Meryl Streep: 'We're Still Not Telling Everybody's Story'

Feb. 2, 2009— -- Meryl Streep has been nominated for an Academy Award 15 times, more than any other actor, but she says that awards shows in general run contrary to her belief that the quality of any artistic performance is "immeasurable."

"It's set up like an athletic event. These artistic things, these aesthetic judgments are not subject to 9.5, 9.3, 9.7, you know, flipping up the cards," Streep told "Nightline. "You respond to a piece of film or music or a poem out of your own experience. It's only as rich or troubled or complicated as that is, that you're going to have a connection to a performance."

Streep echoed that sentiment in her acceptance speech at the Screen Actors Guild awards, where won the best actress award for her role in "Doubt."

"There is no such thing as best actress," she said.

Streep's first Academy Awards nomination was for "The Deer Hunter," and she won for "Kramer vs. Kramer" and "Sophie's Choice." She said she felt validated by those victories, but since 1982 -- that's 27 years -- she's gone home empty-handed, even for some remarkable and iconic performances in films such as "Silkwood," "Out of Africa" and "The Devil Wears Prada."

"There's a part of you that thinks every time you do the work as well as you hope you can do it, you get caught up in the thing," she said. "You just feel worse when you lose than you did before you got nominated. OK? I'll say that."

In "Doubt," Streep plays Sister Aloysius, an abrasive head nun at a Catholic school who is convinced that the parish priest -- played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman -- is abusing a boy in her school.

Streep said she liked playing the character "very much."

"I don't know if I like her, or think, you know, if I were a guy I'd like to date her or something," she joked. "She's just a difficult, prickly type of character and I like people like that. I like difficult people."

She likes playing tough characters "because their contradictions are so vivid and we're all so good at hiding ours. So in the course of a normal day, we all suppress what's hideous and the people that are interesting are sort of the ones who just let it hang out."

When asked about similarities between Sister Aloysius and Miranda Priestly, Streep's character in "The Devil Wears Prada," Streep said, "I see sort of a parallel in that women in power are still kind of terrifying to us. And so Sister Aloysius is terrifying because of her demeanor and so is Miranda Priestley. But we are uncomfortable still with women in power and we don't really know, still, I think. It's a complicated negotiation on the part of the person who has the authority and the people that she's bossing around."