6 Best Meryl Streep Monologues

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The French Lieutenant's Woman (Sarah Woodruff)

The French Lieutenant’s Woman (Sarah Woodruff)

Category: Movie Role: Sarah Woodruff From: The French Lieutenant's Woman

You cannot understand because you are not a woman. You are not a woman born to be a farmer’s wife but educated to be something better. You were not born a woman with a love of beauty, intelligence, learning, but who’s position in the world forbids her to share that love with another. You are not the daughter of a bankrupt. You have not spent your life in penury. You are not condemned. You are not an outcast. I gave myself to the French Lieutenant so that I should never be the same again, so that I should be seen for the outcast I am. I knew it was ordained that I could never marry an equal. So I married shame. It is my shame that has kept me alive, my knowing that I am truly not like other women. I shall never, like them, have children, a husband, the pleasures of a home. Sometimes I pity them. I have a freedom they cannot know. No insult, no blame can touch me. I have myself gone beyond the pale. I am nothing. I am hardly human anymore. I am the French Lieutenant’ s Whore.

The Devil Wears Prada (Miranda Priestly)

The Devil Wears Prada (Miranda Priestly)

Category: Movie Role: Miranda Priestly From: The Devil Wears Prada

This stuff’? Oh, ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean. You’re also blindly unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic “casual corner” where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of “stuff.”

Sophie's Choice (Sophie Zawistowski)

Sophie’s Choice (Sophie Zawistowski)

Category: Movie Role: Sophie Zawistowski From: Sophie's Choice

My mother, she’s very sick, you know. And I can’t do anything. But I think, if only I could have got that meat for my mother it would make her strong. So I go to the country and, the peasants were selling ham and I buy it with the black market money and I bring it back. But it’s forbidden, you know, because all the meat goes to the Germans. So I sat on the train and I hid it under my skirt, I am pretending that I am pregnant, you know? Oh I was so afraid. I was shaking. And then the German, was in front of the train and he saw me. So he come over and take under my skirt that ham and… So they sent me to Auschwitz.

Out of Africa (Karen Blixen)

Out of Africa (Karen Blixen)

Category: Movie Role: Karen Blixen From: Out of Africa

If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on? Or will the children invent a game in which my name is? Or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me? Or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?

Out of Africa (Karen Blixen)

Out of Africa (Karen Blixen)

Category: Movie Role: Karen Blixen From: Out of Africa

He even took the Gramophone on safari. Three rifles, supplies for a month and Mozart. He began our friendship with a gift. And later, not long before Tsavo, he gave me another. An incredible gift. A glimpse of the world through God’s eye. And I thought: ‘Yes, I see. This is the way it was intended.’ I’ve written about all the others, not because I loved them less, but because they were clearer, easier. He was waiting for me there. But I’ve gone ahead of my story. He’d have hated that. Denys loved to hear a story told well. You see, I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills. But it began before that. It really began in Denmark. And there I knew two brothers. One was my lover, and one was my friend.

Kramer vs. Kramer (Joanna Kramer)

Kramer vs. Kramer (Joanna Kramer)

Category: Movie Role: Joanna Kramer From: Kramer vs. Kramer

I woke up this morning, kept thinking about Billy and I was thinking about him waking up in his room with his little clouds all around that I painted and I thought I should have painted clouds downtown because then he would think that he was waking up at home. I came here to take my son home. And I realized he already is home. I love him very much. I’m going to take him with me. Can I go up and talk to him?