Despite her many turns playing women who exude power, decisiveness and self-reliance (yet always with a soupçon of vulnerability), Streep herself wasn’t interested in becoming anyone’s go-to source for life lessons, about marriage or anything else.
“I hate seeing myself pontificating,” Streep said to the New York Times in 1994 on the subject of doing interviews. “I can’t bare it, as if I’m an expert on anything. I’m barely in control of my own life. And there’s the pressure to be articulate. With motherhood, you can barely put the subject before the predicate and make a sentence.”
She couldn’t help it that she continued to come off as so wise that people wanted to hear from her any chance they could get. For the last 27 years she has continued to give interviews sparingly and never divulges much about her family—though she will do her press when need be and will talk at length about causes she’s passionate about.
Of course, technically she’s more passionate about her family than anything else, but they remain off-limits for good reason.
“Motherhood, marriage, it’s a balancing act,” Streep told Good Housekeeping in 2008. “Especially when you have a job that you consider rewarding. It’s a challenge but the best kind of challenge.”
Regarding the family life she keeps so private, she explained, “Robert Redford taught me that when they were babies: ‘They are not your props.’ I really admired the way he protected his family. It’s something I consciously emulated.”
You don’t mess with the role of a lifetime.
(Originally published Sept. 30, 2019 at 3 a.m. PT)
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