After Mamma Mia!, she is back with DoubtMeryl Streep has in the last several years had an unexpected career renaissance—at 59. Now, after almost 30 years of being perennially more admired than beloved, the double Oscar winner has been connecting defiantly with the masses, as the vulnerable fashionatrix in The Devil Wears Prada and as the single singing mother in the musical Mamma Mia!. Her latest film Doubt (premieres December 12), is about the 1964 mano a mano between a nun (Streep) and a popular priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) she suspects of molesting a student, although there is no direct evidence.Streep seems gleeful about her professional resurgence, which she says was completely unexpected. Still, she notes that three of the last four movies she has made were directed by women, and The Devil Wears Prada and Mamma Mia! were championed by female movie executives and producers. “I knew Mamma Mia! would make lots of people happy, and when the bad reviews came out, the blogosphere exploded with women who said, ‘What’s the matter with you? Life-hating, life-sucking, desiccated old farts.’ ”Doubt is the kind of movie that could instigate another Oscar. Streep’s character, Sister Aloysius, is a disciplinarian, a seeming killjoy in a battle with the popular, empathetic priest bent on making the church more accessible. Director-writer John Patrick Shanley says that although he marvelled at her facility in running the crescendo of human emotion, it was not until a day of reshoots when he finally glimpsed Streep’s great artistry. “I saw suddenly her vulnerability about the role, how deeply she cared. She was like a young girl, vulnerable and shaky.”Rachel Abramowitz, LATWP
