The Greatest Living Actress?
By Darren Williams
19th February 2010

I don't like Meryl Streep very much. I thought it best to mention this up-front because it's an opinion I'm usually quite shy in expressing. I'm sure she's a sweetheart as a person, but, to steal a line from Bill Murray, as an actress I think she's "Medium talent". I think I could actually ignore her though, I can do it with so many other performers I don't rate, if it wasn't for the unpleasantness of her fans. Years ago, I read a book about the Oscars and there was a quote from an unnamed Academy member about Daniel Day-Lewis's first Oscar win for My Left Foot. The unnamed actor said that they voted for him to win and the reason they did so was that he was impressed by seeing an actor doing something he himself couldn't do, referring of course to the physicality of Day-Lewis' performance. I think it's this fallacy that's lead to the reputation of Streep, the idea that just because someone is a talented mimic, or can do something physically that another performer can't, that they're somehow a superior performer. I'm not sure what Streep's reputation can be built on otherwise. I understand her huge popularity with female audiences, she's the only diva-esque performer to really have a lasting mainstream reputation from a decade where most of the popular attention was focused on incredibly masculine performers. So I'm more than willing to admit she used to be a talented technical actress, although I think she's lost even that technical side of the craft in recent years, but she's never moved me, and that makes a bad performer in my eyes. I don't think a performer needs to drown their roles in emotion, in fact that's usually another sign of a horrible actor. But there should be some kind of feeling that the character is actually alive, or that you're watching some form of representation of reality. I've never once got that with Streep.

Even a film that requires a huge emotional connection with the character, her most praised role in Sophie's Choice, left me cold. For all I cared her choice may as well have been blue or white paint for the bathroom. So is it me? Are all those people who have connected with the performance right and I'm wrong? Maybe, but my natural arrogance assures me that I'm not. The nature of the role (along with several other of her most acclaimed performances) could easily be taking over the performance itself. Holocaust dramas often receive undeserved acclaim and this film is no different, it's adequately directed by a man who could create mediocrity as often as masterpieces and it's main reason for any kind of lasting importance is on the same level as The Reader, when we come down to it. It's about the Holocaust - therefore it's worthy. Sophie is a character who is going to connect with so many people, parents especially, that it's easy to get involved and see something that isn't really there. It's not the first time that people project their feelings onto a blank canvas performance, which is what Streep really gives. All physical symptoms and accent but no soul. When talking about the role fans talk about how she lost so much weight, how she learned languages and accents, but so what? When people talk about De Niro in Raging Bull they talk about the training and the weight gain, but De Niro captured the soul of a brute who had no idea how to communicate other than through violence, the physicality is something additional to the performance, it isn't the performance. With Streep that's all there is, it's affectation on top of affectation, all disguising the fact that the performance has no soul. You can't imagine Streep's Sophie ever really being anguished, it's like watching a parody of grief.

You also have to question why an actress with such a reputation, who presumably could have her pick of directors, so often picks such mediocre product. How many really good films has Streep been involved with? Forget classics even, just focus on really good films. Adaptation, The Deer Hunter, Manhattan, Fantastic Mr. Fox. Other than that it's been this endless stream of middle of the road, dull, unimaginative 'quality' cinema. Compare Streep's choices, Out of Africa, Marvin's Room, Postcards from the Edge, Music of the Heart, One True Thing, etc etc etc against the work of an actress like Kate Winslet. It's impossible to imagine Streep even taking on roles like Holy Smoke, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Little Children or Quills let alone committing herself so fully to character rather than to aspects of performance. Can you imagine her playing Annie Hall? Actually being kooky and believable? No doubt she would have studied with New York kooks and imitated their behaviour flawlessly, but it would still have been like watching a precocious brat play dress-up. How about if she'd tried taking on Secretary? She would have studied sexual submissives and duplicated their reactions to being spanked, but can you imagine Streep wearing a saddle with a carrot in her mouth and looking like anything other than Streep wearing a saddle with a carrot in her mouth? There isn't actually a great female role I can think of her playing without it becoming an icy parody.

Maggie Gyllenhaal in "Secretary" - a role Streep could never do?

Even her attempts to loosen up in recent years have been hideously misjudged. A film like Mamma Mia comes with a built in audience, so its popularity can in no way be tied to the film actually being a success. Her performance is the same kind of grotesque that she's dealt in these last few years. Even that much praised technique seems to have been forgotten as each new role goes more and more into over-the-top parody. You can forgive it in The Devil Wears Primark, the film is one that cries out for parody, but Streep isn't a born comedy actress because comedy is natural, not studied and that parody seems forced and hideous. Even worse is her turn in Doubt, a film that requires commitment and reserve and she hams it up like she's in the broadest farce imaginable. Streep's work in recent years is every bit as over-the-top and ridiculous as that of Pacino, Nicholson or De Niro, yet they get slated for their poor choices while Streep is constantly not only given a free pass, but a seemingly obligatory Oscar nomination. Which is another problem, the single-mindedness of certain members of the Academy in nominating her year after year means that other more deserving actresses miss out on nominations and this accumulation of Oscar nominations reinforces the idea that she is the greatest actress who ever lived. This week there were interviews with several actors who were asked to pick their choice of the greatest performance of the last decade, Morgan Freeman said any film Meryl Streep made. To me that sums up the attitude to Streep by so many, it doesn't matter what the film is, it doesn't matter what the performance is, it's Streep so it must be good. It's a ridiculous blinkered attitude and it in no way reflects what's actually on the screen and it made me lose a lot of respect for Freeman.

So we get closer and closer to this year's Oscars and once again her most vocal fans are demanding she win because she only has two Oscars. Think about that for a second, she "only" has two Oscars. There's an absurd sense of entitlement around this woman's fans. Anything other than complete worship at the shrine of Streep leads to an online conniption fit usually reserved for the most hardcore of geeks. Never has a toy left a pram or a dummy left a mouth with the same speed as if you slate the Streep in front of an admirer. So I'm torn. Part of me thinks she should win, just to shut up the crying about how she hasn't won in x amount of years. But of course it won't. Because if she wins then she'll be one shy of Hepburn's record, and it'll be all about how she deserves to win again to tie. And then of course she'll deserve a fifth because she has the most amount of nominations, it's only right she has the most amount of wins. So let's hope for a Sandra Bullock win, not only because she actually seems like a human being on screen, and because Streep doesn't actually need a third Oscar, but because the heartbreak of Streep fans over her losing to the star of Miss Congeniality 2 will be the sweetest of schadenfreude.
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