Meryl Streep’s struggle with faith

last updated 8 January 2015

Meryl Streep finds no comfort in prayer, says Mick Brown in the London Daily Telegraph. Long before playing a nun in her current film, Doubt, Streep says she was searching for spiritual meaning in a troubled world. “I’ve always been really, deeply interested in faith, because I think I can understand the solace that’s available in the whole construct of religion,” says the 59-year actress, who grew up Presbyterian. But despite being consumed with what she calls a “yearning for the ineffable, for real true certainty,” Streep has found little of that solace herself. “I really don’t believe in the power of prayer, or things would have been avoided that have happened, that are awful. So it’s a horrible position as an intelligent, emotional, yearning human being to sit outside of the available comfort there. But I just can’t go there.” So where does she find consolation in the face of aging and death? “Consolation? I’m not sure I have it. I have a belief, I guess, in the power of the aggregate human attempt. In love and hope and optimism—you know, the magic things that seem inexplicable.” But Streep does not rule out the possibility that God exists. “I do have a sense of trying to make things better. Where does that come from?”