(Credits: Far Out / Dick Thomas Johnson)
Tue 16 September 2025 20:15, UK
Meryl Streep is commonly cited as one of the few actors still living who possesses enough range as a department store and enough Academy Award nominations to make her the most-nominated actor in Oscars history.
Yet, despite her star status as the reigning queen of Hollywood (who else could do The Devil Wears Prada and Mamma Mia! in such close succession?) Streep has also had her fair share of acting isn’t easy moments with oftentimes roles that demand a lot of her, whether it be drastically changing her appearance or speaking an entirely different accent.
Accents come easy to some, like Gary Oldman, who seems to slip into them as though they’re old slippers, while Christian Bale is scarily good at being American, despite being incredibly British. Streep is also great at accents, and you’d never think that she would have ever struggled with trying on a new voice, considering that she’s even won an Oscar for playing the former British Prime Minister and unemployment puppetmaster Margaret Thatcher, but she was once on the verge of having to resort to lip-syncing.
Back when Streep was still in the early years of her career (several Oscar nominations already secured), she was cast in the British film The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Directed by the legendary Karel Reisz and based on the 1969 novel by John Fowles, the movie would see her embody several characters alongside Jeremy Irons, but she was required to perform with an English accent.
Streep had only made her screen debut four years prior, so really, she was still getting to grips with being a professional actor. Things that would later become second nature to her made her anxious, expressed as her fear that she was going to completely mess up. After all, not only was the film based on a fantastic book written by a man posited on the precipice of modernism and postmodernism, but it also had the legendary playwright Harold Pinter behind the screenplay. The pressure was on.
“I’m so frightened, I’m so frightened about something as important as this,” she reportedly told a friend. Even Reisz started to get a little concerned that the actor wasn’t going to be able to deliver a good enough accent (which is baffling to consider when you think about her legacy as a versatile screen icon today).
“Meryl was very concerned at first,” he explained, “We even had it up our sleeve that we could lip-sync some of those parts if it was necessary”. Luckily, it all worked out, and Streep found herself Oscar-nominated for the part, although who was really surprised but her own talented self?
When it comes to bad accents, you can’t put Streep in the category. She’s no Dick Van Dyke or Keanu Reeves circa Bram Stoker’s Dracula era. Lip-syncing proved not to be necessary in the end, and Streep continued her reign on Hollywood.
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