This morning,
Emma Stone reacted to her
Golden Globe nomination for
Birdman
with a pitch-perfect statement in which she expressed appreciation for
the honor and ribbed the all-reigning queen of Hollywood,
Meryl Streep—who happens to be her competition in the best-supporting-actress category for
Into the Woods.
“I have no words,” Stone said. “I am so incredibly honored and grateful
for this and feel insanely lucky to have had the chance to work with
Alejandro, Michael, Edward, and the whole cast and crew of the beautiful
madness that is
Birdman. Now can someone please explain who this ‘Meryl Streep’ woman is?!”
Stone is the latest in a series of Streep’s awards competitors who
have had the good humor (and, in some cases, just gall) to poke fun at
or just throw shade at the three-time Oscar winner. Ahead, a brief
history of the culprits and their cutups or putdowns.
Jennifer Lawrence: When Lawrence climbed onstage to accept her 2013 Golden Globe, the actress, who was beating out Streep for
August: Osage County, looked at her statuette’s inscription
and blurted out,
“Oh, what does it say? ‘I beat Meryl!’” Some audience members did not
realize that the quip was an innocent nod to a 1996 comedy. “It’s never a
good idea for me to wing it, but it was a quote from
First Wives Club,” the
Silver Linings Playbook star later told
David Letterman. The actress also used her segment on the
Late Show
to repent for her sin of mock-dissing Meryl. “First of all, it’s Meryl
Streep. You can’t offend Meryl Streep.” Still, she did not understand
how the Internet could misinterpret her playful remark. “All of a sudden
I hate Meryl Streep. Is that what this turned into? I don’t like Meryl
Streep? As if I had my eyes on getting that girl forever and I was like,
‘Finally! I knew it would happen one day.’”
(About a month later, Lawrence tripped on her way up to accept her
Oscar. We’re not saying that the slip was punishment from the Meryl
Streep gods she had unintentionally angered during her Golden Globes ad
lib. But we’re also not saying it was not.)
Sandra Bullock: Perhaps no actress has had as much
fun rivaling Meryl Streep than Bullock. During the lead up to the 2010
Oscars, Bullock (who would win for
The Blind Side) regularly ribbed her fellow nominee (who was up for
Julie & Julia).
“With Meryl, when [the awards season] thing started, I left her a voice
mail going, ‘You've got to watch your back. I’m gonna cut you. I’m
gonna take you down,” Bullock told the Associated Press. “And then she
sent me dead orchids and told me to die, so I sent her a case of liquor
and told her to toast to white trash.” When the two were paired up
against each other again in 2014 (for
Gravity and
August: Osage County), Bullock
joked,
“People don't realize that there's a side of Meryl that's just mean.
You walk away and she'll just rip your dress . . . I know not to turn my
back on her.” If the fight were physical, she joked, “I will try to
kick her ass but she will kill me. That's just how it's gonna end and
then she'll be lovely Meryl again and I'll just be dead.”
Katharine Hepburn: The legendary actress was
nominated alongside Streep at the 1982 Oscars, where she beat the then
up-and-comer thanks to her performance in
On Golden Pond.
Although Hepburn did not say anything publicly, her official biographer
A. Scott Berg wrote that Streep was Hepburn’s “least favorite modern
actress.” Perhaps a swipe taken out of jealousy, the biographer wrote
that all Hepburn could hear when Streep was on-screen was, “Click click
click,” referring to wheels turning inside Streep’s head.
Emma Thompson: Although the two Oscar winners are dear friends—a bond that was seemingly cemented with
their kiss in Mike Nichols’s HBO mini-series Angels in America—the
two never miss an opportunity to poke fun at one another on the awards
trail. When Streep beat out her co-star for the Emmy in 2004, she joked
about her fellow nominees in her speech. “
Glenn (Close) is my friend so I know she`ll forgive me,
Helen Mirren is an acting god, and no one has put a better performance on film than
Judy Davis in
The Judy Garland Story. The only one in the group is Emma Thompson, who will hold a grudge for the rest of her life. But who cares?”
In turn, last year, after Streep was nominated for an Oscar for
August: Osage County and Thompson was snubbed for
Saving Mr. Banks, Streep told
Ellen DeGeneres how she had reached out to her friend to offer her condolences. “I was really shocked [by Thompson’s snub],” Streep
explained. “I wrote [Thompson] a long, heartfelt e-mail about how bad I felt. She wrote back and just said, ‘Good.’”
Sharon Stone: Fifteen years after she was nominated for an Oscar for
Casino—the same year that Streep was up for
The Bridges of Madison County—Stone threw some world-class shade at Streep during
an interview with
Tatler
magazine. On the subject of actresses’ looks, Stone said, “I think
that's why Meryl Streep is working so much, because she looks like a
woman we can all relate to.” It gets worse. “I look at her and I think,
I’m chasing my kids, I’ve moved my parents in with me, I’m coping with
food spills—that looks like me in real life.” It gets even worse still.
“Meryl looks like an unmade bed, and that’s what I look like. To me,
that looks true.”
Kate Winslet: When Winslet beat out Streep for the 2009 Oscar (Winslet for
The Reader vs. Streep for
Doubt),
the British actress joked that Streep would just have to accept her
glowing speech remarks instead of another statuette that year. “And I
want to acknowledge my fellow nominees, these goddesses. I think we all
can’t believe we’re in a category with Meryl Streep at all. I'm sorry,
Meryl, but you have to just suck that up!”
Susan Sarandon: The actress, who was up for an
Academy Award twice against Meryl Streep, has not minced words when
speaking about her peer to press. “Everything goes to Meryl first. It’s
the law,” Sarandon
is quoted as saying during an interview with
Fame
magazine in 1989. “I am one of those who think Meryl is a great
actress. I don’t elevate her to the goddess level, but she does get
first crack at all the women’s roles. If other women had the same shots
she’s had, they could equal her.” She even added a more personal dig.
“If her household runs as perfectly as her press would have us believe,
I’ll slash my throat.” Perhaps Sarandon’s attitude towards Streep
softened though after she beat the Oscar winner in 1995 with her
performance in
Dead Man Walking.
Daniel Day-Lewis: Obviously the actor was not up
directly against Streep at the 2013 Oscars—wouldn’t that have been
something, though?—where they both won their leading actor
categories—him, for
Lincoln, and her, for
The Iron Lady.
But Day-Lewis livened up his acceptance speech by joking that he had
been in competition with the world’s finest actress for the part. “It's a
strange thing because three years ago, before we decided to do a
straight swap, I had actually been committed to play Margaret Thatcher
[in
The Iron Lady] and Meryl was
Steven [Spielberg]'s first choice for
Lincoln. And I'd like to see that version.”
But perhaps no one is as good at poking fun at Meryl Streep as Meryl
Streep herself. When she accepted the 2012 Oscar, she started off by
joking, “When they called my name I had this feeling I could hear half
of America going, ‘Oh no! Oh, come on why her! Again!’” After an
impeccably timed beat, she continued, “But, whatever.” And when taking
the 2009 Screen Actors Guild award for
Doubt, she joked about
her own legend. “I’m really really really shocked,” she said during her
acceptance speech, before adding, “even though awards mean nothing to me
anymore.”