Meryl Streep: Six things we learnt from new biography

A new biography about Meryl Streep charts the rise of a star from precocious child to complex Oscar-winning actress.

Journalist Michael Schulman's Her Again, which is based on 80 interviews with people who have known Streep, reveals a brilliant and sensitive woman with both a capacity for reinvention and a strong sense of herself.

Here are six things we learn about the star:

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Her first role was at the age of six

Streep says she remembers feeling the power of acting when she was just six years old, playing the Virgin Mary and cradling her Betsy Wetsy doll. "I felt... holy, actually, and my transfigured face and very changed demeanour captured on Super-8 by my dad pulled my little brothers... into a trance," she says. "They were actually pulled into this little nativity scene by the intensity of my focus, in a way that my usual technique for getting them to do what I want, yelling at them, never ever would have achieved."

She reinvented herself in high school

Born Mary Louise Streep to middle-class parents in suburban New Jersey, Streep was a precocious, talented and slightly bossy child who looked "like a middle-aged secretary", with "cat-eye glasses" and "a brown, neck-length perm" until she transformed herself in high school. After studying the pages of fashion magazines and what the popular girls did, she dyed her hair blonde and "fashioned herself a cheerleader and a homecoming queen".

She performed an abortion scene at university

Unsurprisingly, the actress was the star student in her class at Yale, where she studied acting in a Masters of Fine Art. As a first-year exercise, students were asked to act out a death scene. Most performed conventional scenes, such as shooting, poisoning or hanging themselves, but Streep decided to act out an abortion on herself. One of her classmates said she was "incredibly intense" and claimed other students used the phrase "Streep it up" to mean "step up your game".

A tragic love affair made her a star

In 1976, in her mid-twenties, Streep met and fell in love with fellow actor John Cazale during a production of Measure for Measure. He was 14 years her senior and known for parts in The Godfather and The Conversation. Sadly, Cazale was diagnosed with lung cancer and died two years later, but during his illness, he was cast in The Deer Hunter and Streep also took a part in the film, despite disliking the "stock girlfriend" role, in order to be near him. The role gave the actress her first Oscar nomination and brought her to the attention of a wider audience.

She brought Cazale back from the dead, briefly

Schulman recounts the story of how, on 12 March 1978, a doctor at Cazale's hospital bed declared him dead. Streep wouldn't accept it and began sobbing and pounding on his chest. Momentarily, she seemed to bring him back: Cazale's eyes fluttered open for a second and his last words were to comfort her: "It's all right, Meryl," he said. "It's all right…"

Dustin Hoffman slapped her

Streep and her Kramer vs. Kramer co-star, Dustin Hoffman, failed to get along – with Hoffman, a devoted method actor, slapping her at one point to rouse her anger in a performance. He also taunted her about Cazale's death, whispering his name during emotional courtroom scenes to get a reaction, and once even shattered a wine glass next to her so shards of glass got into her hair. "Next time you do that," she calmly told him, "I'd appreciate you letting me know."