Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 30, 1994 TAG: 9410040044
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICK HOLTER DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DATELINE: WHITEFISH, MONT. LENGTH: Long
Big Mountain - yes, that's really its name - looms in the background, shrouded in a smoky azure haze from distant forest fires. The lake is calm, the mountain majestic. This is not the kind of place that makes you think of death.
But that's what's on the actress's mind.
``I felt the possibility all the time - more and more as we went on,'' she says, describing the ordeal of filming her new white-water suspense movie, ``The River Wild,'' which opens today at the Salem Valley 8 and Valley View Mall 6 in Roanoke. ``Because you feel like, `God, I was safe for a month. Will I be safe for another month?' Like the cat of nine lives - `Did I use up my eight already? Is this gonna be the day I buy it?'''
Meet Meryl Streep, class action hero. The star who made her name in such prestige projects as ``The French Lieutenant's Woman'' and ``Sophie's Choice'' has, after a less-than-spectacular comedic detour, packed her pair of Oscars and nine nominations into a rucksack and set off on a new adventure.
``I've hit a point in my life where I have four children, and I'm always saying to them, `Be careful!' `Don't do that!' `Get down from that, you're gonna kill yourself,''' she says. ``I see them, I'm inspired by them. They're reckless, and they're fearless, and they just go out and careen through the day. I thought, `Maybe I'm missing something, 'cause they're having more fun.'''
So she signed on for ``The River Wild,'' an all-out dive into Hollywood's mainstream. She plays a Boston schoolteacher who returns to the river of her youth to rediscover a passion for white-water rafting and to salvage a battered marriage. With her husband (``Passion Fish's'' underrated David Strathairn) and son (``Jurassic Park's'' Joseph Mazzello) in tow, she's forced to take on a pair of apparently stranded fellow rafters, one of whom is an ever-more-psychotic bad guy played by Kevin Bacon. There's little doubt where the voyage will end, but it's a breathtaking ride.
Like no other movie since ``Deliverance'' (1972), most of ``The River Wild's'' filming was done on the rapids. The principals describe the shoot last summer and fall as a soaking barrage of 14-hour days and six-day weeks. Nearly everyone involved got thrown from a raft at one time or another, and war stories of near-death experiences are traded like baseball cards.
So does this all mean that the most-honored actress of her generation is trying to resuscitate a recently flagging career with a jolt of Van Damme-esque action? Those eyes, so dreamy when she talks about her kids (Henry, Mamie, Grace and Louisa, ages 3 to 14), turn steely.
``How can you look at my career and the choices I've made and think that?'' she asks. ``I'm always intrigued that it makes sense to people - `Yes, that is what she's doing. She really wants that piece of the action pie.' ... I can't even understand where it came from.''
Later, she's more reflective. ``I've always thought of myself as a repertory actress, and I've thought of myself as somebody who - in Shakespeare's plays, you know - could appeal to the groundlings as well as to Queen Elizabeth herself. ... So I've never been interested in that criticism, `Well, why didn't she stay in her niche?' Well, you go stay there! I don't want to.''
Her dogged preparation for a role - learning accents, researching a character, even rewriting dialogue, as she did for ``The River Wild'' - is the stuff of legend. But she'd never faced a challenge this physically demanding.
``I'd seen her do comedy, I'd seen her do drama, I'd seen her do period pictures,'' says director Curtis Hanson (``The Hand That Rocks the Cradle''). ``But what I'd never seen her do was a character that is defined by her physicality.''
He's talking, by the way, about a woman who told a biographer in 1984: ``Exercise! Exercise? Oh, God no. ... The last thing I want to do is `go for the burn.'''
Reminded of her decade-old pronouncement, Streep smiles shyly and runs her hand through her shoulder-length blond hair for the 87th time.
``I didn't want to go for the burn,'' she says. ``I wanted to go for the excitement and the adventure, and in order to be up to that, I had to get in shape. I didn't enjoy that - I hate it. ... I liked learning Polish [for ``Sophie's Choice''] - it's a sedentary activity. But I don't really like to exercise. I find it numbing.''
In Hollywood at this moment, it's the year after Oscar's much-parodied ``Year of the Woman,'' and to hear Streep and other top actresses talk about it, nothing much has changed, especially for women approaching middle age.
``There aren't that many stories about women over 40,'' says the 45-year-old actress. ``I'm constrained by what's available to me, and what people want me to be in.''
She's shocked to hear that one of her current faves, Oscar winner Emma Thompson, is starring opposite a pregnant Arnold Schwarzenegger in the upcoming holiday movie ``Junior.''
``Well, good,'' Streep cracks, ``then she'll be hurled with all those insults about saying that she's `dumbing down,' and I won't have to suffer those slings and arrows.'' The wounds are obviously still fresh from the critical bashing she took for ``Death Becomes Her,'' the ill-fated 1992 comedy that co-starred Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis.
But now ``Death's'' behind her, and the early buzz about ``The River Wild'' is strong. Plus, this summer she landed one of the most sought-after parts in recent memory, opposite actor/director Clint Eastwood in the movie version of the hugely popular novel ``The Bridges of Madison County.''
Initially wary, she gives credit to friend Carrie Fisher, who wrote Streep's 1990 film ``Postcards From the Edge'' and did a ``dialogue polish'' on ``The River Wild.''
``Carrie gave Clint my home phone number, and so he called and said'' - she breaks into a surprisingly accurate Eastwood whisper - ```I hear you didn't like the book.' I said, `No, no, it's not that I didn't like the book. I didn't have that earth-shaking moment that everybody else did.' And he said, `Well, read the script, because I think it's good.'
``The force of that voice - I thought, `OK, OK, I bet it is good.' So he sent it the next day, and it was wonderful.''
by CNB