Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep
Written by Michael Schulman
Narrated by Eliza Foss
3/5
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About this audiobook
A portrait of a woman, an era, and a profession: the first thoroughly researched biography of Meryl Streep—the “Iron Lady” of acting, nominated for nineteen Oscars and winner of three—that explores her beginnings as a young woman of the 1970s grappling with love, feminism, and her astonishing talent.
In 1975 Meryl Streep, a promising young graduate of the Yale School of Drama, was finding her place in the New York theater scene. Burning with talent and ambition, she was like dozens of aspiring actors of the time—a twenty-something beauty who rode her bike everywhere, kept a diary, napped before performances, and stayed out late “talking about acting with actors in actors’ bars.” Yet Meryl stood apart from her peers. In her first season in New York, she won attention-getting parts in back-to-back Broadway plays, a Tony Award nomination, and two roles in Shakespeare in the Park productions. Even then, people said, “Her. Again.”
Her Again is an intimate look at the artistic coming-of-age of the greatest actress of her generation, from the homecoming float at her suburban New Jersey high school, through her early days on the stage at Vassar College and the Yale School of Drama during its golden years, to her star-making roles in The Deer Hunter, Manhattan, and Kramer vs. Kramer. New Yorker contributor Michael Schulman brings into focus Meryl’s heady rise to stardom on the New York stage; her passionate, tragically short-lived love affair with fellow actor John Cazale; her marriage to sculptor Don Gummer; and her evolution as a young woman of the 1970s wrestling with changing ideas of feminism, marriage, love, and sacrifice.
Featuring eight pages of black-and-white photos, this captivating story of the making of one of the most revered artistic careers of our time reveals a gifted young woman coming into her extraordinary talents at a time of immense transformation, offering a rare glimpse into the life of the actress long before she became an icon.
Michael Schulman
Michael Schulman is the author of the New York Times bestseller Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he has contributed since 2006. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and other publications. He lives in New York City.
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Reviews for Her Again
19 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5First few chapters felt kind of slow, but it got much more interesting once Streep started at Yale. I found the accounts of drama school, and how Streep chose roles, and created characters, the most interesting parts.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5On the Acknowledgements page, the author thanks Meryl Streep for "not putting up any serious roadblocks." If the author had been a better diplomat, or knew someone who had leverage on Ms. Streep, then Schulman might have been able to thank the actress for participating. So we start with a gaping hole: Streep is conveyed through journal entries, correspondence, year-book comments, other articles, but never is fully there since for whatever reasons she didn't want to participate. Then there is the disastrous editorial decision to end the book approximately 35 years ago, after Kramer vs. Kramer. The author's rationalization might be that he was interested in the formative forces that enabled this New Jersey girl to move from high school homecoming queen to Oscar recipient. What factors led to the development of her craft? But that paradigm assumes that she finished "becoming" decades ago; is the author saying that there were no learning opportunities for her from 1980 until 2016? Of course that's nonsense. At 266 pages, this reads like an extended magazine piece; the author probably would have needed to add that same amount of pages to create a biography worthy of the name. Reading this, one almost assumes that Streep died at the wrap party for Kramer. Silly stuff. Also, the book is heavily padded to make up for the Streep no-show. What Schulman has can be fascinating. Yet, what he doesn't have might be even more fascinating.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I no nothing about who Meryl was growing up prior to becoming an actor. So I was very curious to read this book. I found Meryl to have an innocence about her. She did not know what a beauty she was growing up and the strong presence she has when on stage or camera. Mr. Schulman does do his research well about Meryl. I did feel like I have gotten to know her better know. When she first did the reading for a school production, it was like I was there sitting in the audience and I could hear Meryl acting out the lines. Yet, despite liking what I read, I could not commit my full attention to this book. There was a lot of skimming done and I did not finish reading this book.