Alexa here. Digging through my magazine collection (I'm not a hoarder, really) I came upon this Meryl Streep-covered issue of Rolling Stone from October 1981, back when Annie Leibovitz was photographing for the magazine, and when Meryl was promoting French Lieutenant's Woman. She was a mere 32 years old then, younger than Kate Winslet is today. There are a lot of choice bits in the interview inside, confirming again that she is just, well, the best and most endearing of them all.
On her method (or lack thereof):
I don't have any method. People who have est, or people who have other means of relaxation, feel sure they have 'The Way' tucked inside their scripts. I don't have that. I sort of go at everything from a different direction.
On fame:
Put yourself in this position. You're passing the newsstand at Fifty-seventh Street and Sixth Avenue, and there's your face on the cover of a magazine. And one week later, you're on the subway, and there's that cover, with your face, on the floor. Somebody's probably pissed on it. It's an immediate sense of recognition of what this is.
On having just starred in Alice in Concert, a musical version of Alice in Wonderland, at the Public Theater:
I had just done three movies, and I needed to jump and leap and feel the way I see my little boy play. And I wanted to forget the way I look, to become un-self-conscious, to have that freedom children have when they're doing something in the middle of a room full of adults looking at them - and they just totally don't care. Sure, maybe I can go to an analyst to try not to be self-conscious, but it never occurred to me to do that.
On her choices:
This is a particularly unadventurous time intellectually and artistically, even in terms of entertainment. And I feel worried, because my livelihood is threatened because I'm not interested in doing most of the films that are being made. People think you make choices based on some array of characters that are placed in front of you. Well, it isn't that way. There are so few beautifully written scripts that if there's something with any promise, you latch on. You pay them to do it.