An actress quite often referred to as one of ‘Hollywood’s GOATs’, Meryl Streep has shone in every single role she has played to date, and her 3 bagged Oscars out of all 21 nominations are the standing proof of that. Be it romance/comedy or horror/thriller: the ‘bossy’ lady has shown her remarkable performance in all.
Yet, there’s only one genre that she explored only once and left it at that: Action, in The River Wild. Although her performance in that movie was as commendable as every other one, there was a rather freaky and near-to-death incident that happened on the sets of the movie that never induced her to return to other projects of the genre ever again.
Also Read: One Record of Meryl Streep at Oscars Will Probably Never be Broken
Getting physical once went wrong for Meryl Streep on the set of The River Wild!
Even though stunt doubles were hired as well, Meryl Streep did many stunts by herself for The River Wild. And while others didn’t quite prove to be a threat, this one simple one did where she had to paddle her raft into a hole where the water was surging up between a few rocks.
Since the director needed ‘just one more take’, The Devil Wears Prada actress agreed to do it again. But little did she know how life-threatening this one particular stunt that ‘looked like nothing’ to her would prove to be. As she explained during an interview with Orlando Sentinel:
“The boat surfed down into the hole, rose, and flipped over,” Streep said. “And I went into the river. I remember sinking down to the bottom with this powerful and freezing water pulling me in deeper.”
Most people would panic while drowning in the river, but that was far from the case for Streep, who was ‘really very quiet and not scared’, which even she agreed wasn’t how she thought she would react in a situation like that.
“My first thought was that if I died my husband would come to the set with a machete,” she said, laughing.
Thankfully, she didn’t go down too low and washed ashore about 500 yards down from where her panicking crew stood, which was followed by a hired kayaker rescuing her.
“When I got to the shore my legs actually went out from under me, but I still managed to get to Curtis,” she said. “My heart was just pounding and I tried to be calm when I said, ‘I really feel quite sure if I say that I’m too tired to do something then we have to assume I’m telling the truth.’”
She might have been in a near-death experience a few minutes ago, but that didn’t stop Meryl Streep’s bossiness from seeping in, considering how her very pale director agreed at once when she made that last comment!
Meryl Streep’s kids inspired her to take on The River Wild
Continuing in the interview, Meryl Streep also revealed that it was actually her kids who provoked her to take on an action movie like The River Wild in the first place.
“They’re reckless and they’re fearless,” she said. “They just go out and careen through the day. I thought that maybe I was missing out on something since they’re having more fun. My kids live for the thrill.”
Just like that, she gave in, and then unfolded all the wonders of the river and rafting in it (which she presumed to be mostly fake until she started working on the movie).
While this all was very new for someone who ‘grew up in New Jersey and was a cheerleader and went to an Ivy League school’, it didn’t stop the Mamma Mia! star from wanting to live for the thrill and ‘have the ride and feel the things that felt like life’ to her.
“I’d be on that river at 8 in the morning… At night I would fall into bed. It was the kind of tired that you couldn’t even get up to go to the bathroom. And then the alarm would go off the next morning and I couldn’t wait to get back outside and do it again.”
Though it most certainly seems like Meryl Streep had her once-in-a-lifetime moment while working on The River Wild, it most certainly lasted only once in her lifetime, considering how she has been venturing far, far away from the action/thriller genre ever since.
