‘Empathy is the engine that powers all the best in us’: Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep is a name known to all cinephiles. She is one of the most celebrated and successful actors of this generation who has given us iconic movies like The Iron Lady, Mamma Mia, The Devil Wears Prada, Little Women, Death Becomes Her, and many more. But even she, when starting her career, did not think that she would make it this far: “I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would be successful.” She went on to attribute luck to her success but also added that “I’ve also poured a lot of hard work into it, so I feel in some way that I can justify myself but I’m just happy that things have happened this way.”

Street said that there is a lot of worth in the profession of acting, and that is in “lening to people who maybe don’t even ex or who are voices in your past, and through you come through the work and you give them to other people. And I think that giving voice to characters that have no other voice, that’s the great worth of what we do.”
Streep also attributed acting for teaching her a great deal about empathy: “I’ve thought a lot about the power of empathy. In my work it’s the current that connects me and my actual pulse to a fictional character in a made up story. It allows me to feel pretend feelings and sorrows and imagined pain. And my nervous system is sympathetically wired, and it conducts that current to you, sitting in a movie theater.”
She added that she wondered what possible function could empathy serve in the survival of the  fittest; “I thought why and how did we evolve with this weak, and useless passion in tact within the deep heart’s core. And the answer, as I’ve formulated it to myself, is that empathy is the engine that powers all the best in us. It is what civilizes us. It is what connects us.”Best of Express PremiumPremiumPremiumPremiumPremium
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