Meryl+Streep

= Meryl Streep = = = =Janine Johnson =

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Biography
Meryl Streep was born June 22, 1949 in Summit, NJ. Her birth name is Mary Louise Streep. Her mother knew she had a unique voice, and put Meryl in operatic voice lessons. She went to Yale Drama School and first appeared in many Broadway and off-Broadway productions. However, Meryl’s passion was not in singing, but acting. The first movie she made in Hollywood in 1977 was //Julia//. From this she became the most admired actress of her generation. “ The coolly elegant Streep is famous for her pitch-perfect mastery of a myriad of accents, just one aspect of the superb technique she employs in her varied and often uncannily telling portrayals,” ("Who2 Biography: Meryl," 2010). Eager to work with her, Woody Allen cast her as his hostile ex-wife in //Manhattan//, where Streep showed that she was comfortable portraying an unlikeable personality. During the feminist movement, Meryl was perfect for the new roles opening up. Not only was she perfect for her talent to perform any accent but because “she could easily suppress her beauty and look ordinary, and embody the difficult choices facing millions of women,” ("Who2 Biography: Meryl," 2010). Switching genres, Meryl showed her flexibility by playing a sexy attorney who catches the attention of a politician in //The Seduction of Joe Tynan//. Her specialty of accents was shown in her next big movie, //Sophie’s Choice//, which named her the “greatest actress of her time,” ("Biography for Meryl," 1990). For this movie she won the Academy Awards as Best Actress for her compelling Polish accent as a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. “What was unusual about Streep was not just her willingness to take on difficult roles, but her ability to utterly disappear into her characters. A thorough researcher said, “She could adopt a different era, nationality, accent, or personality,” ("Who2 Biography: Meryl," 2010). Meryl pointed out that while acting it is not about playing a person, but about a representation. She has proved through her films that she has the ability to “be” and represent anyone and any personality. In //Silkwood//, she took a political character that appeared to be a reckless and courageous nuclear power whistleblower. Following that she again proved herself to a romantic role with Robert DeNiro in the movie //Falling in Love//. This movie was shocking to audiences because they never would have pictured Meryl Streep and Robert DeNiro in a romantic pairing. With another serious drama, Meryl played a woman in the French Resistance after World War II in 1985 //Plenty//. In this movie she plays a woman who is trying to find herself in a post war England. As a Danish woman having an affair in Kenya, Meryl received an Oscar-nomination for the movie //Out of Africa//. Meryl showed her ability to film while being pregnant, in the romantic comedy //Heartburn// where two Washington Journalist get married. Again showing her versatility, in //Ironweed//, she played a Depression-era alcoholic, and a schizophrenic drifter who returns home for the first time in 10 years. In the movie A Cry in the Dark, she again shows her ability for accents, by playing a hated woman in Australia who is accused of killing her baby who went missing. The variety of different movies that are shown here reveals that she has a very talented personality. Being a gifted actor enables her with the ability to apply any person with any personality to herself and make you believe that she is that person. Many actors today are very strong in one genre, and not able to portray a believable characteristic of a different genre. Meryl Streep is also one of the only actors known with her ability for accents and learning new languages. “She inhabits her roles with a craft that can occasionally seem academic,” ("Who2 Biography: Meryl," 2010). It is unbelievable how she learns and applies new personalities in her acting. Hearing her accent, you would believe that she is from another country and never know that she is acting.

Psychoanalytical Perspective
Meryl came to acting late in her childhood, while she was in college. She was always an imaginative little girl, interested in telling stories, and learning more about people that were different than her. When she was 11 years old, she used to take a marker and draw lines on her face to make herself look older, to somehow figure out and understand how older people felt. Her grandmother was a big influence on her in her childhood. Even when she was a child she wanted to feel what it felt like to be her grandmother. She wanted to be in her shoes and see her perspective on life. What were her emotions, what drove her to be who she is? Later in life her main focus is to play different roles while acting and to not just focus on one genre, as I have shown in the many different parts she has played in the movies she made. Meryl’s first interest was in Opera but she didn’t continue because she says, “I was young and foolish and was just interested in boys, I got diverted off the operatic track,” ("Meryl Streep -Interview”). Freud would say that the reason she didn’t continue with opera was because her “id” was acting out; her sexuality. Her main ambition was to be a theater actress; she never thought that she would be lead to a career of just making movies. A theater actor has to be a multitalented, flexible actor, who can play lots of different roles. A person making movies usually only has to be one thing, represented many times in many films. Society is more interested in people who make movies, and they don’t care if you only make horror or drama films all your life. Meryl was not interested in this she wanted the challenge of playing many different people. This would be so interesting to Freud because some of the characteristics she had in her childhood may have been what led her to the kinds of roles she takes in the movies she plays today. Subconsciously, Meryl might not even know that the reason she is driven to parts where she is enabled to play different personalities is because of her earlier childhood desire to understand how her elders felt; for example drawing lines on her face to make her look older as if that would somehow enable her understand her grandmother. This is the Latent content; the underlying hidden meaning in why she is driven to different roles. Freud may call it the vicious circle (or tautology) that sometimes results from a psychoanalytic explanation of personality. Meryl says, “I was not trained for that and I was not interested in that (movies), I wanted to be a theater actress. Someone who changed herself, her face, and her voice, to fit different stories,” ("Meryl Streep - Interview,”). This shows that character is something that is highly valued to her. This would also strike Freud as interesting because, this relates to her childhood, when she attended Vassar, an all-women’s college. Up until then for most of her childhood she felt very uncomfortable, awkward, and unattractive. Meryl had very low self esteem for herself. But when she attended this college, "How we looked was not important, instead how we thought was more important. How we argued, learned, discovered, laughed and joked mattered. I felt like a human being, not a woman or child, and felt the quality of my own character,"  ("Meryl Streep," 2010). Freud would see that while developing her own character as a child she also developed an interest for others. Meryl also has an interest in costume designing as well as acting. While in college she designed her own costumes for the roles she played. She believed that “costume is character, we all sartorially put ourselves together in a certain way to present a certain image, what you choose to put on is very revealing of a character…I’m interested in how your clothes tell us something about you,” ("Meryl Streep - Interview," ). Freud may say that because Meryl’s childhood stressed a development in creativity and becoming one’s self, she then developed an interest in learning more about others creativity through her acting as an adult. Freud may also take a look at this next speech and say that her id is going wild. //“First I want to thank my husband who is golfing, (as she shakes her head) but I am sitting next to the head of Sony pictures. Oh I am really thrilled, I am really really thrilled because I really love what I do. I love acting and I love to work, and I love food and I love sex! (laughing with the crowd), and um so did Julia Child. So it wasn’t that much of a stretch, It was a stretch this way (pointing to the height they wanted her to be at)… I want to thank the embarrassingly gifted Stanley Tucci. He knows why. Thank you very much,”// ("Meryl Streep speech," 2010). Freud may see that her energy and motivations are very free spirited. She feels free to say what she is feeling and doesn’t care about those who might judge her. Her id is reacting based on her pleasure principle; to satisfy its desires and reduce inner tension. Meryl sees her love for things that some may be embarrassed about or may want to hide, and she expresses them. This shows that her personality is very care-free and spontaneous. Freud may characterize this as impulsive, because she is deeply motivated by her instinct. To admit publically that she loves food and sex take a very lighthearted person. Freud may also say that Meryl seems to be fixed at the Genital Stage because she is beginning her life as an adult with normal sexual relations, a marriage, and children. She has seemed to make it successfully through the other stages with enough available sexual energy, and no strong fixations. As seen through her marriage she has turned toward a heterosexual relationship, and is leading a healthy, productive, well-adjusted life.

On the other hand seeing Meryl Streep kissing Sandra Bullock on stage at the Critics Choice Awards, might be just as shocking for you as I can imagine it was for her. From a trait perspective, Carl Jung might characterize her as a very extroverted person. She is definitely one who has an orientation toward things outside herself. While accepting the AFI Life Achievement Award she didn’t have a problem kissing her friends on the mouth, thanking them as she walked up toward the stage. She is a very natural and voluntary person, what she feels is what she does. If Carl Jung used the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to measure what kind of person he found Meryl to be, he would find something different while she is working vs. while she is with her family at home. Using the Sensation-Intuition scale, Meryl is more imaginative while she is acting. This is important while she is creating characters or helping directing/analyzing a movie. At home she is more realistic, doing the daily chores needed to care for her home, children, and husband. Based on the Thinking-Feeling scale, when Meryl is making movies she has to be very personal and use a subjective assessment, because her measurement of who she has to become relies on her interpretation. She is not thinking about the existence of the world around her. Her subjective experience is one which is created, instead of discovered. While at home to a certain extent she can be subjective but it is more appropriate for her to be objective. This is a measurement that is not dependent on the individual making the assessment. She must be connected with the world that actually exist and working toward her goals of raising a family. With an objective assessment each individual would all agree and have the same opinion. Lastly, if Carl Jung used the Judgment-Perception scale he would find that while at work Meryl is mostly flexible and perceptive. She has to be open to others opinions, and have the ability to perceive and understand. While at home it is okay to be structured and make judgments based on personal opinions and standards. Every mom wants their children to be raised and behave in a certain way. To a certain degree everyone incorporates both sides of these while at home and at work but one usually is more dominating than the other. Gordon Allport would say that Meryl Streep as several central dispositions. Because Meryl inspires confidence and compassion, people in need of this tend to gravitate toward her. “She is very hospital and domestic,” ("Meryl Streep Personality," 2009). Meryl did a commercial for American Express where the money went to benefit a school. In the commercial, she is reading a children’s book, imitating different animal sounds, to a classroom full of children eager to learn. “She loves children and is a good parent,” ("Meryl Streep Personality," 2009). Another big central disposition of Meryl is that she is very protective. She purposely keeps her family life very private. You would very rarely find any magazine shots of her children. Barbra from, The View, asked Meryl about her ability to separate her life, her marriage, four children, and her career; she said it is hard because her daughter “Mamie is and actress, and my son is a musician. I worry about them in this business…One thing I have learned about early on is that when you are famous you lose your rights to privacy, and if you promote your children, if you have them photographed, so do they lose their rights. But if you do not have them photographed, and sell them to “OK” magazine, they have the right to retain their rights that you all have (pointing to the audience). Privacy of citizens, people can’t follow you into the restroom. They can follow me, take a picture, whatever they want to do, but my kids, no! Any actor can decide this for their children,” ("Meryl Streep and," 2008). This shows that Meryl has a great deal justice. “She does everything in her power to keep the harmony and is even willing to sacrifice her personal desires for the good of others, ("Meryl Streep Personality," 2009). She is willing to give up her right to privacy in the hope of protecting her children’s. If Allport used the Big Five to characterize Meryl, he would find that she is Open, Conscientious, Agreeable, and Extroverted. I don’t think he would characterize her as Neurotic, because in all of her interviews she seems to be very calm, contented, and a very emotionally stable person.

Discussion
From her childhood we have seen that a lot of the behavior may have been the basis for the reason she was drawn toward acting different people with a stimulating character. Although Freud may have said that her id was running wild, she has very well made it to the Genital Stage without any fixations. She is a mature, healthy, productive adult with a normal marriage and children. Her ability to manage separating her work and her personal life shows something about her central disposition. She is a very private but loving person who loves children. She has found a way to protect them, and keep them out of the paparazzi limelight. Allport would have found her to be a very sociable, talkative, artistic, and warm person. She is definitely a unique person, with an intriguing personality!

References
Biography for Meryl Streep. (1990). //Imdb the internet movie database//. Retrieved (2010, April 14) from [] //Meryl Streep accepts AFI life achievement award//. (2009). [Web]. Retrieved from [] //Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried on the view (2/2)//. (2008). [Web]. Retrieved from [] //Meryl Streep - Interview part 1 of 4//. [Web]. Retrieved from [] //Meryl Streep - Interview part 4 of 4//. [Web]. Retrieved from [] Meryl Streep. (2010). //Nndb tracking the entire world//. Retrieved (2010, April 14) from [] Meryl Streep Personality Number 6. (2009). //Celebrities-galore//. Retrieved (2010, April 13) from [] //Meryl Streep speech at the Critics’ Choice Award 2010//. (2010). [Web]. Retrieved from [] Who2 Biography: Meryl Streep. (2010). //Answers.com//. Retrieved (2010, April 14) from []

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