Widely regarded as the most outstanding actress of her generation, Meryl Streep is a two-time Academy Award winner and recipient of a record-breaking fourteen Oscar nominations.
Streep was born in Summit, New Jersey. Growing up she was surrounded by music, dreamed of becoming an opera singer and took up singing lessons at the age of twelve.
She then became interested in acting and went on to major in Drama and English at Vassar College. Following her graduation in 1971, she enrolled at the Yale University School of Drama in New Haven, Connecticut, graduating in 1975.
At the age of 22, she made her professional stage debut in The Playboy of Seville (1971) and her Broadway debut was in Trelawney of the Wells (1975). Her small screen debut was in the made-for-television movie The Deadliest Season (1977) and her big screen debut in Julia (1977).
She has gone on to cut her own unique path, taking on an astonishing array of roles and establishing herself as an unrivaled master of character, accents and genres.
Some of her best-known movies include The French Lieutenant's Woman, Sophie's Choice, Out Of Africa, Postcards From The Edge, The Bridges Of Madison County and The Hours. Her recent works include The Manchurian Candidate, Prime, A Prairie Home Companion and The Devil Wears Prada.
The intelligence and refinement of her craft continue to endure and she remains as busy as ever. In 2004, she was honoured with an AFI Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2008 was honoured by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Q. When did you start getting interested in music?
A. My dad was a pianist. Essentially he was a businessman but he would have loved to have been a musician. He published some songs and wrote a musical with a friend of his. Romantic ballads were his thing. He didn't have any up-tempo numbers. I used to sing with him at the piano, as did my mother. I once asked my mother, "If you hadn't been completely fulfilled in the role of my mother, what would you have most liked to have been?" And she told me that she'd have loved to have been a lounge singer. She was always singing around the house. She knew all the words from all the songs of the 1930s and 1940s. Both my parents were great music-lovers. They fell in love over the piano. They were older. My dad was forty when I came along, my mother was 35. That was kind of unusual back then. Now it's the norm.

Q. When did you start liking ABBA's music?
A. I've always liked it. But I always considered it to be dance music. I wasn't too familiar with the ballads. The only time I paid proper attention to ABBA was when I was dancing to their songs. We always had ABBA music when we were exercising, my friends and I. Some of the more disco numbers we always danced to. But a song like Slipping Through My Fingers, I didn't know that song until I saw the Mamma Mia! musical in New York seven years ago. That's when I fell in love with Mamma Mia! The first time I saw it was right after 9/11 and I was trying to figure out a way of doing something with my ten-year-old and her friends. There had been seven parents killed in the student body of my daughter's school. Understandably, the kids were very low. I'd heard this musical had just opened and I'd heard it was great fun. By the end of the show these kids, who'd been so down at the start of the day, were jumping up and down on the seats. Either side of us, these old ladies were dancing in the aisle. I was struck by the power of the musical. I thought it was good medicine for the soul and spirit. I wrote to the cast and told them so.

Q. How natural a singer are you?
A. I'm definitely not a natural singer. I'm not even sure it's second nature for me. I'm not often asked to sing, dance and climb over buildings (laughs). That's a whole new thing for me. But I wouldn't have missed out on it for the world.

Q. How did the stage production of Mamma Mia affect you emotionally?
A. Being the mother of three daughters, I was struck by the way that the songs could be expertly woven to tell a story. They manage to document all the important steps along the way that you experience as a parent. Because it's a long series of goodbyes, from seeing them off to kindergarten to waving them off as they go on their gap years and sleep in Greek youth hostels - which is what I did in 1975. I didn't fall in love with anyone then on Hydra but the girl I was travelling with did. She fell in love with an American sailor which turned out to be a really bad move. She abandoned me and I had no clue about money in those days. But my Greek interlude was never less than interesting.

Q. Has Greece changed since those days?
A. Up in the northern Aegean it's so lush. You smell thyme and lavender all the time. You smell fruit trees, olive trees, big green fir trees. I'd always known Greece to be baked in the sun. Where we filmed for Mamma Mia!, it was as beautiful as the south but softer and milder. But the people were still uniquely welcoming. They are very warm. We really did take over this little town and they didn't mind us trampling through. They'd bring the fish in from these boats at night, take them right off the boats and straight onto our tables.

Q. Was it a challenge to sing and dance in Mamma Mia!?
A. Well, no-one ever wants me to do those things in movies so I welcomed the challenge. It's great to be able to go to work and think that every scene is asking more and more of you. Usually an acting job is so finite. You sit at a desk. You open a door. Someone walks in. You ask them a question. They answer the question. Mamma Mia! wasn't like that. It was much more fun. Even the scenes that I thought would be daunting turned out to be fun. I never imagined how much fun it would be to scale the wall of a building while singing the song Mamma Mia.

Q. Is that really you doing the splits in the movie?
A. Sure. That's no body double. We didn't use CGI. I did it on instinct. That's what happens with my acting.

Q. Did it concern you that Phyllida Lloyd had not directed a movie before?
A. Not at all. She's such an accomplished stage director and there is nothing harder in the whole wide world than dealing with orchestras and huge casts. She's amazing. It's not always easy for a female director. In Europe, most of the crew was male. So she would be in the position of telling a lot of men what to do. That can be uncomfortable for some men. In America you find many more women working on the crew than in Europe. Having said that, we had a fabulous crew and Phyllida won them over not by ingratiating herself but by her certainty about what she wanted from the movie and by how much she respected everyone who was working on it. She included us all. She was aware that each and every one of us had a very hard job. If I was to compare her directing style to anyone else's it would be Clint Eastwood. She had the same kind authority that comes from being very certain about what is required at a particular moment. That always inspires confidence in cast and crew. We all loved her. Benny (Andersson) said to me over dinner last night, "Phyllida made me feel like I was her collaborator, almost like her co-director."

Q. You've made so many different movies and played so many different characters in your career. What new things did Mamma Mia! teach you?
A. I came out of the theatre in the mid-1970s and thought of myself as a repertory actor who plays a lot of different parts. Sometimes I played the lead, sometimes I played the maid, sometimes I played the man. The variety of it never daunted me. I always loved the challenge of something new. I've never had a persona that I've planted in a movie and shifted to the next movie and the one after. I don't understand working that way. It's not how I'm trained and it's not how my imagination works. I like to be stimulated and I like to be surrounded by people who want to go out on a limb, who are willing to try new things. Mamma Mia! didn't feel out of the range of what was possible for me to achieve. There are always unknowns when you first step onto a step. You don't know if all these people are going to get on and pull together to make the best possible work. You don't know if the whole thing is going to work. But you dream that it will work and that the experience will be a happy and fulfilling one. Mamma Mia! was an especially happy and fulfilling one.

Q. What was the most difficult challenge you faced in filming Mamma Mia!?
A. Right from the beginning there was a period of three weeks when we were all trying to learn the song Voulez-Vous. We'd go to the studio for eight hours a day and it was very complicated. We bonded over that because it's the hardest number in the movie. Every actor and dancer was in the room for that one. We were working in a courtyard that wasn't very big so we had this finite space in which to work. There were a large number of us who weren't dancers. You had these big disco lights, the kind that you can take for about an hour in a club, then you have to get some fresh air. We had eight hours of that a day. It was pretty intense. In those three weeks, everyone involved became very close. It's not often that everyone involved on a movie shoot spends that much time together on one scene. It made for a collegial group. 

Q. Is it true that you recorded many of the songs for this movie in one take?
A. It is, yes. But maybe that's because they could see that doing three or four takes wore me out too much. But I like one takes in my acting too. I usually pour it into my first choice and go with that if I have any choice.

Q. Would you ever consider making your own music album?
A. It's not something I've ever been approached about and I'm the kind of girl who likes to sit back and wait to be asked.

Q. Was it difficult to make the transition between the songs and the story for this movie?
A. I think that might have been a challenge for Phyllida and the editor (Lesley Walker) because there's a point in this movie where the characters almost stop talking. When I saw the musical in New York I remember thinking that it really took off when Dancing Queen comes in. After that point it's irresistible. I loved the way it drew me in like that. Because I can be a bit of a snob when it comes to certain things. I go in thinking, "What is this going to show me? What is this putting in the world? Is this valuable? Is this going to do anything good?" But I was completely seduced. Everything that's built up in the first act  - who these people are and what they want to find out - pays off in the end. So you don't see the joins between the story and the music. It's one entity. Phyllida made that happen in a masterly way. She conducted the whole thing beautifully.

Q. Were your daughters impressed at the idea of you starring with a former James Bond (Pierce Brosnan)?
A. My girls don't follow the Bond movies so much. They were much more worried about how I would look in spandex and how that would affect their reputations at school. Also, they don't really appreciate my singing style. I guess I'm not the only person who sings around the house and their kids go, "Please will you stop." Even if my kids know that I'm preparing for something, they still don't want to hear it. When they were younger, it was stranger for them. When you have a famous parent and their talent is their thing, it can take up too much room around the house.

Q. Would you do another musical?
A. Oh sure. But it needs a great script, great actors, great songs. The whole package has to be right. That was the case with Mamma Mia! It's the most fun thing I've done in a long time. 

Q. Did this movie give you the opportunity to have some fun with your image?
A. Maybe. But it was more a case of having the opportunity to do lots of things that I'm not normally asked to do. I so loved that show when I first saw it on stage and this was a chance for me to give back to the show. I loved going to work on this every morning. By the end of the day they almost have to lay me on a gurney and wheel me off the set. I really was that tired. I've never slept so well on a movie. Then I'd wake up and I was so excited to be doing it another day. That's not usually the way I get up to go to work. I really do think this is a movie that puts something good into the world. It's a contribution.

Q. Has it always been important for you as an actress to be putting something meaningful into the world?
A. It's been especially meaningful the last fifteen years. I've saved my money so I don't need to work. The kids' college is paid for. So my decisions are based on, "Does this interest me enough to do it?" In the last few years the choices have opened up even more for me and they are projects that I feel have been worth doing, worth handing to the culture. This last year alone I've made six films. I couldn't have turned any of them down. They've all been really interesting. But they are all very different. 


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