While previewing Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron's yummy film about blogger Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and her heroine-worship of jolly French chef Julia Child (Meryl Streep), I whispered to a colleague, "Is Streep the first actor ever to have previously played on screen the director he/she works for in a subsequent film?" (Streep, of course, played Ephron in Mike Nichols' Heartburn (1986), about the bustup of Ephron's marriage to Washington Post scribe Carl Bernstein.)
The closest example I can come up with is that William Wellman, Jr. played his father in senior's Lafayette Escadrille, (1958), about the elite World War I flying legion -- but that misses the mark by many miles. Can you think of one?
The Streep/Ephron connection goes back to Silkwood (1983), which Ephron co-wrote with Alice Arlen. In Julie & Julia, Streep is a jolly, jolly Julia, nailing the carbonated voice, cheery confidence and irrepressible vivacity of the woman who taught Americans how to bone a duck, set an aspic and embrace butter like a long-lost lover. It also occured to me while watching Streep's masterful embodiment of the master chef, that the actress might have played more real-life figures than any other performer. Let's see: she was Karen Silkwood, Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa, Ephron in Heartburn, Lindy Chamberlain, accused child murderess, in A Cry in the Dark, violin teacher Roberta Guaspari in Music of the Heart, Susan Orlean in Adaptation and now Child in J & J. She played a slightly fictionalized Carrie Fisher in Postcards from the Edge. That makes eight. Can any other actor top that?
If you don't have answers to these brainteasers for movie geeks, tell me your favorite Streep performance? (I'd say Sophie's Choice, Defending Your Life and The Devil Wears Prada). By the way, Streep turned 60 last month so here's belated birthday greetings for the dame who started at the top and has surpassed herself ever since.
Carrie- I believe that Inga Helms Weiss, the character that Streep played in "Holocaust," was based on a real-life figure. My favorite Streep performances: "Sophie's Choice," "Silkwood" and "A Cry in the Dark."— Pash- Streep can do no wrong in my estimation. I have loved so many of her performances. Her recent performances in Prime, Devil Wears Prada, Doubt, Mamma Mia, and now Julie & Julia all sparkle and demonstrate the virtuosity of her talent. Brava!— moishglukovsky
- It's not quite the same thing, but there's always Ward Bond in "The Wings of Eagles" playing "John Dodge" -- that is to say, John Ford.— chris schneider
- Anything Meryl Streep is in is a must see for me! The movie that really showed me her level of commitment to character development was Bridges of Madison County. She had so many authentic Italian hand gestures and ways of holding her head that I thought I was looking at one of my relatives. When she folded her dish towel the way my mother does my jaw dropped! I wonder how much time she spent observing Italian women! She is amazing!— meg bolton
- I really enjoy most everything Meryl has done. I enjoyed her in Postcards From the Edge immensely and She really was amazing in Angels in America on HBO. Not only because all of the roles she played in the film but also the way she developed and showed Hannah Pitt's enlightenment was gradual and so real.— merrilljs
- A reader asked me to post this for him: Meryl Streep is a gift. My best memory of her talent came in a flash during, "Doubt." First, I am a 67-year-old ex-Catholic who can tell you (if you don't already know) that the Catholic school experience sears an indelible brand on one's ganglia that cannot be removed. During the movie I have cited, there is a scene in which the director does a close-up of Streep, her face framed in the unmistakeable Nun black & white. Her character sneers at a misbehaving boy as the great actress says, contemptuously, "Stand up." There, in a darkened movie house, I almost did. Ed Gallagher East Norriton, PA— carrierickey
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