Meryl Streep, a graduate of the Yale
School of Drama, has been nominated for 17 Academy Awards, making her the
most-nominated actor in Oscar history as of 2013.
She has won two Academy Awards: Best
Supporting Actress for
Talking about her acting school experience at
Yale, Meryl Streep says:
When I was there,
from 1972 to 1975, it was a tiny program, and that was one of the great things
about it. You were with directors and costume and scenic designers and you
could see into the process of many aspects of theater… In those days it was
purely a theater lab; the pressures of doing television and film were not yet
present.
She also speaks about the competition that
arises in acting courses:
The competition in
the acting program was very wearing. I was always standing in competition with
my friends for every play. Some people got cast over and over and others didn’t
get cast at all. It was unfair… It wasn’t that I wasn’t being cast. I was, over
and over. But I felt guilty.
Meryl Streep talked to the psychiatrist at
Yale who gave her some advice that she never forgot:
He said, “You’re
going to graduate in 11 weeks and you’ll never be in competition with five
women again. You’ll be competing with 5,000 women and it will be a relief.” He
was right. It was excellent advice. After I got out, I had a lot of
unbelievably good breaks, but they didn’t seem designed at someone else’s
expense.
After graduating from her acting course in
1975, Meryl Streep appeared in many theatre productions while auditioning for
film roles. It took her two years to secure her first screen performance – a television film called
In 1979 her career took off, thanks to her
performances in Manhattan and
