are varied. Why can't we have that expectation about women? — Meryl Streep

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

I wonder which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our
President's personal savior, would have personally
dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad? — 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

Acting has to reach everybody on some level - it's a communication of feeling - but as far as judging the work is concerned, it is, I think, something that actors know about. — Meryl Streep

They filled our lives so much, the films they were in made us laugh, think and cry. Through their work they shared a piece of our soul. We will miss them with the sadness with which we miss an old friend. — Meryl Streep

Instant gratification is not soon enough. — Meryl Streep

Acting is my way of investigating human nature and having fun at the same time — Meryl Streep

I think the best role models for women are people who are fruitfully and confidently themselves, who bring light into the world. — Meryl Streep

I thought, "Why? and how did we evolve with this weak, and useless passion in tact within the deep heart's core?" And the answer as I've formulated it to myself is that empathy is the engine that powers all the best in us. — Meryl Streep

That consciousness of quality, and the need to demand it can galvanize your energies, not just in your work, but in a rigorous exercise of mind and heart in every aspect of your life. — Meryl Streep

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

My advice: Don't waste so much time worrying about your skin or your weight. Develop what you do, what you put your hands on in the world. — Meryl Streep

When you're an actor and there's no music, you have to sort of bring it all yourself. — Meryl Streep

You can't sing when you're upset. You can't sing when you're crying. You get all congested and disgusting. — 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

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

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

Being an actor lets me be a million different things. — Meryl Streep

The movie that makes me cry is Anchorman. I have the biggest
crush on Will Ferrel I love him in every film he does. I mean, Ryan Gosling could be my child. I'm not going to have a crush on a child.
Will Ferrell is a man. — 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 want to feel my life while I'm in it. — Meryl Streep

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

Young people who learn the arts do better in every phase of their lives. — Meryl Streep

The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy, we can all sense a mysterious connection to each other. — Meryl Streep

You are thinking about where your brain is at any time. It's very tricky but it's why women are very well suited to rule the world in the future, because of the multi-tasking they do and their ability to be moving in 15 directions at once. It's the women who behave like men, who focus in that singular way with the blinkers on, who have problems. You get a lot more done that way maybe, but you also lose the perception of who's behind you, what's going on, the 360 degrees of it, the whole picture of life that we do have as women. — Meryl Streep

When they called my name, I had this feeling I could hear half of America going, 'Oh no. Come on ... Her, again?' You know. But, whatever. — Meryl Streep

To imagine myself in different ways comes from my beginnings in the theatre. People are more accepting when you go 'apparently', 'wildly' afield from who you are or where you were brought up. — Meryl Streep