Film legend, rising star wearing 'Prada' well

NEW YORK -- They might hit her up for acting tips. But you'll never catch any of Meryl Streep's three daughters raiding her closets at her homes in Connecticut or Manhattan. The very idea elicits an astounded stare from the actress and sends her into peals of merry giggles.

"Are you mad? Wear my clothes? Eww. Nothing I wear is cool enough," says Streep, shaking her head and tucking a strand of loose blond hair behind her ear.

"My own style is non-existent. I like thinking about clothes in relation to character. Clothes are revelatory. But I'm not interested in fashion or trends. I'm bewildered by a lot of those things."

It's a sentiment that wouldn't shock her girls -- Mamie, 22, Grace, 20, and Louisa Gummer, 15 -- or the fashion watchers who have sometimes commented on Streep's unconventional red-carpet attire, such as the poufy black-and-white ensemble she wore to receive the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2004. But Streep's disdain for trends would send Miranda Priestly, the coolly ferocious and flawlessly coiffed fashionista she plays in The Devil Wears Prada (opening Friday), into one of her formidably self-possessed diatribes.

The performance has dazzled critics. Rolling Stone's Peter Travers writes that "Streep knocks every laugh out of the park," and Variety's Todd McCarthy calls her "a wonder."

As Miranda, the finicky editor of a magazine much like American fashion bible Vogue, Streep harangues her skinny minions in a voice that rarely rises above a loud whisper. She thinks nothing of calling her curvy and dowdy sweater-wearing new assistant, Andy (played by Anne Hathaway), "fat." And she ends her invectives with a decisively dismissive "that's all."

On this Monday afternoon, the sartorial roles are reversed on the 48th floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Streep, 57, is dressed down in a flowery top with black pants and open-toed heels, her narrow blue-tinted glasses and red pedicure the only concessions to her appearance-driven career. And Hathaway, 23, who in the film goes from earnestly diffident duckling to suave swan, is sleek in a black low-cut top, paired with a miniskirt, leggings and heels.

In the film, they get under each other's skin, but Streep and Hathaway's off-screen relationship is warm, more sisterly than parental.

Streep hugs Hathaway when the younger actress walks into her suite, pats her as she grabs coffee and teases her for being tired. "Party girl!" Streep trills, and Hathaway corrects her: "It was Father's Day. I went to New Jersey and didn't get back until super-late."

Streep, who spent the weekend with her family in Connecticut, nods approvingly and says she liked Hathaway so much that during filming, she "had a little trouble inserting the final skewer" into each of her scathing onscreen attacks.

She never got competitive with Hathaway or Emily Blunt, who plays the senior assistant, director David Frankel says. "She's surrounded by hot young girls at home. For her, that part of it was like being at home. She did look out for them. She wanted them to do their best."

And, no, the two-time Oscar winner didn't dole out unsolicited advice, Yoda-like, to Hathaway or Lindsay Lohan, who plays her daughter in this summer's comedy A Prairie Home Companion, in theaters now. Her only words of wisdom for the schedule-challenged Lohan, who showed up late for work? "I just told her to come to the set on time."

Sharpen those talons

Streep has suffered extensively for her art, playing a Holocaust survivor in 1982's Sophie's Choice, a whistle-blower with plutonium poisoning in 1983's Silkwood and the tormented wife of a philandering Jack Nicholson in 1986's Heartburn. So she relished the idea of baring her claws as "a great female villain." But shortly into the New York shoot, she realized that wearing Miranda's Prada heels wasn't "that much fun."

That's because, Frankel says, Streep remained a muted version of Miranda for most of the shoot, reading a book when she wasn't on camera. "She was never unkind, but she was very aloof and kept her distance and wasn't chummy. She wanted to make sure Annie and Emily were intimidated by her presence."

Still, being bad didn't feel so good for Streep. She didn't confab with Hathaway, Blunt or Stanley Tucci, who plays the acid-tongued art director of the fictional magazine, Runway. "They were all having a wonderful time in the corner. There were a couple of days where I tried to join in, and it was so icky and unsuccessful. It just didn't help the dynamic of the whole set. I'm not a method person, but I felt I was vaguely dissatisfied all the time."

Hathaway breaks into loud guffaws. "I'm not a method actor either, but I take certain traits home and they pop up in the most bizarre places."

This time, the normally laissez-faire Hathaway turned into an all-star scheduler, just like the dutiful assistant she played. "I kept replaying scenes from the day over and over and over. Did I call this person? It became about the details."

In real life, Hathaway says, "everybody knows if they call me, they should expect a returned call in a week." Streep, on the other hand, was happy to leave Miranda's perennial disgruntlement at the office, shed the Fendi coat and relax.

"I get all my rocks off at work. I was so glad to take everything off at the end of the day and put my jeans on and my rattiest, rattiest things and just go home and veg," she says. "Oh, my God, I was so glad not to have to be her."

Both actresses got so sick of being dressed to the nines in the film that "we made a pact to become fat communists" after the film wrapped, Hathaway says as both women scream with laughter. Hathaway turns to Streep: "I feel bad because the one piece of advice you gave me was to eat a hamburger, and I haven't done that yet."

Streep prefers to snack on granola and fruit and seems relaxed. Despite an impending flight to Utah to wrap the drama Dark Matter for Chinese director Chen Shi-Zheng, Streep -- a reluctant flier -- is guardedly friendly. Ask Streep's co-stars about her, and they wax poetic about how funny she is, how very normal and approachable, how you forget after being around her that she has earned the most Oscar nominations for acting (13) in history and has won twice, for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Sophie's Choice.

"I won't go on and on about her because she'll blush, but it's easy to see how someone in my position would have a lot to look up to," Hathaway says.

Sarah Jones, who just won a Tony for her one-woman play, Bridge & Tunnel, which Streep produced, calls the star "the most regular gal in the world, the coolest, most down-to-earth chick I know."

Bad behavior is the role model

Certainly, Streep's character is anything but. She's based on the editrix in Lauren Weisberger's thinly disguised roman a clef, which caused a ruckus in the fashion world when it was published in 2003 and has sold more than 1 million copies. The author had worked as Anna Wintour's assistant at Vogue, and many wondered just how much of the domineering, demanding boss she wrote about was based on the fearsome fashionista. But Weisberger insisted the book was a work of fiction rather than an expose of the enigmatic editor with the sleek bob, a woman who could make or break designers but rarely talked to the press.

Streep based Miranda on "three people that I know who are, by the way, much, much worse-behaved. Not one of them female. I know people like this, who are very, very demanding of themselves. They hold themselves to a really high standard, and they expect everyone else to do as much."

She came up with Miranda's distinctive look -- all white hair, severely tailored black clothes and clacking heels. She's loath, however, to discuss those tresses.

"Oh, that was my own hair. I got younger!" she jokes, patting her own blond mane. "I don't like to talk about the wigs, because then that's all anybody looks at. I don't even acknowledge it. I wanted her to be someone who didn't look like anybody else."

This devil wears white

Among Streep's style inspirations were legendary fashion editor Polly Mellen, the late Harper's Bazaar editor Liz Tilberis, and "Diana Vreeland, (who) had this indelible thing that she presented to the world."

Another renowned muse was celebrated model Carmen Dell' Orefice, who "has this sweep of white hair and a great jaw."

Instead of turning Miranda into a surgically enhanced woman clinging to youth, Streep decided "it would be interesting that someone in the business of beauty makes a decision not to dye her hair. The studio got hysterical because (of the idea of) an old white-haired lady. But as we tried other things, everything else looked Fairfield County, Conn., or Santa Monica. It was too generic. I'm a real pain in the neck for costume designers because I have very specific ideas."

It's partly because Streep studied costume design and drama at Vassar and drama at Yale, and she smiles as Hathaway talks about her literature major at New York University, where she has two years left. For Hathaway, getting a degree was a no-brainer, despite the early success she found as the star of the sugary 2001 comedy The Princess Diaries.

"I didn't know who I was, and I shudder to think of the vapid person I would be if I hadn't taken that time for myself or the vapid person I would become if I don't finish."

Streep's two older children, son Henry, 26, and Mamie, have graduated from college. Daughter Grace is in school now, and Louisa is in high school. Streep, who has been married to sculptor Donald Gummer for 27 years, has been fiercely protective of her brood, shielding them from the media and rarely dragging them to red carpets.

This is the woman who told Good Housekeeping in 1998 that she refuses to "publicize my family to enhance me. I haven't taken a picture with the kids saying what a fabulous mother I am."

She shakes her head, muttering "no, no," as Hathaway discusses what stage-parented child actors go through in Los Angeles.

The protective curtain has been lifted now that both Henry and Mamie have pursued their own entertainment careers. Mamie appeared in the off-Broadway production of Mr. Marmalade last fall opposite Michael C. Hall and won a Theatre World Award; she appears off-Broadway now in The Water's Edge. Musician Henry makes his movie debut this year in Lying, opposite Chloe Sevigny. The young Gummer girls, who share their mother's distinctive nose and sharp cheekbones, partied with their friends at the bash for A Prairie Home Companion this month, which Streep herself skipped.

As her children follow in her footsteps, Streep tries to guide them. She gives them advice "endlessly, but do they listen?" Streep asks, rolling her eyes heavenward. "They're going to do whatever they want to do because ... it's a hard choice to enter our business. They've gotten a very skewed version of things. On the one hand, I've kept them completely out of the picture because I just felt that was better for them. They don't see me at work. They don't see me having fun. They just see me come home and do what you do at home, which is go, 'Oh, my God.' Whine and complain and 'poor me.' And they still wanted to do it."

Next up, Hathaway is taking a road trip around Europe with her Italian businessman boyfriend, Raffaello Follieri. After finishing Dark Matter, Streep plays the lead in the stage production of Mother Courage and Her Children, part of Manhattan's annual free Shakespeare in the Park performance series. It runs Aug. 8-Sept. 3.

Dressing down

But they have gone back to wearing their street clothes. Neither Streep nor Hathaway kept any of the Prada or Chanel garb they wore in Prada. "We were making the movie at the time of Katrina, and it was really obnoxious to have everyone salivating over the (hand)bags when people's lives were floating away," Streep says.

That's why, Hathaway says, "Meryl had the great idea of auctioning them off for charity so we wouldn't kill each other when the film was done." Killer fashion? That sentiment would make Miranda proud.

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