Like death, taxes and fistfights at Denny’s, you can always count on Meryl Streep to score glowing accolades for her work. The 66-year-old acting legend is a bonafide Oscar magnet that picks up awards and gushing reviews the way average folks snap up M&Ms. So, is there a role in her filmography that isn’t up to snuff in The Great Meryl’s eyes? Yes, but the answer had to be pulled out of her by Graham Norton.
Streep was a guest on the UK chat program The Graham Norton Show and was posed with a question about which role she didn’t feel she got right. After a bit of arm-twisting, the actress shared that she wasn’t wild about The French Lieutenant’s Woman, a 1981 film that she earned an Academy Award nomination for because of course she did.
“I’m giving myself an out, but part of it was, the structure of it was sort of artificial because I was the actress playing ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman,’” she said. “At the same time I was an American actress playing a British woman.”
Yes, that sounds like a bit of an exercise to unpack.
In addition to Streep dishing about the performance she didn’t care for, fellow guest Hugh Grant shared a bit about how some of his former co-stars didn’t care for him. To be fair, Norton ushered that in by pointing out some of the things he’s said about the leading ladies he’s shared the screen with. (Spoiler: He seems to be of the opinion that a chunk of said co-stars are crazy.) Grant got to sit back and revisit how he’s said stars like Julianne Moore, Rachel Weisz and Drew Barrymore (!) despise him. What could have possibly led to Barrymore having a distaste for Hugh?
“She made the mistake of giving me notes,” he explained. “How would you take that?”
Of course, his Florence Foster Jenkins castmate Meryl had a spot-on rejoinder. Soak it in by checking the clip below.
(via Variety)
