From Weekend 1
"I was so impressed by it. I really was. You just never know what's going to happen with any movie you do. You go in and do your work. Then you go away for a year and come back." She pauses, and a note of dread comes into her voice as she recalls the sensation she feels. "And you go, `Oh! , What are they going to show me now?'."
She has not seen the stage version of Dancing at Lughnasa, which won three Tony awards, including best play, when it ran on Broadway. "I'd love to see it," she says. "It was only after I arrived in Dublin to make the film that I read the script of the play. I felt it was an advantage not to have seen it. I didn't want the images in my head. I wanted them to be of our own making. So I stayed away from it. Then, as we started rehearsals for the film, I thought I'd I'd read it as a source.
"The film is quite, quite different. It's faithful to the play in its essence, but this is a real film. That's Pat, I guess, and Frank, who really re-conceived it in all its elements. I told Pat that if I'd read the play well in advance I would have made a big play for lots more speeches and lots more to say. The language is so beautiful.
"It's not a stagey movie or a filmed play. It is really a film. There's no question. And, I think, that's an amazing achievement. I've been in films adapted from other media, so I know that's not easy to do. It's not."
While she hadn't seen the play of Dancing at Lughnasa, she had been to see Riverdance at Radio City Music Hall in New York, in anticipation of performing the thrilling dance sequence involving all five Mundy sisters in the film. "When I saw Riverdance, I thought `Oh, my God, they're going to make me do that when I get to Dublin!' I took two months of lessons with this wonderful guy, John McArdle, who's got this little school for ceili dancing in Connecticut. I became so good at it, I tell you, I could scare you! Maybe I was a little over-zealous."
Shooting the dance sequence was "exhausting", she says. "It seemed like an age, although I think it took just three nights in a row. But they had to change the camera angles and then we'd do it again and again. But it was so exciting, too. And it's so beautifully edited in the film."
Her director, Pat O'Connor, was "drowning in women on the set", she laughs. "I met him in London to talk about the film and I was completely charmed by him. He just gave us a lot of freedom. Basically, the best directors make you feel like everything you do is completely right - and then you have no sense of how he's manipulating you to get what he wants. I was just so comfortable working with him."
One of the most striking features of Streep's performances, and one of those most commented upon, is her quite remarkable facility with accents, and she ably responds to that challenge again in Dancing at Lughnasa. "You know, this Donegal accent," she says. "Well, we were all freaked out by this, especially me, because I felt like an interloper, you know, the American ringer in the middle of all these fabulous actresses. I felt the English could do the accent just because they have their ears cocked that way. I tried very hard. "Usually, when I do these accents, I listen to tapes before I come to the movie and then I don't do anything. After that, I can't stay outside myself and listen to myself any more. Once I've begun I've got to protect this little fragile bubble of belief that I have. But this time I thought I'd branch out. "Pat had engaged this fantastic dialogue coach, Gerry Grennell, so I signed up for the sessions. And it completely dismantled my ability to act and do what I do. I had a real breakdown about three weeks into the filming. I thought, `I'm going to kill myself. I can't do this.'
"I heard everything I was saying and that's an experience I've never had. I usually just say what I've got to say and listen to what the other actors are saying. This time I found myself listening to myself. It was so distracting and I didn't know how I was going to get through it. So I went to the pub with all the other actresses and they said they were feeling like that, too. Poor Gerry! He got the brunt of it."
Does she take her character home with her at the end of a day's filming , or does she gradually relax into herself? "Oh, it doesn't feel gradual," she says. "It feels like schizophrenia. I had my family with me for the first few weeks of shooting and they don't brook anything when you get home! So I had no choice. But it became a lot easier when we all relaxed into our roles, and we all did. And in the end, I think that's all that matters."
And as she relaxed into her role, she got down to enjoying herself in Dublin. "I had such a great time," she declares with evident enthusiasm. "I went out in the evenings with my make-up-cum-hairdresser-cum-bodyguard-cum- whatever (Roy Helland), and he and I made a tour of what I'd call the secondtier restaurants. We never went to that new five-star one in the whatever hotel. You know, that fancy French one.
"Two things people told me about Ireland before I went there were that I could expect fantastic music and terrible food. I never could find any music - we never went to the right place on the right night - except when I went out to Barrettstown Castle, to do a benefit for Paul Newman's camp out there. That was like a dream come true - all the musicians who were there. I heard everyone. It was wonderful.
"But we ate like kings. I lived in Dalkey for a while and there were some great restaurants out there, and then I moved to Ballsbridge and did the entire tour there. I don't want to single any out for fear of hurting the others' feelings. "But you just couldn't go wrong. There are so many fantastic restaurants. The only other place I've been to, outside of Paris, that has more wonderful restaurants per block, is Copenhagen. This was a revelation. And it was a problem. I had to start running in the park to keep down my weight! But I stayed out of the pubs. That was the secret. I didn't drink the Guinness. I did the first week when we went to Johnny Fox's up the hill. I made a scene, so I couldn't go back there again."
What kind of scene? "Oh," she laughs heartily. "I was loud - and ridiculous."
As she went about her tour of Dublin restaurants, did she find people were recognising her all the time? "Oh, yes, but they were very cool about it. I think they're used to that sort of thing in Ireland. There's such a sense of confidence and optimism about Ireland, I found."
She eagerly awaits returning to Dublin for the premiere. "My one regret is that I didn't make it to Donegal while we were filming in Ireland. The story of the film is set there, and my Irish relatives are from there. It's an unusual name, Strain - my great-grandmother was Grace Strain from Donegal, and I'm also related to the McLaddens. I wanted to go there and trace my roots like all the Americans do. Maybe I'll do it when I get back for the premiere. I am so looking forward to going back."
Dancing at Lughnasa will have its Irish premiere in Dublin on September 23rd and it goes on release across the country two days later.