Meryl Streep quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Meryl Streep on Wise Famous Quotes.

True freedom is understanding that we have a choice in who and what we allow to have power over us.

I follow no doctrine. I don't belong to a church or a temple or a synagogue or an ashram.

I didn't have any confidence in my beauty when I was young. I felt like a character actress, and I still do.

I'm older. There's some sort of seniority. As a matter of fact, the seniority ebbs as you get older.

Instant gratification is not soon enough.

It's amazing what you can get if you quietly, clearly and authoritatively demand it.

I need to go where people are serious about acting.

I would never say don't do acting [to my kids], because I think it is a glorious profession and I am so thankful for everything it has let me express.

For me, clothes are kind of a character. They're more interesting in those terms.

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.

Acting is my way of investigating human nature and having fun at the same time

I feel like I run a business although I haven't one. It's planning, planning, and planning.

There are some days when I, myself , think I'm overrated

The work will stand, no matter what.

Being an actor lets me be a million different things.

You can't sing when you're upset. You can't sing when you're crying. You get all congested and disgusting.

Obsession is an attractive thing. People who are really, really interested and good at one thing and smart are attractive, if they're men.

I found it unbearable when I allow the song to meet the music, to allow the story to meet the music.

I have four to five months, tops, per year to give to my acting work.

What makes you different or weird, that's your strength.

We are the choices we have made.

You don't have to be famous. You just have to make your mother and father proud of you.

There's no road map on how to raise a family: it's always an enormous negotiation.

Being a celebrity has taught me to hide, but being an actor has opened my soul.

The key to every actor is deep, deep insecurity.

I would like Martin Scorsese to be interested in a female character once in a while, but I don't know if I'll live that long.

What's worse than brutality that dehumanizes women? Tolerance and indifference towards it.

I wonder which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our
President's personal savior, would have personally
dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad?

I don't have time to read a lot. And when I do, I read things that have just the facts.

You have to embrace getting older. Life is precious, and when you've lost a lot of people, you realize that each day is a gift.

If I am not confident that I can portray the character perfectly on screen, I won't even try.

Some men can maintain cragginess and weary masculinity. Women just get old.

The progression of roles you take strings together a portrait of an actor, but it's a completely random process.

Put blinders on to those things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head.

Enough people write about me every day without even interviewing me.

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.

There are wonderfully talented actresses. It's a really rich field. There isn't as rich a field of material.

I want to feel my life while I'm in it.

Interestingly, young people don't come to you for advice. Especially the ones who are related to you.

I love acting, of course, but being with my husband and my children always brought me the greatest joy and happiness in life.

People have to make their own decisions about their lives.

Everyone is interesting. Everyone has something unexpected to offer and the job of acting is to pull it out of each other.

Sometimes it's easier for people who are in authority to be authoritarian, because people know where you stand.

My family really does come first. It always did and always will.

I think your self emerges more clearly over time.

I never give any character I play less respect than I give my own life.

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.

I'm never so sure as I was in my mid-20s.

It's harder for men to imagine themselves as the girl in the movies than it is for me to imagine myself as Daniel Craig bringing down the building.

We all make the mistake thinking that how you look makes you more worthy of love.

There are improbable things suspended in space, like the earth.

Everything that truly makes us happy is quite simple - love, sex and food!

When they called my name, I had this feeling I could hear half of America going, 'Oh no. Come on ... Her, again?' You know. But, whatever.

I have always regarded myself as the pillar of my life.

Anyone who wants to achieve something, needs a lot of work.

All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene.

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.

Women are the last group anyone cares about in Hollywood.

Expensive clothes are a waste of money.

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.

That is the simple secret. Always take your heart to work.

The reason I chose the movies that I did was based on where they were being filmed.

You can be afraid in a press conference, nervous, sweaty, but you can't be afraid when you do your work because it doesn't work that way.

The interesting thing about being a mother is that everyone wants pets, but no one but me cleans the kitty litter.

I can become you for a second and you can become me and this lifts us up.

When you're an actor and there's no music, you have to sort of bring it all yourself.

My feeling about fears is, if you voice your fears, they may come true. I'm superstitious enough to believe that.

I get a trickling few scripts that I'm lucky enough that some of them are great. I don't get loads of scripts.

The greatest gift given to man by God - is the ability to empathize.

People want what they want. Sometimes you just have to walk in defiance of it and just be yourself.

Every single decision I make about what material I do, what I'm putting out in the world, is because of my children.

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.

Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.

I have a lot to say about the world, clearly. I can't put together a clear sentence about it all, but through the work I can say what I think.

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.

Guard your good mood.

Having been let out of the barn once, I know I wouldn't be happy if I were home all the time.

Fear focuses the mind.

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.

I can't stand most things that I see.

The first thing [in career and motherhood] is a great husband. That I found many years ago and I am lucky in that way.

How you first meet the public is how the industry sees you. You can't argue with them. That's their perception.

You have to embrace getting older

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.

It is well that the earth is round that we do not see too far ahead.

You didn't have to work to keep your fear up, your energy up, or your anxiety. It is all kind of built into the process.

Margaret Thatcher was a pioneer, willingly or unwillingly, for the role of women in politics,

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.

I get nervous calling myself an artist. I feel I'm more like an interpreter or a violinist, you know.

I think the best role models for women are people who are fruitfully and confidently themselves, who bring light into the world.

You win an Oscar, it can double the audience that you had before.

If everybody that had two cars had a Prius instead of an SUV, we wouldn't be in the Middle East right now.

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.

I don't really talk about my process very much, because I feel like if I give something away, it might not come back.

Everyone tries to look a cookie-cutter kind of way, and actually the people who look different are the ones who get picked up.

If you make the tough decisions, people will hate you today. But they will thank you for generations.

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.

When I was younger I spent way too much time thinking about me being too fat. So stupid.

Having wrinkles is at once strange and exciting.

The more you are in this business, the more humbled by it you become.