Meryl Streep Admits She Once Thought her Career Would End at age 40
"As I was hovering around 40, I thought each movie would be my last," she said.
— -- It's hard to believe that Meryl Streep, who has received 11 of her 19 Academy Award nominations since she turned 40, ever doubted that she would continue to find roles as she got older.
In an interview with WSJ Magazine following the premier of her latest movie, 'Florence Foster Jenkins', Streep opened up about the age barriers for women in Hollywood that once seemed more impenetrable than now.
"I remember as I was hovering around 40, I thought each movie would be my last, really," the highly decorated actress admitted. "And all the evidence of other 40-year-old women at that time -- this is 27 years ago -- would lead you to believe it was over.”
Streep, now 67, has defied those odds, and, in doing so, has helped to pave the way for many other actresses, though she notes she didn't purposefully intend to do so. Instead, the work just kept coming.
“On a certain level you don’t have any choice -- you’re unhappy if you’re not doing it, so you’re compelled in a certain way. And if you’re lucky you can keep working,” she said.
Streep has certainly had that "luck," but has nonetheless remained incredibly in touch with reality.
"But everybody has troughs and dismal times -- every single person," she added.
Streep also confessed that despite the recent popularity of social media memes featuring the actress, she "[doesn't] even know what that means."
The memes, created by Instagram account Taste of Streep, show the actress posing with, and sometimes in, food.
"People have too much time on their hands,” Streep said of the pictures. “We need to create more jobs!”