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
I say to myself, 'I don't know how to act - and why does anybody want to look at me on-screen anymore?' ... Lots of actors feel that way. What gives you strength is also your weakness - your raging insecurity.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Insecurity can drive creativity, but it can also be a source of doubt.
Meryl Streep's quote reflects the duality of an actor's experience, highlighting how insecurity can be both a motivating force and a crippling weakness. She acknowledges that many actors share this feeling of uncertainty about their talents and appeal, suggesting that the very traits that fuel their passion may also hinder their confidence.
Themes
InsecurityActorsStrengthWeaknessCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
During an acting workshop while discussing performance anxieties.
More from Meryl Streep
All quotes →Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.
Meryl StreepRead
I 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 that’s 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
Similar quotes
A John Updike is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon, if that generation is lucky: so comfortable in so many genres, the same lively, generous intelligence suffusing all he did.
George SaundersRead
Americans want beauties, not me. I’m not the Parisian bombshell they expected. Can you see me as a chorus girl? Where’s my feather up the ass? They think I’m sad, they’re dumb. I don’t connect to them
Edith PiafRead
She's got those big black eyes with plenty shiny white in them that makes them shine like brand new money and she knows what God gave women eyelashes for, too. Her hair is not what you might call straight. It's negro hair, but it's got a kind of white flavor. Like the piece of string out of a ham. It's not ham at all, but it's been around ham and got the flavor.
Zora Neale HurstonRead
One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.
Henri NouwenRead
Critics... They're like traffic cops. They say what they have to say, then leave, and another guy moves in ,and he has his say - and it's often just the opposite. The result is either critical acclaim or critical murder, and neither has any bearing on my music or direction.
Jeff BuckleyRead
After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction
Alice HoffmanRead