Actress Meryl Streep said in an
interview this week with Michigan LGBT weekly PrideSource that she's
been “in love with gay people” all her life.
Streep, who is promoting her upcoming
film Florence Foster Jenkins, was asked whether she feels a
connection to the LGBT community.
“I just can't remember when LGBT
people were not in my life,” Streep
answered, explaining that her piano teachers when she was 11 and
12 were two gay men.
Streep was asked about playing a
lesbian in the 1979 film Manhattan.
“Why did you take on a role that
might've been deemed 'too much' during that time period?” she was
asked.
“I didn't think of it that way,”
Streep responded. “I mean, I was coming to movies sort of sideways
from the theater. I got an early movie and I thought, 'Well, this is
a one-off; they'll never ask me again.' I was fine with that. I was
happy in the theater. And in the theater I had lots of gay friends
and my longtime collaborator Roy Helland is gay. I've grown up with
gay people and been in love with gay people.”
“Romantic love?”
“Oh no, not that kind!” she
answered.