Faith & Spirit Quote by Meryl Streep

Acting, in Meryl Streep's framing, isn’t a parade of technique; it’s a daily wager. “Blind faith” is the tell: she’s pointing to the unnerving fact that, once the lights hit and the camera rolls, an actor can’t audit their own performance in real time. You can’t step outside yourself to check whether the character is landing. You commit, and you hope the commitment reads as truth.

The line also sneaks in a philosophy of identity that feels especially modern. “Who they say they are today” suggests the self is not a stable asset you carry from project to project, but something assembled on the spot - vulnerable to mood, energy, age, headlines, and whatever happened in your life before call time. It’s a counter to the myth that great actors are always in control. Streep, famously associated with precision, undercuts the idea that mastery eliminates uncertainty. Even at the highest level, the job contains a kind of spiritual leap.

Context matters: Streep came up in an era that prized “serious” performance - craft, transformation, research - and she became the emblem of it. This quote quietly flips that narrative. Research helps, rehearsal helps, but the last mile is irrational confidence: the willingness to inhabit a claim without proof. The subtext is bracingly democratic, too. Actors are not superheroes; they’re people practicing belief, scene after scene, trying to make a temporary identity feel inevitable to everyone watching.