Reviews: November/December 2016

View full image

Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep
Michael Schulman ’03
HarperCollins, $26.99
Reviewed by Mark Blankenship ’05MFA

Mark Blankenship ’05MFA, a theater critic and reporter, edits TDF Stages and produces the film series Meet the Theatre.

It sounds like a Meryl Streep movie. A young woman of incredible gifts struggles to become her truest self, despite the resentment of insecure men. Armed with confidence and talent, she gains control of her trajectory, and soars.

According to Michael Schulman’s new biography, Her Again, that’s a summary of Streep’s own life. Subtitled Becoming Meryl Streep, the book casts her early years—starting with her girlhood and ending with her early success—as a tale of feminist awakening. We see Streep transform from a boy-pleasing teenager into a woman who personally rewrites the climactic scene in Kramer vs. Kramer to make her character more human. It’s the evolution of an actress into a principled artist.

Streep didn’t personally contribute to Schulman’s research, but he draws on a raft of her interviews and speeches to inject her voice into the book. And he conducted interviews with Streep intimates—costars, former boyfriends, and classmates at the Yale School of Drama—to add insider details that create a sense of intimacy with a woman we’ve watched for almost 40 years. It’s fun to revisit The Deer Hunter, for instance, and know that between takes of the famous wedding scene, she was demonstrating the best way to kill a fly.

Schulman uses the anecdotes to underscore what an actress—or, frankly, a woman—faces in America.  In the final pages, when she collects her Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer, her victory seems as metaphysical as it does professional. She’s accepting not just an award, but a place on the stage she built for herself.