7 Myths About Meryl

A fashion tyrant in The Devil Wears Prada, Streep proves that talent is always the new black.

BARRY WETCHER / 20th CENTURY FOX

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4 SHE IS DIFFICULT "I know that when I start a new job, that this is the thing that precedes me," Streep says with a sigh. "That I'm rigorous in doing my homework and hideously overprepared, and ..." She shrugs. "And that's fine. Better to come off as smarter and more disciplined than I actually am." She waits a beat and then adds with a delighted laugh, "Not that I'm interested in debunking the myth!" Yet everybody who's worked with her turns into a geyser of mush about how giving and life-affirming she is. So perhaps the difficult rep arises not from who she is but whom she plays these days. Her characters went from frail to ferocious. In the first 15 of her 44 films, those made before she turned 40, Streep (who turns 57 this month) lost or gave up at least seven children, five husbands, one fiance, her life twice and her mind once. Since then, while her characters have had some rotten luck (cancer, house burned down by son), Streep has mostly played people taking charge of their own destiny, if not actual ballbusters. She has shot rapids, taught violin and had people murdered.

In her two newest films she's much more fun to watch as the carnivorous Miranda than as Prairie's fading, wistful rustic Yolanda. Does the sheer longevity of her career make it hard for us to believe anymore that she can play anyone weak or pathetic? Or is it that she plays Yolanda's aging, slightly desperate flirt, complete with old-lady cleavage, so well it makes us uncomfortable?

5 ALL SHE DOES IS ACCENTS Being able to do accents, Streep maintains, is like being able to sing. You can do it or you can't. Still, not everybody who can do accents can do everything else she can. Brave is the person who tries to analyze what makes Streep's performances so remarkable. But Tony Kushner, who wrote Angels in America and is translating Mother Courage, gives it a whirl. "She does that weird thing that really great actors can do that really good actors can't. It's the ability to do two, three or four things at once. To create these moments of human behavior that are so layered and so deep that they're ambivalent: confusion and contradiction, heartbreak and a lie, tragedy and absurdity."

6 HER BEST WORK IS BEHIND HER It's true, as Rod Stewart so memorably sang, that the first cut is the deepest. Everyone has a favorite early Streep film, a Sophie's Choice or an Out of Africa. But if the first piece you ever saw her in was 2003's Angels in America, those roles--the Mormon mom, the rabbi, Ethel Rosenberg--would be just as indelible. "I asked her, 'How in God's name did it ever occur to you to make Ethel funny?' says Nichols, who directed Angels. "I'm surprised by her every single day we shoot." She may have more surprises for us.