ONE TRUE STAR

Spotlight

The home is her domain, cheerful and pretty; you just know she put up the wallpaper herself. She makes a perfect pie. She lavishes care on birthday parties and Christmas decorations. She is the wife and mother—which means she doesn't get much respect from her daughter, a ferociously ambitious young journalist with no time for flaky crusts. Until Mom gets terminal cancer.

"I just wanted this to be on-screen so bad," says Meryl Streep, who plays the dying mother opposite Renee Zellweger as the daughter in One True Thing— the movie version of Anna Quindlen's novel—which will be released this month. Since Streep is utterly convincing no matter what she does, it is no surprise that she dies well: luminous, resolute, courageous. But that isn't what drew her to the story.

"I've never seen a mother really depicted onscreen: the sort of invisible contributions that moms traditionally make," she muses. "I thought these things could be made visible—could be celebrated. This is a piece where the daughter looks around and suddenly sees the glue, the grout that holds the family together and makes life pleasant and lovely."

As the mother of four, Streep should know; ever since she had a family, her own priorities have been very clear. "Every single decision I've made about my career has been completely defined by who needs what at which particular time," she admits.

Her oldest is 1 8 now, and even though the youngest is only 7, Streep is already worrying about the fledglings leaving the nest. "At four o'clock in the morning an unnamed anguish wakes me," she says, her eyes reddening.

But for now, they're still at home. "It's a great thing to have children in my position—very humbling," says Streep, who also appears in the movie Dancing at Lughnasa, coming out this fall. "Children keep you anchored to reality. You're on a movie set and everyone gets you coffee and asks you what you need." She grins. "And then I go home and I'm waiting on tables like I was in college."

LESLIE BENNETTS