"Meryl Streep, in her Protestant way, is stuck on words; she flashes clever accents as a mask for her deeper failures. (And she cannot deliver a Jewish line; she destroyed Nora Ephron’s snappy dialogue in Heartburn.) Streep’s work doesn’t travel. Try dubbing her for movie houses in India: there’d be nothing left, just that bony, earnest horse face moving its lips. Imagine, on the other hand, lesser technicians like Hedy Lammarr, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner: these women have an international and universal appeal, crossing the centuries. They would have been beautiful in Egypt, Greece, Rome, medieval Burgundy, or eighteenth-century Paris. Susan Hayward played Bathsheba. Try to picture Streep in a Bible epic! Streep is incapable of playing the great legendary or mythological roles. She has no elemental power, no smouldering sensuality."
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Educators from the United StatesFree speech activistsWomen academics from the United StatesFeminists from the United StatesJournalists from New York (state)
Original Language: English
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p. 16
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Camille_Paglia
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Camille Paglia
art historian, writer, literary critic
1947 · United States
338 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Camille Paglia →
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