When Meryl Met Alec

EW: You both give such vanity-free performances in this movie, particularly with respect to aging. Meryl, you have a great scene where your character freaks out in the plastic surgeon's office after the doctor explains the horrifying potential complications.
Streep Well, if you've ever even contemplated that stuff and looked at what can go wrong in any of those magazines, it's terrifying! I thought that scene was very well written, the way the doctor said they cut the top of your head and —
Baldwin They make a balloon out of the back of your scalp. They tie a little knot and you have a little bump for the rest of your life.
Streep Kind of clears your sinuses, when you think about it.
Baldwin Gets rid of your apnea. I told Meryl this story about how I did Inside the Actors Studio [in 1994], and then they asked me to come back a second time to raise money for the Actors Studio. I'm a total sucker, so I did it. And I sit there and Jimmy Lipton goes, ''Let's show a clip of Alec and his first visit 13 years ago.'' They show a picture of me, and there were three women in the front row who gasped audibly [at how much I'd aged].
Streep [Incredulous] Oh, stop it.
Baldwin But you can't worry about that. You can't think about that.
Streep You can't. And also, we are who we are at this point. We can't hide it.

EW: Lots of people in Hollywood try.
Streep Yeah, but now every part of your life is chronicled. If something mysteriously looks better... [Trails off in a fit of giggles]
Baldwin I'm not saying I wouldn't do something! I intend to do something. I probably will. Let's put it this way: I wouldn't rule it out because —
Streep Yeah? When?
Baldwin How 'bout today? What are you waitin' for? [Laughs] You don't think I wake up every day and wish I looked like this and this and this? But I can't let that bother me. I'll never forget, I said to Mike Nichols, ''Who do you think is the greatest actor?'' And he said, ''Nicholson. Because he has no vanity.'' I thought, God, what a thing to say.

EW: Meryl, is that true? You know Jack Nicholson well.
Streep He has very healthy self-esteem. But I don't think he's a vain man at all.
Baldwin Not in the character. He was talking about how Jack [stands at] that bed in Terms of Endearment with his gut sticking out. It's a classic scene.

EW: Alec, you do some of that yourself in this movie, baring almost all, including your behind.
Baldwin [That was] my ass double! You can put that in Entertainment Weekly so people know. I have a great ass, if I may say so. That's a part of my body that needs no surgical enhancement or rearranging.
Streep It's funny you don't show it more.
Baldwin Well, you gotta pay me a lot of money. They didn't pay me enough. I think I even said that to Nancy: ''I'm not going to show my ass in this movie. Maybe for [9½ Weeks director] Adrian Lyne or something like that, where it's more appropriate.''
Streep Nice.
Baldwin But the guy who was my ass double, he worked on 30 Rock one day, and he dined out on it the whole week. He showed up and told everybody, ''I was Alec's ass double.'' It's a sick business.

EW: You're not nude on screen, Meryl. Did Nancy ask you to bare all, as she did with Diane Keaton in Something's Gotta Give?
Streep She asked me to bare all in many ways.

EW: Your soul.
Streep Yeah. But I don't think if we had romped through half of this movie completely naked it would have added to the film. It's about the intimacy of marriage and the comfort and the mess of it. It felt like what we did was exactly right.

EW: Alec, even if the bare buns weren't your own, you do show plenty of skin. Did you need much convincing?
Baldwin [Shakes his head] When you do a movie that you like or you're hopeful about, you'll go to any lengths if it seems right. And I was taking my clothes off for her [points to Streep] — not for you, the public. Big difference.
Streep And Alec is fabulously handsome, so this is not a problem!
Baldwin In spite of those women gasping in the front row.