Neither Queen Elizabeth II nor Barbara Covett, in Scandal, are exactly glamorous parts. And in Prada there is a memorable scene in which Miranda Priestly is shown in a very real, makeup-free manner. Is it mortifying to be shown in that way, or as an actress, do you think, Fantastic!?
STREEP: That's the part of the film that makes the whole rest of it worth doing. Without that scene, what is there?
MIRREN: One of the great advantages of getting older is that you can walk into a world which is more truthful and less to do with other people's fantasies.
STREEP: But I felt the desire to f--- around with how I look from the very beginning. And the idea that you're married to some sort of glamorous look makes me crazy. I hate all that bulls---. I mean, I'll put on foundation over my pimples, but really it pisses me off.
MIRREN: How extraordinary, then, to play in The Devil Wears Prada. That's what it's all about.
STREEP: My favorite line is Stanley Tucci's: ''That's really what this multibillion-dollar industry is all about, isn't it? Inner beauty!''
What was your first-ever paid acting job?
DENCH: Playing Ophelia at the Old Vic.
STREEP: Gee, that's starting small. [Laughs]
DENCH: That was in 1957. I got paid 3 pounds, 10 shillings a week. I was sharing with two other people and the rent was 9 pounds a week and we were to give 3 pounds each. So I was left with 10 shillings. What is that nowadays, 50 pence? [Roughly a dollar.]
MIRREN: My first paid acting job was in a play called Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs that I did in a theater that had those seats which would flip up. And I had a line that went, ''Will you shaft me?'' Which means ''Will you f--- me?'' And whenever I said, ''Malcolm, will you shaft me?'' at least five seats would go click-click-click-click-click as people left their seats in outrage. The beginning is always the best, isn't it?
STREEP: Right after college I joined a theatrical commune and we played during the summer in Vermont. We made so much money that we decided to go right through the winter and play the ski resorts. And so we would do Chekhov in the ski resorts and, at the end of the first act, the whole front row was snoring. They'd been on the slopes all day and they would snore so loud.
MIRREN: We've all seen that.
Meryl recently worked with Lindsay Lohan on the late Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion. What do you all think about the media scrutiny young actresses find themselves under these days?
DENCH: Well, now there's nothing you don't know about people. You can find out everything about everybody and I think that's a rather eroding thing. I would be put right off if I was coming into the profession now. I wouldn't like it at all.
MIRREN: But, you know, there are actresses — and I suspect that we three were of that ilk — who really operate on a completely different level. They're just not interested in that. They don't read the magazines. They're thinking about Shakespeare or about Chekhov. They're thinking like actresses, not celebrities. Lindsay Lohan — who is wonderful, actually, on screen — has come into the profession, into the work...
STREEP: ...as a child, and that's a very difficult thing.
MIRREN: And she loves it. And why shouldn't she? And she'll get over it.
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