For many of us, the idea of being in the presence of the acting royalty that is Meryl Streep is enough to send us all aflutter – yet the actress revealed this week that she was overcome with her own moment of being starstruck when she was ‘summoned’ by Stephen Sondheim for her work on musical INTO THE WOODS.
‘I was summoned to [Sondheim’s] town house with [director] Rob [Marshall]. ‘He let us know that he’d written a new song for me – that isn’t in the movie, but it’s on the DVD – and I was very excited to hear that this had been written and I thought that they’d send me the music or a recording of it or something – but he wanted to play it for me and sing it for me himself.’
Sondheim’s voice was clearly very low compared to Meryl’s. She says it wasn’t really a lot of help but did give her ‘the feeling of what he wanted to convey’.
Simply being in his presence, at his home, working on this song, was apparently not enough for Streep, who then dared to ask for an autograph.
Streep explained: ‘At the end, I said “Can you give me the sheet music?” and he said “Of course”.’ It was then that she asked if he’d sign it for her. What did he write? ‘Don’t f*ck it up.’
Well he does have a way with words.
INTO THE WOODS arrives in UK cinemas on Friday 9th January.
