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.
Meryl StreepRead
Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Acting is about discovering the commonalities between oneself and a character rather than pretending to be someone completely different.
Meryl Streep's quote emphasizes the essence of acting as a process of introspection and self-discovery. Instead of merely stepping into the shoes of a different character, a true actor seeks to connect the traits, emotions, and experiences that resonate with their own identity, highlighting the shared human experience even in roles that appear vastly different.
Themes
ActingSelf-DiscoveryIdentityArtTheater
In practice
Example use cases
In a workshop about acting techniques, this quote can inspire participants to explore character connection.
More from Meryl Streep
All quotes βI believe in imagination. I did Kramer vs Kramer before I had children. But the mother I would be was already inside me.
Meryl StreepRead
I believe in a world of opposites and thatβs why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities.
Meryl StreepRead
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 StreepRead
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 StreepRead
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 StreepRead
Similar quotes
[May 1958, on playing Macbeth at age 30 and age 48] When you're a young man, Macbeth is a character part. When you're older, it's a straight part.
Laurence OlivierRead
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.
James A. MichenerRead
If a given combination of trees, mountains, water, and houses, say a landscape, is beautiful, it is not so by itself, but because of me, of my favor, of the idea or feeling I attach to it.
Charles BaudelaireRead
It always gave me the creeps when I saw performers who desperately wanted the audience to like them. That's not what I'm about.
Barbra StreisandRead
We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.
Igor StravinskyRead
The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.
Sherwood AndersonRead