Meryl Streep Doubted She’d Have an Acting Career After She Turned 40

Meryl Streep has been in Hollywood for so long it might be difficult to imagine the Oscar-winner not involved in film.

But she felt her long career was approaching its end once she hit her 40s.

Meryl Streep doubted that she’d still have an acting career once she hit her 40s

Meryl Streep | Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Streep found herself enjoying one of Hollywood’s longest and most successful careers. But she thought her time in Hollywood was going to run out after she left behind her 30s.

“I remember as I was hovering around [age] 40, I thought each movie would be my last, really,” Streep once told the Wall Street Journal (via Wusa9). “And all the evidence of other 40-year-old women at that time — this is 27 years ago — would leave you to believe it was over.”

The Don’t Look Up actor was still getting roles even after that age, however. They just weren’t the kinds of roles the actor wanted to do.

“I remember when I turned 40, I was offered, within one year, three different witch roles. To play three different witches in three different contexts. It was almost like the world was saying or the studios were saying, ‘We don’t know what to do with you,’” she once recalled when doing an interview with npr.

But Streep also believed there were more quality roles available for women past the age of 40. At least in the later stages of her film career.

“That really has changed, not completely, not for everybody, but for me it has changed. Part of it has to do with, I wasn’t that word that I just said that you bleeped before; when I was a younger actress, that wasn’t the first thing about me,” she said.

Meryl Streep almost quit acting because of her first film role

There were a couple of times throughout Streep’s career where she was tempted to walk away from Hollywood early. Streep had acted all throughout her childhood. Her dedication to the craft eventually led her to the Yale school of drama.

Despite standing out with her work, however, Streep became disillusioned with her career choice. The Mamma Mia! star began to wonder if she was perhaps better off going down another path.

“I was very influenced by environmental concerns and thought being an actor, at that time, felt like an indulgence or a vanity project that I was going into debt to be, and maybe if I were going to go into debt it should be in the service of something more meaningful and something more measurable,” she once told The Hollywood Reporter. “My contribution would be something you could see instead of what I was aiming for, which was a life in the theater.”

Streep’s performances in Yale would later grab the attention of some in the film industry. This would eventually lead to the movie star being cast in her debut film Julia. The 1977 feature saw Streep in a small supporting role alongside veteran Jane Fonda. But she wasn’t too fond of the role at the time. Because of this, she revisited the idea of abandoning the film industry altogether.

“When I saw myself on screen for the first time, I was horrified. I had a bad wig, and they took the words from a scene I shot with Jane and put them in my mouth in a different scene. I thought I’d made a terrible mistake, no more movies. I hate this business,” Streep once said according to Living Magazine.

Of course Streep would remain in the film industry for years to come.

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