Celebrating movie icons: Meryl Streep

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Today, we continue our series Classic Films and Movie Icons and hear interviews from our archive with Meryl Streep and Sidney Poitier. I spoke with Streep in 2012 when she was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the film "The Iron Lady." She won. She'd previously won for her performances in "Kramer Vs. Kramer" and "Sophie's Choice." She holds the record for the most Oscar nominations - a total of 21. One of the things she's known for is her uncanny ability to do accents. Let's start by hearing how she sounds as Margaret Thatcher. The film begins after Thatcher has lost her husband and is suffering from dementia. She's imagining that her husband is still with her and talking to her. In this scene, Streep portrays Thatcher after she's become the first woman to lead the Conservative Party. She's speaking before the House of Commons.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE IRON LADY")

MERYL STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) The right honorable gentleman knows very well that we had no choice but to close the school...

(JEERING)

STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) ...Because his union paymasters have called a strike deliberately to cripple our economy.

(JEERING)

STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) Teachers cannot teach when there is no heating, no lighting in their classrooms. And I ask the right honorable gentleman, whose fault is this?

(JEERING)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Methinks the right honorable lady doth screech too much.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) And if she wants us to take her seriously, she must learn to calm down.

(JEERING)

STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) If the right honorable gentleman could perhaps attend more closely to what I am saying, rather than how I am saying it...

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Here, here.

STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) ...He may receive a valuable education in spite of himself.

GROSS: Margaret Thatcher later took voice lessons from a drama coach to help her sound more authoritative. Here's Streep as Thatcher after those lessons, addressing Parliament about the war in the Falklands.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE IRON LADY")

STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) We were faced with an act of unprovoked aggression, and we responded...

UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Hear, hear.

STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) ...As we have responded in times past, with unity, strength and courage...

UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (As characters) Hear, hear.

STREEP: (As Margaret Thatcher) ...Sure in the knowledge that though much is sacrificed, in the end, right will prevail over wrong.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: Meryl Streep, welcome to FRESH AIR. Thank you so much for being here. And congratulations...

STREEP: Thank you.

GROSS: ...On your Golden Globe and your Oscar nomination.

STREEP: Thank you very much for having me, Terry. I'm a huge fan.

GROSS: Oh, wow. Thank you.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: So we just heard you before and after Margaret Thatcher has voice lessons - voice lessons to teach her authority and power - so that you can speak more powerfully to the Parliament. Did she really have that kind of vocal training?

STREEP: She did. My memory is a little cloudy, but I remember reading that Laurence Olivier had something to do with arranging for her to have - he demurred. He said he wouldn't care to do it himself, but he steered her in the direction of a good vocal coach. And she did go. And it did help her. And it was part of the "Pygmalion" process that Gordon Reece put her through.

GROSS: So can you talk a little bit about what you think she learned with those vocal lessons and how you transformed your voice as her after she really learned her way around as a public figure and had the advantage of those voice lessons?

STREEP: Well, I think that voice lessons really just bring out a voice that you already possess. So she already had - whatever the sort of stentorian tones that she acquired over time. They were all lying in wait there and within her arsenal. And she'd also had elocution in her high school, the equivalent of high school, in Grantham. She had changed her way of speaking. Her accent from Grantham had disappeared by the time she went to Oxford to study chemistry, and she had decided on a sort of a plummy kind of aspirant, upper-middle-class, what we would call upper-middle-class, voice. And so what the voice coach did was enabled her to expand her breath, deepen her voice, bring it to a place where men could listen to it in its most emphatic tones.

GROSS: So how did you change your voice for the before and after, for the more confident and experienced Margaret Thatcher versus the early Margaret Thatcher?

STREEP: Well, I had evidence of both voices, you know, from the public record, so I could listen to them. And it's sort of my fun to sing along with records and imitate people that are on the telephone that have different ways of speaking. I mean, I pick things up like that, so it's not a thing that's a struggle. It's work, but it's not a struggle. It's fun. And she had a very particular way of emphasizing points and making her point. And that had to do with bringing out a word that you didn't normally think was the most important word in the sentence. Do you know what I mean?

GROSS: Yes.

STREEP: And she also had a sort of a way, like a railroad train of going - (inhaling) - (impersonating Margaret Thatcher) taking a breath and starting quite quietly and making a point in a way that you don't really know that this point is going to be made through several examples, and there will not be a break in the speaking voice at any point. And you - if you think you're going to interrupt, you're really not going to have the opportunity because she's just got capacity. It's just really stunning as I looked at interviews.

GROSS: So you need a lot of breath to keep talking like that. Did you have it?

STREEP: I've just been talking like that.

(LAUGHTER)

STREEP: Yeah. I did need a lot of breath. I had - I needed much more breath than I have. After all my expensive drama school training, I couldn't keep up with her.

GROSS: I think it's interesting when you're doing the voice of a real person, or I suppose if you're learning an accent, too, you think of it as singing along with a record. So is that what you do, like, you play Margaret Thatcher giving a speech, and you do the equivalent of singing along with it, you give the speech as you're listening to it?

STREEP: I say that because that's my way in in the very beginning...

GROSS: Yeah.

STREEP: ...How to enter it. Very quickly in the process, I don't think about voice being separate from the way you hold your head or the way you sit or the way you dress or your way you put on lipstick. It's all a piece of a person, and it's all driven by conviction. In other characters, it's driven by insecurity, or it's driven by fear, or - there's always a driver, and the - all the physical manifestations - you need your way in. So, yeah.

When I was a kid, when I was 16, 17, I'd come home from high school, and my dad collected all of Barbra Streisand's records. And she was very young then. I think she was - she probably had three records out, and she was 21. And we had them all. And I knew every single song, every breath, every elision, every swell. And I sang along to it, but it - for me, it was a way to get out the feeling of the song and also to get out the feelings that, you know, roil in high school, to express something that I had no other way of expressing. And, of course, now I'm rich and famous, and I met Barbra Streisand, and I told her that, and she was nonplussed.

(LAUGHTER)

STREEP: She was just - oh, we can't know what we mean to each other. You know, artists - you can't know - you can't know that, but she was really important.

GROSS: We're listening to my 2012 interview with Meryl Streep. We'll hear more of it after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF ALEXANDRE DESPLAT'S "JULIA'S THEME")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my 2012 interview with Meryl Streep as we continue our series Classic Films and Movie Icons.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: I have another Margaret Thatcher question for you because you age several decades through the course of the film.

STREEP: Four.

GROSS: Yeah. So you had to wear, you know, like, a prosthetic older person's neck, and your face has a lot of makeup or something because, you know, you age four decades. So is it harder to be expressive when you're underneath something, you know, either a lot of makeup or a prosthetic or whatever?

STREEP: Well...

GROSS: I mean, you manage to be very expressive, but I'm wondering if it's, you know, more difficult.

STREEP: It can be, but I didn't want it to be. So I've worked for 35 years with a master artist - makeup artist and hairdresser. That's Roy Helland, and he's done everything - bleached my eyebrows for - and hair - for "Sophie's Choice." And he gave me a brown mullet in "Silkwood." And...

GROSS: (Laughter).

STREEP: ...You know, he got me ready for the Golden Globes. And he understands the job and changing the outside to get at something inside. So in conjunction with this British prosthetics designer, Mark Coulier, he and Roy and I, we did tests. And it was all about taking away, taking away, taking away. You know, we start with what Mark would carve the - a sculpture of me. They took a life mask. And then he'd add on, with clay or whatever the material is, age. And then they'd cast it in sort of this silicon thing. And then I would wear it, and we'd test it. And then I would say, inevitably, less, less, less, less. So it's kind of remarkable how little I really am wearing. And...

GROSS: And when you're saying, less, less - I want less - is that partly so that you can move your face and...

STREEP: So I can be free.

GROSS: ...And be expressive? Yeah.

STREEP: It's all about being free and having - so I can look in the mirror and see me, not stuff. And it all has to do with - you know, it's not about the audience. It's all about fooling the other actors into believing that you are who you say you are because that's hard when you walk on set, and it's a big makeup job. And it's - it makes it hard for them. And I take my entire performance from them. So if they don't look at me and hate me appropriately...

GROSS: (Laughter).

STREEP: ...Or love me the way they're supposed to or find, you know, an old face but see the young one underneath, which is Jim Broadbent's task as Denis Thatcher, then I'm lost. I don't have anything to go on 'cause I can read that immediately in their eyes, you know?

GROSS: Gee, I never thought of it that way - that you have to convince the other actors that you're Margaret Thatcher.

STREEP: That's the whole deal - the whole deal.

GROSS: You know, I hear a certain similarity between your voice in "The Iron Lady" as Margaret Thatcher and your voice in "Julie & Julia" as Julia Child. It almost strikes me as if - and I never thought about this till hearing you in both those films - that if Margaret Thatcher kind of drank too much...

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: ...And started being, like, surprised and delighted about how her, like, food concoction was behaving, that she might sound like Julia Child. What do you think?

STREEP: Well, they had a similar flutiness in - especially in the younger - Julia Child had (impersonating Julia Child) a flutiness...

GROSS: Yeah (laughter).

STREEP: ...You know? which, is - and it's also part of her class, her - the way that there are women of that time and of that class. We don't like to talk about that in America, but there are classes in America. And she was of a class of women who were wealthy, privately educated, went to Smith, moved in that sort of circle. She was conscripted into the OSS, which is the early CIA, which was all filled with Yalies and Princeton and Harvard people and a few women, who were typing mostly, but also had something to do. And they had a way of speaking. I mean, the last person you would know - we would also recognize as having that way of speaking is Katharine Hepburn, probably.

When I was in - at Vassar - and I came from a public high school in New Jersey - there was a way of talking that the private school girls had that was different than the way I talked from (laughter) New Jersey.

GROSS: Let me play a little bit of you as Julia Child in "Julie & Julia." And this is a scene when you're on TV early in your TV career, and you're making some kind of, like, mashed-potato pancake concoction that you're about to flip, and it's not - it kind of...

STREEP: ...Doesn't go well.

GROSS: Doesn't go well. It kind of splatters in the air, and half of it lands on the stove instead of in the pan. So...

STREEP: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Let's hear a little bit of that. And this scene alternates with you on TV and with Julie watching you on TV.

STREEP: Amy Adams, yeah.

GROSS: Yeah. Amy Adams is Julie.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "JULIE & JULIA")

STREEP: (As Julia Child) I'm going to try to flip this thing over now, which is a rather daring thing to do.

AMY ADAMS: (As Julie Powell) She changed everything. Before her, it was frozen food and can openers and marshmallows.

CHRIS MESSINA: (As Eric Powell) Don't knock marshmallows.

STREEP: (As Julia Child) Give it a try. When you flip anything, you've just got to have the courage of your convictions, especially if it's a loose sort of mass like - oh, that didn't go very well. But you see, when I flipped it, I didn't have the courage...

ADAMS: (As Julie Powell) She's so adorable.

STREEP: (As Julia Child) ...I needed to - the way I should have. Oh, but you can always put it together. And you're alone in the kitchen. Who's to see?

ADAMS: (As Julie Powell) Pearls. The woman is wearing pearls in the kitchen.

STREEP: (As Julia Child) I've just got to practice the piano. I'm Julia Child. Bon appetit.

GROSS: You know, I love that, 'cause you talk about studying someone's voice as if it's music, and she has such a musical voice.

STREEP: She does.

GROSS: And, you know...

STREEP: And she has no breath.

GROSS: Yeah, I was going to say that.

STREEP: Absolutely none (laughter).

GROSS: Exactly. It sounds like she's been running up a hill.

STREEP: She always sounds like that. I feel like that when I'm in the kitchen. Don't you? Well, I'm not a very good cook, but...

GROSS: Me neither, honestly.

STREEP: (Laughter) I just...

GROSS: I believe that's why...

STREEP: I find myself...

GROSS: ...Delis exist, so that I don't have to cook (laughter), but...

STREEP: Well, I got better after this, and my entire family really did appreciate it.

GROSS: (Laughter).

STREEP: Usually, they're resentful of movies that I go off and make (laughter), but this one had a bonus attached. But, yeah...

GROSS: You know, I compared...

STREEP: ...She had no breath.

GROSS: ...I compared her voice and Thatcher's voice before, but breath-wise, they're the opposite, 'cause she's almost, like, gasping for air.

STREEP: Yeah.

GROSS: And Thatcher has this, like, endlessly long breath.

STREEP: Well, she's so alive, Julia Child, and Margaret is so designed. She's so intent upon making her point. That's the most important thing, is that she win the argument, and there is nothing that stands in the way of that train, you know? But Julia's just alive in front of you. That's part of why people loved her. They lived it with her. They breathed it with her. And the mistakes were all part of it. But she was adept, too, at what she was doing - incredibly adept.

GROSS: OK, so here's a story I read, which I assume is true, but you can tell me if it actually happened (laughter), that in - for the 1976 Dino De Laurentiis remake of "King Kong," you auditioned for Dino De Laurentiis and his son...

STREEP: Yes.

GROSS: ...Who were Italian.

STREEP: Yes.

GROSS: And Dino De Laurentiis said in Italian - what did he say?

STREEP: (Speaking Italian). I don't know. I can't speak Italian anymore, 'cause I'm so old and forgetful, but he said something like, but this is so ugly. Why do you bring me this?

GROSS: This being you (laughter).

STREEP: Yes.

GROSS: Yes.

STREEP: I'm sitting in front of him, opposite the desk. He's smiling. He looks impeccable. He has everything beautiful. And his son is very kind. His son said - 'cause his son had seen me in something, and he said, no, you know, Dad, she's a wonderful actress. And because I had just - I'd studied a year of Italian at Vassar, I could understand what they were saying, and I said, you know, (speaking Italian), I'm very sorry that I'm not as beautiful as I should be, but, you know (laughter), this is it. This is what you get, sort of. And I left. I mean, I was very upset, but I didn't show it. Yes, it's a true story.

GROSS: So a very interesting story (laughter), 'cause you were being told early in your career, basically, that you're not beautiful.

STREEP: Yeah.

GROSS: You're not qualified - your face is not qualified for this role. And you're also...

STREEP: Face and body, I believe.

GROSS: And body.

STREEP: Yes.

GROSS: But then you're also making the decision to let them know that you understand what they said. They were intentionally speaking in Italian so that you wouldn't understand them.

STREEP: Right. Right, right.

GROSS: But you did understand them. You let them know you understood them, and...

STREEP: Because they did - they think actresses are stupid. That was the other thing that - I mean, not they, 'cause I don't think his son was that way. His son was my champion. I mean, he was the reason I was in the office. But the dad - he wasn't being mean to me. He was just speaking to his son in Italian, but he had no idea that I would understand, because they think Americans are stupid, too, so...

GROSS: Did you worry that you were basically - I mean, you hadn't been in any movies yet (laughter), so did you worry that word would spread about you that you were...

STREEP: A pain in the a**?

GROSS: ...That you spoke back to directors? Yeah, that you were a real pain...

STREEP: (Laughter).

GROSS: ...And that you were - yeah, that you were a problem, so, like, avoid her.

STREEP: I am a pain in the a**.

(LAUGHTER)

STREEP: How can I hide it?

(LAUGHTER)

STREEP: I mean (laughter), yeah, that is the package, you know, and...

GROSS: (Laughter).

STREEP: But I was not probably suited to that role either. I mean, that was the truth.

GROSS: How much did you want it?

STREEP: Not much. I mean, I did want a break, but I didn't think I would be good in it. Honestly, I didn't. It represented something that, I don't know, I wasn't drawn to. So I suppose it was easier to be obstreperous in the meeting because of that. If it was an audition for "Sophie's Choice," and Alan Pakula had said something like that, I maybe would have swallowed it because I wanted it so badly.

GROSS: We're listening to the interview I recorded with Meryl Streep in 2012. We'll hear more of that interview, and hear my 2000 interview with Sidney Poitier, after a break, as we continue our series, Classic Films and Movie Icons. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BOSTON CELLO QUARTET'S "RAPSODIA CUBANA")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my 2012 interview with Meryl Streep, one of the movie icons we're featuring this week on our end-of-summer series.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: You were engaged to the actor John Cazale, whom most people know as Fredo in "Godfather" one and two, and in...

STREEP: "Dog Day Afternoon."

GROSS: In "Dog Day Afternoon." Why am I blanking on the title? And he had a small part in "The Deer Hunter." You were nominated for an Oscar for your part in your - in "The Deer Hunter." It was, like, one of your first films. And so you were engaged, and he died of bone cancer shortly after, in 1978.

STREEP: Yes. We were not engaged, but we were a couple. We lived together and - yes, for, like, three years.

GROSS: So he probably died not knowing how famous his roles were going to be, how famous those movies were going to be.

STREEP: I know. I know. He had - well, he had a - the "Godfather" movies were unbelievably popular. And, you know, they were just - popular isn't the word. They were...

GROSS: Well, they've entered into iconic. Yeah.

STREEP: Yeah, absolutely. And they did early. I mean, early, early on, they had that importance, certainly in New York, where we lived. And, you know, we would walk along the street, and people would roll down the window, and they'd go, hey, Fredo, you know? And we could never pay for a dinner if we went to Little Italy - never, which was great. We went all the time. But he - yeah, he made five movies, and all five of them were nominated for best picture.

GROSS: You gave a terrific commencement address at Barnard in 2010, and one of the things you talked about was how you think of your first character as being you in high school (laughter), when you wanted to be the pretty, popular girl. So what you did was you studied Vogue and Mademoiselle. And what were some of the things you taught yourself to do?

STREEP: Bleach my hair, A, and curl it. And there was an elaborate thing, 'cause there weren't hot curlers in those days, so you had to go to bed on - sleeping on rollers, which is just a torture, like maybe sleeping on one of those Maasai...

GROSS: (Laughter).

STREEP: ...Wooden plugs that they put under your neck in the boma, you know, to go to sleep, which I also don't understand.

GROSS: Did you ever use the tin-can thing, putting a tin can on top of your head?

STREEP: That was for the people with curly hair.

GROSS: All right. I get it.

STREEP: I was interested in curling...

GROSS: I get it.

STREEP: ...My bone-straight hair...

GROSS: Right.

STREEP: ...Which won't bend, you know, under any circumstance. Yeah. But the girls with curly hair put it on cans so that it would straighten it out...

GROSS: Right.

STREEP: ...During the night. Everybody was miserable.

GROSS: So you said that you adjusted your temperament to - in trying to be popular and appealing to boys.

STREEP: Yeah. Oh, sure.

GROSS: What did you change?

STREEP: I remember that, well, opinions took a back seat. Opinions were not, you know, attractive. I mean, this is stuff I remember thinking when I was quite young. You know, at my house, in order to be heard, you had to get your - no, you had to get your opinion out. No, no, no, don't interrupt me. You know, Dad, he did that again. And you just...

GROSS: (Laughter).

STREEP: ...You got it out. You learned to rise above the contending voices, but I recognized early on that that wasn't attractive on a date. Like, if he said something stupid, you go, no I don't agree with that at all. That's - how can you say that? It's idiotic. And that would not get a second date, so I would learn to go, (laughter) wow. Yeah, cool.

GROSS: (Laughter).

STREEP: You know, and that that would be OK. So it's a form of acting for a purpose which girls learn to do, and girls are good at it, if they care to be. Now I don't think they - what do I know? I have three daughters, and they're all - they're all doing it on their own, in their own way - I mean, getting along in life on their own terms. And I don't feel they make those accommodations quite in the way we did, but this was something people did. Yeah.

GROSS: One other thing actresses, I think, worry about - you can be the leading lady in your 20s and 30s. Once you're in your 40s, it's really harder to get roles. There's character roles and, you know, the parent roles. I think things are starting to change, but have you been satisfied with the roles for women of your age as you've changed ages over the years, or have you been frustrated with what's out there?

STREEP: Both. I remember when I turned 40, I was offered within one year three different witch roles to be in.

GROSS: Literally witch?

STREEP: Witches, to play three different witches in three different contexts. But it was almost like the world was saying - or the (laughter) studios were saying - we don't know what to do with you. And I remember - I mean, I've repeated this before many times, but I remember being shocked to find out that Bette Davis was 40 or 41 when she did "All About Eve" and was playing an over-the-hill, done, out-of-it, you're-finished actress and that she was only 50 when she did "Baby Jane" and "Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte," and those grotesques of witches. You could call them witches. So, yeah, I think there was for a long time in the movie business, a period of when a woman was attractive and marriageable or something - not marriageable. [Expletive], I guess, is the word (laughter), which...

GROSS: You can't really say that on the radio.

STREEP: ...I probably can't say that. OK. Well, you know what I'm saying, so you substitute something better, but...

GROSS: We could bleep it.

STREEP: OK.

GROSS: It will have been bleeped by the time listeners hear that.

STREEP: OK. So that's - that was it. And then after that, they really didn't know what to do with you until you were the lioness in winter - right? - until you were 70. And then it was OK to, you know - "Driving Miss Daisy" or "Trip To Bountiful," or things like that. But that middle period, what we call the middle, the most vibrant years of a woman's life, arguably, from 40 to 60, were completely - nobody knew what to do with them. And that really has changed - completely changed - not for everybody. But for me, it has changed, and part of it, I think, has to do with the fact that I wasn't that word that I just said that you bleeped before. When I was a younger actress, that wasn't the first thing about me.

GROSS: Sexuality was not the first thing, is what you're saying.

STREEP: It was not the first thing.

GROSS: Sexiness.

STREEP: Yeah, because when that goes away - cute. I was never cute. So when cute goes away, 'cause that goes away with age...

GROSS: Well, Meryl Streep, I really regret that we're out of time. It's been great to talk with you.

STREEP: Me too. Great to talk...

GROSS: Thank you so much for being on our show.

STREEP: Thanks, Terry. I enjoyed it.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAURENCE ROSENTHAL'S "MAIN TITLE/THE CHAUFFEUR")

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to our series, Classic Films and Movie Icons, with the interview I recorded with Sidney Poitier in 2000 after the publication of his memoir. Poitier said he always believed that his work should convey his personal values. When he started making movies in 1949, it was hard for Black actors to get significant film roles, much harder than today. It was even difficult to get small parts that weren't stereotyped. But in the '50s and '60s, Poitier starred in a string of films that addressed the racial tensions of the time - films like "The Defiant Ones," "In The Heat Of The Night," "Lilies Of The Field" and "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner." In 1963, he became the first Black actor to win an Oscar for best actor. He remained the only Black actor to win in that category until 2001, when Denzel Washington won for "Training Day." In the '70s, Poitier directed such films as "Buck And The Preacher," "Uptown Saturday Night," "Let's Do It Again," and "Stir Crazy." Poitier grew up in the Bahamas on Cat Island and Nassau. His family was poor. He was born in 1924 and arrived prematurely, weighing only three pounds. His father prepared for his baby's imminent death by buying a little casket. His mother went to a fortune teller. Poitier died two years ago at the age of 94.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: Your first audition was as a result of a classified ad that you'd read for the American Negro Theatre, which was looking for performers. You say when you got to your audition, you had trouble just reading the script. You certainly hadn't been in an audition before. You had no training, but you didn't have much schooling either.

SIDNEY POITIER: No, I didn't. So when I went into to this place, I could read, for instance, the want ad pages, and I could recognize words like janitor and dishwasher and stuff like that. Just across the page from the want ad page was the theatrical page, and there was this sign that said actors wanted. And I went to this address. I said, maybe I can - I tried dishwashing and janitors and all that stuff. Maybe I'll try this. And I went there, and there was a gentleman there, and he asked me - he said, are you an actor? And I said, yes, I am. And he said, OK. He gave me a script and set me up on this little stage. And he said, turn to page 28. And I did. And on 28 I saw that there was a name, John. And underneath the name John was an awful lot of writing. And these - I suppose these were the words that John would be saying, and then was another part named something else, and he was going to read those parts, he said. So he told me to look it over and take a second, look it over. And when I was ready to let him know. So I read the page and then the following page, and I said, OK, I'm ready. And he said, OK, you start. I said, all right. And I started reading.

Well, of course I had never read for anyone in my life, except maybe in the in the elementary area in my first year in school in Nassau. So I started out, I said, so where are you going tomorrow? So the chap, I guess his eyes flew open and he looked up on the stage and it all came to him, you know, that I was a fake. So he came running up onto the stage, and he snatched the script out of my hand, and he grabbed me - I was a kid, you know, and he spun me around, and he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and my belt in the back, and he marched me to the door. And on the way he said - these were his words, as I remember. He said, get out of here and stop wasting people's time. He said, why don't you go out and get yourself a job you can handle? And as he opened the door and as he chucked me out, his last line to me was, get yourself a job as a dishwasher or something.

GROSS: What did you do to try to improve your auditioning skills before going back to prove that this guy was wrong and that you could do it?

POITIER: Well, my first job was to - because I had this Caribbean accent, as you are, I'm sure you're acquainted with...

GROSS: Well, let me just stop you there and say I can hear the accent much more in this interview than I hear it in movies.

POITIER: Oh, yeah. Well, I had it very intensely, and - so much so that he made a remark about it. And I knew that from what he had said, that I had to do something about that first and foremost. So I saved up enough money to buy a radio. And I thought that the best way to correct it would to - to listen to a radio here in America and try to learn the sounds, the pronunciations and stuff from people I heard on the radio. And I did that, and I listened to the radio between dishwashing in terms of - in other words, when I'd get home, wherever I was sleeping, I would plug in this little radio and I would listen until I fell asleep and whatever was said on the radio, I would repeat it.

GROSS: So you went back to the American Negro Theatre Company (ph) and auditioned a second time?

POITIER: Yeah, I certainly did. That was my aim. I went back six months later and had to audition, but I was really - not really prepared because I didn't have a scene or a monologue from a play. I didn't know that one could buy such things in certain bookstores, so I bought what I thought would be appropriate for an audition. I bought a True Confessions magazine.

(LAUGHTER)

POITIER: And I memorized two or three paragraphs of this - of one of the stories in this thing. (Laughter) I didn't know any better. So I got up on the stage, and I'm reading this thing. And I was hardly through the first paragraph when they stopped me. Oh, my God - just thinking about it.

GROSS: So it's amazing, really, that you were able to actually get a part after all of this. What - just tell me - what was the thing that you did that you think convinced the right people at the theater company to give you a shot?

POITIER: They didn't give me a shot. They rejected me after the - they saw my audition. And I made some observations myself while I was there. I noticed that they did not have a janitor there. And I proposed that I would do the cleaning-up stuff if they would let me come and study. And the people to whom I was speaking, they were the administrators of the American Negro Theatre at that time. And they were somehow impressed with my determination, and they said, if you want to study that bad - that badly, you - OK, you can come in. And so they got - they took me in, and I would - I was the janitor.

GROSS: Let me advance the story a little further and take you to the early part of your movie career, specifically to "Blackboard Jungle," which was released in 1954. This was an important film for you. You had one of the leads in it. This is, like, the most famous high school film, I think - opens with "Rock Around The Clock." Glenn Ford plays the new teacher at a school just filled with juvenile delinquents. And in your first scene, he catches you and some of the other guys smoking in the bathroom. You're washing your hands with your back turned toward the teacher for most of this scene. Let's hear this scene.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "BLACKBOARD JUNGLE")

GLENN FORD: (As Richard Dadier) What's your name, wise guy?

POITIER: (As Gregory Miller) Me? Miller - Gregory Miller. Do you want me to spell it out for you so you won't forget it?

FORD: (As Richard Dadier) No, no. You don't have to do that. I'll remember, Miller.

POITIER: (As Gregory Miller) Sure, chief. You do that.

FORD: (As Richard Dadier) Or maybe you'd like to take a walk down to the principal's office right now with me? Is that what you want?

POITIER: (As Gregory Miller) You're holding all the cards, chief. You want to take me to see Mr. Warneke, you do just that.

FORD: (As Richard Dadier) Who's your home period teacher?

POITIER: (As Gregory Miller) You are, chief.

FORD: (As Richard Dadier) Well, why aren't you with the rest of the class?

POITIER: (As Gregory Miller) I already told you - came in to wash up, chief.

FORD: (As Richard Dadier) All right, then. Wash up. Just cut out that chief routine, you understand?

POITIER: (As Gregory Miller) Sure, chief. That's what I've been doing all the time.

GROSS: Sidney Poitier, how did you like your role in "Blackboard Jungle"?

POITIER: I liked it. I liked it. This young guy that I play, he was really on the cusp of finding himself in useful ways or losing himself to forces he couldn't quite understand by then. And so he had some complications. He had some complexities. He had some depth to him. And I liked playing him.

GROSS: We're listening to the interview I recorded with Sidney Poitier in 2000. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Sidney Poitier in 2000.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

GROSS: Well, you became the African American leading man in the '60s. What were some of the things that you felt you weren't allowed to play or express as an African American leading man in the '60s in Hollywood?

POITIER: I - that is a very good question. And the true answer is I have no such imagery of what I was not able to express because taken - taking the times as they were, the fact of my career was in itself remarkable...

GROSS: Right.

POITIER: ...Just the fact of it, you see. It would have been a luxury I would not have spent much time on trying to determine what was missing. What was missing was not so much for me but what was missing for the overwhelming majority of other minority actors at the time.

GROSS: Well, I'm glad you brought that up. What were some of the things you heard from your fellow actors at the time about stereotype roles that they had to play in Hollywood when you came to Hollywood?

POITIER: Yeah, well, you know, most of us, I think, were obliged to play what was available. I did not. I did not take advantage of that. I couldn't. It was not what I needed to do for my life. I had elected to be the kind of actor whose work would stand as a representation of my values.

GROSS: Let me talk with you about a scene that I think represents the kind of values that you're talking about. And this is a scene from "In The Heat Of The Night." In that film, Rod Steiger plays a local police chief in a Southern town. You're a homicide cop from Philadelphia passing through the Southern town, but you're arrested for being suspicious because you're a Black man from out of town carrying money in your wallet. The police chief doesn't really believe that you're a cop, so he calls your boss in Philly. And your boss suggests that you stay in the small Southern town to help them solve this big murder case that they're working on 'cause they don't have cops who are nearly as experienced as you are. So in this scene, you and Rod Steiger, who's still very skeptical of you, go to question one of the leading white businessmen in town. And I'll just explain, in case it's confusing as our listeners hear it, that as you're questioning him, the businessman slaps you, and then without missing a beat, you slap him right back. Here's the scene.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT")

LARRY GATES: (As Eric Endicott) Let me understand this. You two came here to question me.

POITIER: (As Virgil Tibbs) Well, your attitudes, Mr. Endicott, your points of view are a matter of record. Some people - well, let us say the people who work for Mr. Colbert - might reasonably regard you as the person least likely to mourn his passing. We were just trying to clarify some of the evidence. Was Mr. Colbert ever in this greenhouse, say, last night about midnight?

(SOUNDBITE OF SLAPPING)

GATES: (As Eric Endicott) Gillespie.

ROD STEIGER: (As Bill Gillespie) Yeah.

GATES: (As Eric Endicott) You saw it.

STEIGER: (As Bill Gillespie) I saw it.

GATES: (As Eric Endicott) Well, what are you going to do about it?

STEIGER: (As Bill Gillespie) I don't know.

GATES: (As Eric Endicott) I'll remember that. There was a time when I could have had you shot.

GROSS: Sidney Poitier, in your new memoir, you say that's not the way the scene was originally written. Originally, you didn't slap this businessman right after he slapped you. What did you do in the original scene, and why did you want to change it?

POITIER: The original scene called for the businessman to slap me and for me to absorb it and leave. I found it reprehensible that the writers, writing for that period, would not have written it differently. And I felt that the natural emotional response to being slapped as - and I'm speaking not as Sidney Poitier, but I'm speaking as a Philadelphia detective - that the natural response to a man slapping him, he's going to slap him right back. And I thought that that would be - since those kinds of moments were never found in American films - from the inception of films in this country, that kind of a scene, which would be electrifying on the screen, was always either avoided, not thought of, and I insisted that if they wished my participation in the film, that they would have to rewrite it to exemplify that.

They were - meaning the director, Norman Jewison, who was and is an exquisite artist, and the producer, Walter Mirisch, who is - I mean, his record is fabulous, and we've been very good friends all these years. Both of them said, hey, that's great. Let's do it that way. So we did it. And it indeed did turn out to be a highlight moment in that film, but it also spoke not just of the two characters. It spoke of our time. It spoke of the time in America when in films, at least, we could step up to certain realities.

GROSS: In that film, you use something that you've used in a lot of your films, a very indignant stare, a stare that carries a lot of weight. Can you talk about how you perfected that look?

POITIER: First of all, I don't acknowledge that I have such a look, I mean...

GROSS: Right, right.

POITIER: ...Because I see myself differently than other people see me obviously.

GROSS: Right. But is that, do you think, a look that came from real life or one that you just developed for your acting roles?

POITIER: No, my acting roles are, at the core of themselves, a part of me. So whatever that look is, I mean, it - I cannot manufacture such a look. It comes out of those forces that are churning internally in the individual, you know? And so I just have that look, I suppose, even when I'm thinking of things that are quite contrary to what the look might suggest.

GROSS: Well, I thank you so much for talking with us.

POITIER: Thank you for inviting me.

GROSS: Sidney Poitier, recorded in 2000. He died in 2022 at the age of 94. Our series Classic Films and Movie Icons continues tomorrow, featuring interviews from our archive with Dennis Hopper, who made his movie comeback with the film "Blue Velvet," and Isabella Rossellini, who starred in that film too. She's the daughter of two other movie icons, actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini. I hope you'll join us.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT")

RAY CHARLES: (Singing) In the heat of the night, seems like a cold sweat creeping cross my brow. Yeah.

GROSS: Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producers are Molly Seavy-Nesper and Sabrina Siewert. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT")

CHARLES: (Singing) ...Stare from the skies all mean and bright.

Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.