
DATE: Sunday, March 2, 1997                 TAG: 9703010068

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E10  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  145 lines

RISK-TAKING MERYL STREEP WAS DRAWN TO BAD-GIRL ROLE

I'M TERRIBLE at PTA meetings,'' Meryl Streep said, laughing. ``I tend to get too emotional.

``What I am is a soccer mom. I go to all the games my son plays, but I don't really understand what's happening. They run up and down. What's offsides?''

This, mind you, is the definitive actress of her generation. She has received 10 Academy Award nominations and two Oscars. Only Katharine Hepburn has received more.

Critics hail her for her ability to lose herself entirely within a character. Others say she's the high priestess of suffering. Is there any doubt she could bring emotionalism to her PTA meeting? Plenty of people would pay to see that.

Dressed in a silk, olive-green business suit, Meryl Streep's newly cropped hair emphasizes her porcelain-smooth skin. She's reserved but particularly vulnerable. Clearly, she doesn't enjoy doing interviews, but she's much more at ease than a few years ago, when an interview with this brilliant actress consisted of nervous giggles.

Today, Meryl Streep is a little more trusting.

``I'm particularly daunted by the press' obsession with my reputation,'' she said. ``I ignore it, but then, there's that thing that you're compared, every time out, to what you did before. It does make me hesitate to do theater again. I'm afraid they'd say, `It's OK, but we expected more.' ''

Her technical abilities are awesome, but some fans claim they are distracted by her use of accents, twitchy facial mannerisms and self-conscious hand gestures. She's convinced us, at varied times, that she was Danish (``Out of Africa''), Polish (``Sophie's Choice''), Australian (``A Cry in the Dark''), a poverty-ridden alcoholic (``Ironweed''), a young Hollywood type (``Postcards from the Edge''), midwestern (``Silkwood''), Victorian English (``The French Lieutenant's Woman'') and an Italian war bride (``The Bridges of Madison County'').

She recently reigned on the small screen, playing a tenacious mom battling to save her son in ``. . . First Do No Harm.''

Yes, she's aware of all the jokes about her accents.

``How could I talk like me and play all these different parts? They wouldn't talk anything like me,'' she said.

Her latest movie, ``Marvin's Room,'' arrived this week and, as usual, no less than greatness is expected from her. In it, she is transformed into a trashy, chain-smoking mother who has neglected her family.

``I was attracted to the bad girl in her,'' Streep said. ``Lee is a woman who is angry all the time. I've never played anyone like her. It was a delight, but a challenge, to touch that side of myself. Of course, it was hell at home.''

Initially, Streep was to play Bessie, the faithful stay-at-home sister who gave up her life to care for the family's dying father, with Anjelica Huston as the loose-living Lee. But Streep preferred Lee and suggested Diane Keaton for the role of Bessie, ``because there is sadness and honesty in everything Diane does, even her comedies. I wanted to work with her. She is totally real. She isn't capable of phoniness.''

This is not a diva talking.

Streep looks at you as if she wants help in defining herself. She is elegant. She is cool, but there is always that nervous little giggle that lets you know that, in spite of the reputation and the Oscars, she seeks approval and understanding.

Born in Basking Ridge, N.J., she began taking voice lessons at age 12 for opera. In fact, her first meeting with co-star Keaton was backstage, years later, at the Broadway musical ``Happy Ending.'' Her singing career has been largely sidetracked, but she is not crying about not doing ``Evita'' on screen. ``I think that girl was meant to play it,'' she said. (A reference to Madonna's role in the subsequent movie).

She majored in drama at Vassar and spent a term at Dartmouth studying costume design and playwriting. ``I think it was a production of Strindberg's `Miss Julie' that finally committed me to acting as a profession,'' she recalled.

She did graduate work at Yale School of Drama, where she got most of the leads. Sigourney Weaver, in a separate interview, said, ``Meryl got all the leads. I think the fact that I was so tall and the fact that a talent like Meryl Streep was in the world largely discouraged me from trying acting. Of course, I went on anyway, but Meryl was seen as a star from the first.''

It is a mistake, though, to think that it's all been easy going. Streep's movie debut, ``Julia'' in 1977, was in a small role only after Vanessa Redgrave got the part she had wanted.

Her first Oscar nomination came for ``The Deer Hunter'' in 1978, in spite of the fact that she only had a few lines. She was allowed to write her own lines for the part.

Kate Jackson was set for the part in ``Kramer vs. Kramer'' that eventually brought Streep her first Oscar. For it, she wrote her own speech for the all-important courtroom scene.

For ``Sophie's Choice,'' she learned both Polish and German in order to do a brief scene at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

In her mid-20s, she lived with actor John Cazale, best known as the weak-willed Fredo Corleone in ``The Godfather.'' She took the part in ``The Deer Hunter'' only to be near him. When he contracted cancer, she gave up her career to remain at his bedside until he died, nine months later.

Six months later, she married sculptor Don Gummer, a friend of her brother's. They have been married for 18 years and have four children: Henry, 17; Mary, 13; Grace, 10; and Louisa, 6.

``My children have seen very few of my movies. They see me more as a working mom than as a movie star, I think. I just decided, last year, that the oldest two could see `Sophie's Choice,' but then I had trouble finding a rental store that had it.''

She reads about one script a month and has an agent who reads the rest, but says that few of them are any good. ``I can play most women, if only I can connect to them. The only part I can't play, anymore, regrettably, is a very young woman. It's very scary to me to think of something I can't play that I once could.''

She may be, as a survey recently stated, ``the defining actress of her generation,'' but she freely admits that ``I'm not so sure I'm in vogue with the current movie industry. I think of acting as a compassionate act of understanding another human being. The trend now is to be more cool, and detached.''

``I don't think good actresses are often movie stars, or vice versa.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by MIRAMAX

Meryl Streep, right, stars with Diane Keaton in ``Marvin's Room.''

Critics hail Streep for her ability to lose herself entirely within

a character.

Graphic

THE FILMS OF MERYL STREEP

``Julia'' (1977)

``The Deer Hunter'' (1978) Oscar nomination

``Manhattan'' (1979)

``The Seduction of Joe Tynan'' (1979)

``Kramer vs. Kramer'' (1979) Oscar win

``The French Lieutenant's Woman'' (1981) Oscar nomination