Best quotes from Meryl Streep

Mary Louise Streep is an American actress. Often described as “the best actress of her generation”, Streep is particularly known for her versatility and accent adaptability. She has received numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over six decades, including a record 21 Academy Award nominations, winning three, and a record 32 Golden Globe Award nominations, winning eight. Meryl Streep made her stage debut in 1975 Trelawny of the Wells and received a Tony Award nomination the following year for a double-bill production of 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and A Memory of Two Mondays.

In 1977, she made her film debut in Julia. In 1978, she won her first Primetime Emmy Award for a leading role in the mini-series Holocaust, and received her first Oscar nomination for The Deer Hunter. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a troubled wife in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and went on to establish herself as a film actor in the 1980s. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for starring as a Holocaust survivor in Sophie’s Choice (1982) and had her biggest commercial success to that point in Out of Africa (1985).

She continued to gain awards, and critical praise, for her work in the late 1980s and 1990s, but commercial success was varied, with the comedy Death Becomes Her (1992) and the drama The Bridges of Madison County (1995), her biggest earners in that period. Streep reclaimed her stardom in the 2000s and 2010s with starring roles in Adaptation (2002), The Hours (2002), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Doubt (2008), Mamma Mia! (2008), Julie & Julia (2009), It’s Complicated (2009), Into the Woods (2014), The Post (2017) and Little Women (2019).

She also won her third Academy Award for her portrayal of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady (2011). Her stage roles include The Public Theater’s 2001 revival of The Seagull, and her television roles include two projects for HBO, the miniseries Angels in America (2003), for which she won another Primetime Emmy Award, and the drama series Big Little Lies (2019). Streep has been the recipient of many honorary awards.

She was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2004, Gala Tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2008, and Kennedy Center Honor in 2011 for her contribution to American culture, through performing arts. President Barack Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts in 2010, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2014. In 2003, the French government made her a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters. She was awarded the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2017.

Some of the best quotes from Meryl Streep are listed below.

1. “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
2. “Acting is my way of investigating human nature and having fun at the same time.” – Meryl Streep
3. “Acting is not about being someone different. It’s finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.” – Meryl Streep
4. “All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene.” – Meryl Streep
5. “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
6. “As there begins to be less time ahead of you, you want to be exactly who you are, without making it easier for everyone else.” – Meryl Streep
7. “Being a celebrity has taught me to hide but being an actor has opened my soul.” – Meryl Streep
8. “Being an actor lets me be a million different things.” – Meryl Streep
9. “Don’t give up or give in in the face of patronizing ridicule, amused disdain, or being ignored.” – Meryl Streep
10. “Don’t waste so much time thinking about how much you weigh. There is no more mind-numbing, boring, idiotic, self-destructive diversion from the fun of living.” – Meryl Streep
11. “Empathy is at the heart of the actor’s art.” – Meryl Streep
12. “Every easy choice will have its consequence tomorrow.” – Meryl Streep
13. “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
14. “Everyone is interesting. Everyone has something unexpected to offer and the job of acting is to pull it out of each other.” – Meryl Streep
15. “Everything that truly makes us happy is quite simple – love, sex and food!” – Meryl Streep
16. “Everything that truly makes us happy is quite simple: love, sex, and food! Everything else – power, influence, strength – all those things can overpower what’s important in life. But as long as you have food and shelter over your head, if the necessities are taken care of, what makes us happy on top of that is very simple.” – Meryl Streep
17. “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
18. “Expensive clothes are a waste of money.” – Meryl Streep
19. “Fear focuses the mind.” – Meryl Streep
20. “For me, clothes are kind of a character. They’re more interesting in those terms.” – Meryl Streep
21. “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
22. “Grace, respect, reserve, and empathetic listening are qualities sorely missing from the public discourse now.” – Meryl Streep
23. “Guard your good mood.” – Meryl Streep
24. “Having been let out of the barn once, I know I wouldn’t be happy if I were home all the time.” – Meryl Streep
25. “Hillary Clinton has taken some fire over 40 years of her fight for families and children. How does she do it? That’s what I want to know. Where does she get her grit and her grace? Where do any of our female firsts, our pathbreakers, where do they find that strength?” – Meryl Streep
26. “How you first meet the public is how the industry sees you. You can’t argue with them. That’s their perception.” – Meryl Streep
27. “I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities.” – Meryl Streep
28. “I believe in imagination. I did Kramer vs Kramer before I had children. But the mother I would be was already inside me.” – Meryl Streep
29. “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
30. “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
31. “I do honestly think that if women were running the world there would be more investment in peace, because basically as women we do not want to see our children killed. Maybe I am completely idealistic, but until we see women in equal positions of power in the world, I just think that we are doomed.” – Meryl Streep
32. “I have a pretty good idea of what I am not good at and have it front and centre of my consciousness every minute I am doing it.” – Meryl Streep
33. “I have always regarded myself as the pillar of my life.” – Meryl Streep
34. “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
35. “I let the actions of my life stand for what I am as a human being. Contend with that, not the words.” – Meryl Streep
36. “I love acting, of course, but being with my husband and my children always brought me the greatest joy and happiness in life.” – Meryl Streep
37. “I never give any character I play less respect than I give my own life.” – Meryl Streep
38. “I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature.” – Meryl Streep
39. “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
40. “I think that we pay much more attention to fashion and our hair, skin and foreheads, our abdominal muscles and shoes than what is happening in the world. We willingly take that ‘drug’ and go along with that.” – Meryl Streep
41. “I think that you find your own way. You have your own rules. You have your own understanding of yourself, and that’s what you’re going to count on. In the end, it’s what feels right to you. Not what your mother told you. Not what some actress told you. Not what anybody else told you but the still, small voice.” – Meryl Streep
42. “I think that you find your own way… In the end, it’s what feels right to you. Not what your mother told you. Not what some actress told you. Not what anybody else told you but the still, small voice.” – Meryl Streep
43. “I think the best role models for women are people who are fruitfully and confidently themselves, who bring light into the world.” – Meryl Streep
44. “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
45. “I think you have to listen to the people who are deeply unhappy. You have to find the source of it and not overreact to the craziness in it.” – Meryl Streep
46. “I think your self emerges more clearly over time.” – Meryl Streep
47. “I want to feel my life while I’m in it.” – Meryl Streep
48. “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
49. “I’m really interested in the collaborative thing. It’s what makes it scary because you never know what it’s going to end up like. But you hope. You put yourself in the hands of the best people you can find, and you’re completely dependent on the kindness of strangers and their commitment. It’s like this mutual delusion.” – Meryl Streep
50. “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
51. “If you have a brain, you are obliged to use it.” – Meryl Streep
52. “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
53. “Instant gratification is not soon enough.” – Meryl Streep
54. “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. Don’t let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth – don’t let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.” – Meryl Streep
55. “It’s a good thing to imagine yourself doing something you think you can’t. I do that every day because, basically, if I had it my way, I’d just stay home and think about what I’m having for supper.” – Meryl Streep
56. “It’s amazing what you can get if you quietly, clearly and authoritatively demand it.” – Meryl Streep
57. “It’s bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children’s health than the paediatrician.” – Meryl Streep
58. “It’s good to push yourself and do what you don’t necessarily want to do, that if you’re not automatically good at it, you should try it. Trying is so important.” – Meryl Streep
59. “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
60. “Leave me to the thing I love. I love acting. But being called ‘the greatest living actress’ – a designation not even my mother would sanction – is the opposite of good or valuable or useful. It is a curse for a working actor.” – Meryl Streep
61. “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
62. “Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.” – Meryl Streep
63. “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
64. “My family really does come first. It always did and always will.” – Meryl Streep
65. “My job is usually to express emotion as freely as possible.” – Meryl Streep
66. “My own sense of well-being and purpose in the world. That comes from studying the world feelingly, with empathy in my work. It comes from staying alert and alive and involved in the lives of the people that I love and the people in the wider world who need my help.” – Meryl Streep
67. “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
68. “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
69. “People want what they want. Sometimes you just have to walk in defiance of it and just be yourself.” – Meryl Streep
70. “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
71. “Personality is immediately apparent, from birth, and I don’t think it really changes.” – Meryl Streep
72. “Power, influence, strength – all those things can overpower what’s important in life. But as long as you have food and shelter over your head, if the necessities are taken care of, what makes us happy on top of that is very simple.” – Meryl Streep
73. “Pretending is a very valuable life skill.” – Meryl Streep
74. “Pretending is not just play. Pretending is imagined possibility. Pretending, or acting, is a very valuable life skill and we do it all the time.” – Meryl Streep
75. “Pretending is not just play. Pretending is imagined possibility. Pretending, or acting, is a very valuable life skill and we do it all the time.” – Meryl Streep
76. “Put blinders on to those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head.” – Meryl Streep
77. “Service is the only thing that’s important about love. Everybody is worried about ‘losing yourself’ – all this narcissism. Duty – we can’t stand that idea now either but duty might be a suit of armor you put on to fight for your love.” – Meryl Streep
78. “Singing and acting are very similar. Singing makes you reach into your deepest feelings. Singing is an extension of everything that you do when you’re acting.” – Meryl Streep
79. “That is the simple secret. Always take your heart to work.” – Meryl Streep
80. “The best thing about acting is when you’re playing a scene and you actually become your character and lose yourself in that moment. That’s when you know you’ve been succeeded at what you’ve worked very hard to accomplish in your profession. Those are the truly thrilling moments.” – Meryl Streep
81. “The formula of happiness and success is just being actually yourself, in the most vivid possible way you can.” – Meryl Streep
82. “The greatest gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.” – Meryl Streep
83. “The interesting thing about being a mother is that everyone wants pets, but no one but me cleans the kitty litter.” – Meryl Streep
84. “The key to every actor is deep, deep insecurity.” – Meryl Streep
85. “The minute you start caring about what other people think, is the minute you stop being yourself.” – Meryl Streep
86. “The more you are in this business, the more humbled by it you become.” – Meryl Streep
87. “The thing that you have to fight the most when you lose is you feel like the biggest failure in the world.” – Meryl Streep
88. “The work will stand, no matter what.” – Meryl Streep
89. “There are some days when I, myself, think I’m overrated… but not today.” – Meryl Streep
90. “There is some liberation in the freedom of being totally alone and really going for it.” – Meryl Streep
91. “There’s no road map on how to raise a family: it’s always an enormous negotiation.” – Meryl Streep
92. “True freedom is understanding that we have a choice in who and what we allow to have power over us.” – Meryl Streep
93. “We all make the mistake thinking that how you look makes you more worthy of love.” – Meryl Streep
94. “We are the choices we have made.” – Meryl Streep
95. “We need art as much as we need good works. You need it like food. You need it for inspiration to keep going on the days that your low. We need each other in that way.” – Meryl Streep
96. “What does it take to be the first female anything It takes grit, and it takes grace.” – Meryl Streep
97. “What makes you different or weird, that’s your strength.” – Meryl Streep
98. “What’s worse than brutality that dehumanizes women? Tolerance and indifference towards it.” – Meryl Streep
99. “Without question, of the heterosexual men that I’ve spoken to over the years, that’s usually – they say, you know, my favorite thing you’ve ever done was Linda or Sophie. And they were a particular kind of very feminine, recessive kind of personality. So they fell in love with her, but they didn’t feel the story through her body.” – Meryl Streep
100. “Women are better at acting than 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
101. “Wrinkled, wrinkled little star… hope they never see the scars.” – Meryl Streep
102. “You can’t get spoiled if you do your own ironing.” – Meryl Streep
103. “You can’t suppress the things that make us human. It’s pointless to try.” – Meryl Streep
104. “You don’t have to be famous. You just have to make your mother and father proud of you.” – Meryl Streep
105. “You have to be braver in your choices, and you have to be brave enough to listen to your heart and not just your head.” – Meryl Streep
106. “You have to embrace getting older. Life is precious, and when you’ve lost a lot of people, you realize each day is a gift.” – Meryl Streep
107. “You just have to keep on doing what you do. It’s the lesson I get from my husband; he just says, Keep going. Start by starting.” – Meryl Streep