Mary Louise “Meryl” Streep is an American actress. Often described as the “best actress of her generation”, Streep is particularly known for her versatility and accents. Profoundly inspirational Meryl Streep quotes will challenge the way you think, change the way you live and transform your whole life.
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Famous Meryl Streep Quotes
I didn’t really like opera. I liked cheerleading and boys and, later, smoking. So my opera career was cut short when I was 15. My dad got sick, and we couldn’t afford the lessons, so I stopped and became a cheerleader and wrecked my voice. — Meryl Streep
I’m older. There’s some sort of seniority. As a matter of fact, the seniority ebbs as you get older. — Meryl Streep
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
The more you are in this business, the more humbled by it you become. — Meryl Streep
I’m a pain in the ass to all of the costume designers with whom I work because I have very strong feelings about the subject. — Meryl Streep
The work is the most fun; it seems illicit how much fun it is. — Meryl Streep
I know movies are a function of our dream world. And when you project yourself on screen, it’s easier to project yourself into what you were, not what you are. — Meryl Streep
The aggregate of everybody’s emotion, it’s such a powerful thing. You can see it in the Trump rallies, where people – I just know, in their living rooms, would be better people – are driven to the worst possibilities by the bloodlust in a crowd. It just gets ginned up, and they’re outside of themselves. — Meryl Streep
Disney, who brought joy, arguably, to billions of people, was, perhaps, or had some… racist proclivities. He formed and supported an anti-Semitic industry lobby. And he was certainly, on the evidence of his company’s policies, a gender bigot. — Meryl Streep
The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy. — Meryl Streep
When I was a kid, when I was 16, 17, I’d come home from high school, and my dad collected all of Barbra Streisand’s records. And she was very young then. I think she probably had three records out, and she was 21, and we had them all. And I knew every single song, every breath, every elision, every swell. And I sang along to it. — Meryl Streep
All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene. — Meryl Streep
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
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
I don’t know why I don’t watch a lot of movies; I can barely keep up with the things my friends are in. There isn’t enough time in life. — Meryl Streep
I think I’m not a natural performer; I think I’m an actor. — Meryl Streep
My feeling about fears is, if you voice your fears, they may come true. I’m superstitious enough to believe that. — Meryl Streep
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. — Meryl Streep
Sometimes with my children, I remember exactly how I felt as the child in this situation, not just how it feels to be me. — Meryl Streep
What does it take to be the first female anything? It takes grit, and it takes grace. — Meryl Streep
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
I think we all think we sound really good in the shower, where there’s that nice reverb, and the water’s drowning you out, and there is some liberation in the freedom of being totally alone and really going for it. — Meryl Streep
Interestingly, young people don’t come to you for advice. Especially the ones who are related to you. — Meryl Streep
People at agencies and studios, including the parent boards, might look around the table at the decision-making level and feel something is wrong if half their participants are not women. Because our tastes are different, what we value is different. Not better, different. — Meryl Streep
I get a trickling few scripts that I’m lucky enough that some of them are great. I don’t get loads of scripts. — Meryl Streep
Enough people write about me every day without even interviewing me. — Meryl Streep
I’m never so sure as I was in my mid-20s. — Meryl Streep
America doesn’t reward people of my age, either in day-to-day life or for their performances. — Meryl Streep
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
I think your self emerges more clearly over time. — Meryl Streep
There are improbable things suspended in space, like the earth. — Meryl Streep
If I am not confident that I can portray the character perfectly on screen, I won’t even try. — Meryl Streep
I don’t like to be gone all weekend and at night too. Because for 20 years, I’ve had children who are in school. — Meryl Streep
I had this sort of idolatry for certain actors who preceded me, people who inspired me, so I’m honored to be that way for young actors. — Meryl Streep
I let the actions of my life stand for what I am as a human being. Contend with that, not the words. — Meryl Streep
Men should look at the world as if something is wrong when their voices predominate. They should feel it. — Meryl Streep
My family really does come first. It always did and always will. — Meryl Streep
We are who we’re going to be when we’re very old, and when we’re very old we are who we were when we were 8. — Meryl Streep
It’s bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children’s health than the pediatrician. — Meryl Streep
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
I have a very good life – I’m lucky enough not to be deprived. — Meryl Streep
I need to go where people are serious about acting. — Meryl Streep
It’s amazing how easily people are led to fury and chaos. Unhappy people with guns are not going to make this country great. — Meryl Streep
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
I have a very clear understanding of what my voice is. It’s like a B voice. It hovers around B-minus, B-plus. I have great friends who are wonderful singers, and I know I’ll never be able to do that. But singing through a character is something I can do. — Meryl Streep
Chris Cooper is one of my favorite actors in the world. I’ve seen him in most everything he’s done. — Meryl Streep
You can’t suppress the things that make us human. It’s pointless to try. — Meryl Streep
There’s no road map on how to raise a family: it’s always an enormous negotiation. — Meryl Streep
Having been let out of the barn once, I know I wouldn’t be happy if I were home all the time. — Meryl Streep
Instant gratification is not soon enough. — Meryl Streep
I have a holistic need to work and to have huge ties of love in my life. I can’t imagine eschewing one for the other. — Meryl Streep
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
I go to a lot of movies where people are all around me laughing, and I feel like I’m from outer space because I find it dangerous and stupid and horrible and degrading to women and all these things. — Meryl Streep
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
People say, When you have children, everything changes. But maybe things are awakened that were already there. — Meryl Streep
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
Acting is not about being someone different. It’s finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there. — Meryl Streep
I have four to five months, tops, per year to give to my acting work. — Meryl Streep
The reason I chose the movies that I did was based on where they were being filmed. — Meryl Streep
You can’t strategize falling in love, can you? It’s never worked. People love you the most and set you up, and it doesn’t work because you can’t predict these things. You fall in love serially. — Meryl Streep
Grace, respect, reserve, and empathetic listening are qualities sorely missing from the public discourse now. — Meryl Streep
I have a very busy life, and not many people who have a career and four kids go out a lot to the movies. — Meryl Streep
I want to feel my life while I’m in it. — Meryl Streep
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
For me, clothes are kind of character; I don’t follow fashion or understand trends. — Meryl Streep
The interesting thing about being a mother is that everyone wants pets, but no one but me cleans the kitty litter. — Meryl Streep
I’m all over the place. — Meryl Streep
The work will stand, no matter what. — Meryl Streep
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
Show business has been really, really good to me because I can work and take a lot of time off, and I’m extremely undisciplined person. — Meryl Streep
It is well that the earth is round that we do not see too far ahead. — Meryl Streep
Nobody can swashbuckle a quick-witted riposte like Emma Thompson. She’s a writer, a real writer, and she has a relish for the well-chosen word. — Meryl Streep
I was offered, within one year, three different witch roles. It was almost like the world was saying – or the studios were saying – ‘We don’t know what to do with you.’ — Meryl Streep
You win an Oscar, it can double the audience that you had before. — Meryl Streep
I can’t do a lot of things, like golf. I don’t like golf. I mean, I really don’t, because I tend to like things that I can do right away. If I can’t do it right away, I don’t like it. — Meryl Streep
I remember, as I was hovering around 40, I thought each movie would be my last, really. — Meryl Streep
Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials. — Meryl Streep
There are wonderfully talented actresses. It’s a really rich field. There isn’t as rich a field of material. — Meryl Streep
You can’t get spoiled if you do your own ironing. — Meryl Streep
Some people are filled by compassion and a desire to do good, and some simply don’t think anything’s going to make a difference. — Meryl Streep
I know what I do and what it means to me and where its sources lie, and that’s mine. It still is mine. — Meryl Streep
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
Don’t give up or give in in the face of patronising ridicule, amused disdain, or being ignored. — Meryl Streep
All that attention to the perfect lighting, the perfect this, the perfect that, I find terribly annoying. — Meryl Streep
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
My job is usually to express emotion as freely as possible. — Meryl Streep
I’m thrilled when I get nominated. I don’t count how many and I don’t remember how many I’ve had. I just know it’s a lot. — Meryl Streep
I don’t know very much about, honestly, about the Middle East, and yet I’ve played a lot of different people from a lot of different cultures. The thing that I notice is that we’re all – there is a core of humanity that travels right through every culture. And, after all, we’re all from Africa originally. — Meryl Streep
Expensive clothes are a waste of money. — Meryl Streep
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
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
I can’t stand most things that I see. — Meryl Streep
The progression of roles you take strings together a portrait of an actor, but it’s a completely random process. — Meryl Streep
I am a humanist. I am for nice, easy balance. — Meryl Streep
I always feel like I can’t do it, that I can’t go through with a movie. But then I do go through with it after all. — Meryl Streep
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
How you first meet the public is how the industry sees you. You can’t argue with them. That’s their perception. — Meryl Streep
Personality is immediately apparent, from birth, and I don’t think it really changes. — Meryl Streep
